CHAPTER I
THE NEW MR. RAWN

I

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

"Miss Delaware."

"Yes, Miss Delaware. Thank you!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Rawn nodded assentingly, smiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIII

"Ave CÆsar!" irreverently remarked a man with a gray mustache as Rawn passed toward the cloak room.

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

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

—"And nights," added a smiling friend.

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

CHAPTER II
GRAYSTONE HALL

I

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

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

II

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

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

"Very well, John."

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

He only growled as he turned away petulantly.

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

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

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

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

"It cost a lot of money!"

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

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

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

"Accommodation?—"

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

"Why, John! Why, John!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

I

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

III

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

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

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her eyebrows were a trifle raised by now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, you know the place?"

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

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

VI

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

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

"As in what particular?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And beautiful prices?"

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

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

VII

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

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

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

"You mean apiece?"

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

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

VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's all, Miss Delaware."

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

IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV
AT HEADQUARTERS

I

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

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

II

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

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

III

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

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

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

"Why won't they?"

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

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

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

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

IV

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You want my resignation now?"

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

"Is there much dissatisfaction down there?"

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

"Four?"

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

VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What right had you to think it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VII

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

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

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

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

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

VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V
THEIR MASTER'S VOICE

I

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

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

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

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

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

"How many shares?"

"I'm only in for three thousand."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

"And good riddance!" said John Rawn calmly.

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

"Why not now?"

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

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

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

"Well, then—" said a tentative voice.

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI
IN PROPER PERSON

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

"You surprise me!" was all he said.

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

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

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

"I don't think I understand you."

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

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

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

VI

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

"It would be rather a pleasant experience, perhaps, for you—as it would be for me—just to mingle with that giddy throng—say, for dinner. Would you like to be part of it? It's just a foolish thought that came to me."

She turned to him, her eyes bright, her face eager. "Could we, Mr. Rawn?" she said. "I'm crazy over it!"

"I see," he commented dryly. "You were dressing to go down to dinner?"

"No, no, I couldn't afford to do that, of course. I couldn't go alone, and I had no company. I wasn't going down at all. I just dressed up—to—to—"

"Just to look at yourself in the mirror, isn't that it, Miss Delaware?"

"Yes, it's the truth!" She turned to him calmly at last, well in hand again. "I couldn't be one of them—couldn't be like those people down below, so I did the best I could up here—I dressed as much like them as I knew how. I—I—I imagined! I dreamed, Mr. Rawn. I've never known a real evening of that sort in all my life—but it's in my blood. I want to go, I want to dine, and drink, and dance—I'm mad about it, I know, but it's the truth! I want what I can't have. I want to be what I'm not. I don't know what's the reason. It's in the air—maybe it's in the day, in the country!"

VII

"Yes, it's the country," said John Rawn. "We're all going a swift pace, men and women both. I don't blame you. I understand you. Now I know what you want."

"What do you mean?"

"You want just about what I want."

"But, Mr. Rawn—"

"It's the same thing—it's power that you want, just as I do. I feel it in the air when I come near you. You feel the same way when you come near me!"

She nodded rapidly, her eyes narrowing. "Yes, it's true!" she said. "That's true."

"You want to have it within your ability to influence men, just as I do, don't you, Miss Delaware? That's what was in your soul when you stood before your mirror there when I came in, wasn't it, Miss Delaware? You want to win, to succeed, to triumph, don't you, Miss Delaware—you've got ambition? Wasn't that your dream—isn't that what you were imagining, as you stood there and looked in your glass?"

"Yes, yes, it's true, I know it!" she admitted panting. "I know it, my God! yes, I can't help it! But what chance have I?"

"All sorts of chances, my dear girl. I don't make mistakes. I told you this is a business proposition. Now, then, tell me, why did you tog out this way?"

"I did it because I had to. I told you I couldn't help it. It was in my blood to-night!"

"Any man waiting anywhere, Miss Delaware?"

"On my word, no! I wasn't even going downstairs. But I told you I was mad to be in that crowd, where the rich people are. I wanted to hear the music, I wanted to see them—I wanted to pretend for one night that I was a part of it all!"

"You wanted to win—you coveted power! Is it not true?"

"Yes!" she blazed fiercely. And indeed at that moment the room seemed full of some large influence, moving, throbbing all about them.

VIII

"I wanted that," the girl admitted. "All the world does!"

"I suppose you wanted to see some strong man fall on his knees and beg of you?"

"Yes."

"I am sorry, my dear, but I'll not do that. But I understand. So you searched out these glad rags and tried yourself out before the mirror there! Very good! You'll do! Believe me—or ask any man in all this city."

She nodded rapidly. "Yes, you know it, now."

"Now, you're no more mad than I am," said John Rawn. "You're as cool-headed as I am, if I know women at all. We think alike. You're young. I'm young enough. Where'd you get that gown?"

"I had it made—in an alley, in the city back home. It cost as much as I could afford. Thirty dollars!" She flung out the words scornfully.

"It looks three hundred; and I've seen worse below to-night that probably cost three thousand. But it's not yet quite complete—your costume."

"It was the best I had. You ought not to taunt me. I stood here facing myself. I felt disappointed, bitter! Yes, I'll admit that."

"You needn't be," said Rawn calmly. He nodded to her bare and unadorned neck, her hair which lacked brilliants, her fingers left unjeweled. The girl caught his meaning without further speech, and it hurt her yet more.

"What could I do? Why did you bring me here, Mr. Rawn? You've made me unhappy. I've seen it, and I can't be a part of it. It doesn't seem I can go back there to work and be just the same any more, after seeing the city here! I tell you, it's got in my blood, all at once."

"No," he said evenly, "not again just the same. We outgrow ourselves, and can't go back. I'm not the same man I once was." He half-unconsciously shifted to get a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

"But now, my business proposition is very simple. It holds good for one evening, Miss Delaware. I was just going to propose that we forget all this unhappiness, and do a little pretending for one night, say for one hour or so."

IX

He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out something which suddenly flamed into dancing points and rays in the light that fell upon it. She stood motionless while he passed about her neck a tiny thread, delicate as if spun of moonlight. She held out her hand, and he slipped over it a gleaming ring of gems. She bent her head, and he placed a sparkling ornament in her hair. She had seen these jewels before. She turned to the glass now, her bosom heaving as she saw them gleam at her own neck, her own hands, in her own hair. She held out her hands to look at them now, and the gems flashed back challenge to her eyes, sparkling yet more brilliantly.

"It was nothing," said John Rawn tersely. "That's all that lacked. You're good as the best now. I've seen no woman in this city that is your equal in beauty. You were born for this life. Now do you understand what I mean? I say, you can carry it off!"

She turned to him, another woman, changing on the instant, something in her eyes he had never seen before. But in his own eyes there was at the time nothing save the original calm and purposefulness.

"As I was saying, then, since we can both carry it off, why not do so for an hour or so? I've read somewhere of masquerades. Why not try it?"

She turned to him, flushed, radiant, but slightly frowning, puzzled, studying him. Rawn felt the query of her look, felt also something stirring down in his nature which he grappled at once and was able to suppress. His voice was cool and low as it was before.

"It's a big crowd below, and we'll be lost in it. I've learned already that you can be discreet. We'll drop down in there, where no one knows us. We'll try ourselves out, and see whether we'll do, here where the test is hardest. You're ambitious? So am I. This is the heart of the world—the place of gratified ambitions. What do you say, Miss Delaware? I've been looking around down there, and as nearly as I can see, I'm the only man in this avenue worth a million dollars who at this precise moment of the day isn't talking to some good-looking woman!"

"You flatter me!" commented the girl. He did not endeavor any analysis.

"Not in the least! I simply talk sense and business to you. I covet what you covet, love what you love, want what you want. Things which are equal to the same thing ought to be equal to each other—for just a little while, Miss Delaware. Isn't it true? If it is only play, why, let's play at it.

"I forgot to tell you," he added, "that my son-in-law, Mr. Halsey, has gone back to Chicago. He was summoned by wire. No one else knows us both. There wouldn't be one chance in many of our being seen by any one here who knew either of us, and if so, what harm? We'll go and dine as well as the best of them, in the main room. What do you say, Miss Delaware?"

X

She stood facing him now, seeming years older than she had a few moments before. A very skilled observer might possibly have suspected a certain new quality in the calmness of her eye. Beautiful she certainly was; alluring, irresistible in the ancient appeal of woman, she certainly ought to have been, and would have been to any but this particular man who now stood facing her, half smiling; a man of middle age, gray about the temples, of heavy-browed eyes, strongly lined face, of strong and bony frame; not an ill-looking or unmanly man one might have said, though years older than this young woman who stood now threading between her fingers the filmy moonshine chain which suspended the points of flame that rose and fell upon her bosom.

At last she said, hesitating, and holding up the flaming pendant, "I'm not to keep them?"

"No, Marguerite!" he smiled. "This particular Papa Faust retains a string on those jewels. They have been seen elsewhere, my dear girl. No, one night's use of them is all this business proposition carries, my dear."

He began to be just a shade more familiar; but she looked at him, still curiously helpless, because she found him strong where most men are weak and defenseless. He caught some sort of challenge in her attitude and in spite of himself trod a half step forward.... She evaded him. He heard her laughter rippling in the hall, and followed.... Soon they were in the crowded lift, packed in against shirt front and aigrette, silks and jewels, arms and bosoms bared for the evening's fray.

XI

It may be true that no gentleman is grown in less than three generations, but it is not the case that it requires three generations to produce an aristocrat; and here was simple and perfect proof of that assertion. Head waiters make no mistakes! The head-waiter of the main hall unhesitatingly took John Rawn and his companion to as good a table as there was in the room. He knew the air of distinction when he saw it!

Heads, in plenty, of men and other women, turned as they passed through in that careless throng of the world-wise and blasÉ. They walked by quietly, simply, took their places with no ostentation. John Rawn had bethought him earlier as to the dinner order. He gave his directions now quietly, without hesitation.

The two ate and drank discreetly, comported themselves, in fact, easily as any of these scores of others. They did not lean toward each other and obviously talk secrets, they did not laugh uneasily and stare about. Among the many well-bred women in that room—where at least a few such were present—none showed an easier accustomedness than Virginia Delaware. Her eagerness, her feverish anxiety, all now were gone. She was perfectly in hand. It was her pleasure now only to prove her fitness for such a scene, to comport herself as though she had known no other surroundings than these in all her life. Once more the miracle of possibility in the young American woman was shown.

Rawn, discreet as his companion, looked on with approval. "You're it!" he once whispered across the table, as he bent above the menu. "You are the part!" Suddenly there came to him out of this occasion an additional surge of self-confidence. Yes, he said to himself, he, too, could travel this gait. He could step easily into this life, the summit of life in America—as he thought—as though born to it. He could spend money with the best. He could obtain for himself as beautiful a woman to wear his jewels as any man here in all this great city. He could as widely advertise his power, his wealth, as any of these. Did he not see envious eyes bent upon his companion and upon himself? It was done! He had won! He had succeeded!

XII

After all, it had been easy, as he had found so many things easy in the test. As to the young woman with him, John Rawn's cold heart went out in admiration. "By Jove!" he said, "she's a lady, that's what she is. She'd be—" Yet it is to be noted that his admiration for this young woman was primarily based not upon the usual impulses of men so situated, but upon a vast self-respect, for that he had placed her here and so proved his own judgment to be good. Some souls are slow to any love but that of self, the approbation of self being the breath of life to them. Even the beauty of Virginia Delaware—and she was beautiful—was swallowed up in John Rawn's love and admiration for himself.

There was, thus far, no suggestion of impropriety between them, now or later. They dined long, deliberately and well. Miss Delaware drank no wine, Rawn himself only abstemiously. The keenest delight of the evening felt by either came not of food or drink. The intoxication of the city's night life fell upon them, entered their souls. Distant and low-voiced musical instruments set the air athrob with sensuous melody. Flowers bloomed, jewels blazed, soft voices rose, wine added its stimulus here and there. Cut beyond this luxury, this sensuousness, beyond the novelty of it, beyond the vague impulses of a common humanity which runs through all the world, they felt the last and subtle delight which comes with an admitted assuredness of self—the consciousness of power and ability to prevail, the certainty of knowing all the path, all the full orbit of the great.

XIII

As they sat thus calmly, apparently, as most might have said, old habituÉs of scenes like this, apparently persons of wealth and distinction, Rawn felt once more bent upon him the look of a passer-by. There approached the table where they sat the couple he had seen earlier that evening, a stately and beautiful young woman, whose features now were a trifle more animated, whose eyes were brighter; and with her the same dyspeptic director, sallow, with pointed dark beard. His face flushed still more as he saw John Rawn and his companion. He turned an admiring gaze upon the latter, whom of course he did not recognize. Rawn caught the gaze. It was the keenest delight of his evening that he could smile back, showing his own teeth also.

"By Jove!" muttered the ex-director to himself.

"I beg pardon!" haughtily commented his own fair companion, who had caught his gaze aside. "You know that person? Who is she?"

"I don't know, my dear—I'm just trying to think. Her face—it looks like the goddess on some stock certificate I've seen—"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, goddess with a handful of lightning bolts."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. We might call her the 'Lady of the Lightnings' to-night. She surely does shine like the bright and morning star, the way she's illuminated—eh, what?"

"Indeed?"

"Well, hang it all! Yes. She's a looker, too!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, indeed! And they both look like ready money." The ex-director gave a little laugh.

"You don't know them?" asked his companion, more placated as they readied the corridor, where Virginia Delaware was at last out of sight.

"No, I don't know her—never saw her before, unless, as I said, in an engraving. Don't worry—I haven't got any of the engravings—now."

"Who is he?"

"Fellow by name of Rawn, from Chicago."

"Oh!"

CHAPTER VII
JOHN RAWN, PROMINENT CITIZEN

I

The blare and blaze of American life went on in all its capitals of industry. Buildings sprang up, factories poured their smoke unceasingly into the sky. Men ran hither and thither like ants, busy about what seemed to them of importance. Vast hives of heaped-up stone twice daily poured out their population of small creatures, some of them crippled, hurt, shorn in the battle of life, their faces pale, their forms bowed and stunted before their time. Out of the rich West poured always a steady stream of the products of the soil and of the mines, wealth unspeakable, dug from the resources of this admirable country of ours. Many produced it, a few controlled it, all required it.

But there came a sort of hush over all the country, as though an eclipse were passing, or some gloom cast by a cloud coming between these cities and the sun. Men said that business was not so good as it should be, though the country was richer than ever. None understood the popular unrest. Many pondered, many attempted to explain, but they found all save the easy and obvious explanation. The masses remained morose, dissatisfied. Pamphlets appeared. In the journals pretending to give voice to popular trend of thought there were now to be seen many screeds from many unknown men. Some men said that prices should rise, others that rates of transportation should rise, but that wages should decrease. Others said that wages should increase—a few only of these, not many; for those who needed most a larger wage were those most dumb of expression, least able and least apt to make any public protest. Our proudest may be our poorest—our neediest our most silent.

II

In John Rawn's slowly growing factories near the western capital wages did not rise. He kept on his fight with the labor organizations. For this reason he met additional expense and additional delay in carrying on his plans, but still waged war, relaxing not at all, meeting pickets with policemen, force with force. The popular discontent of the day meant nothing to him. His eye was fixed ahead. To Halsey's complaints on the one side, his directors' discreet grumbling on the other, he paid as little attention on the one hand as upon the other. John Rawn had a dream, and he knew that his dream must come true. His dream was one of a wide-reaching and relentless power, shared by those few men destined by fate to own the so-called American republic. Let the people do what they would, all they could. This was his dream. It had come to him in all its fullness one evening in the great city of the East. He exulted.

As to the industrial situation in International Power, Rawn now began to prove himself a good business man, and he received more and more the grudged confidence of his associates, who came from almost every rank of big business. Through the aid and advice of these, his private fortune began to mount up enormously. So also did International Power make money. The only sore place of the directors' overstrained nerves centered in affairs at the gaunt building in the suburb, where a dozen mysterious machines, toothed and armed, cogged and coiled, still stood in a state of half-completion, as inchoate and mysterious now as they had been at their inception. None of the workmen, none of the foremen, could guess what they would look like when completed.

There was something else, which not the most suspicious guessed—John Rawn himself did not know! His success was a vast bubble. Halsey was the only man who ever had known the full secret of mantling one of the miraculous receivers which they all had seen and all had accepted. Rawn, bold enough, kept this to himself, although he feared to go to Halsey and make any demands. Halsey held grim peace for months—indeed, for more than four years in all, counting from the first motor made in the Kelly Row woodshed. It was risky, but for once Rawn dared make no desperate move. Halsey talked little. He was very sad since the birth of his hunchbacked child. Sometimes he talked to Virginia Delaware about it; never to his wife, Grace.

And still the seven days' wonder of International Power remained to puzzle the industrial world. No inkling of the real intention of the company ever got out. There was, as Rawn had predicted, no market for the stock, for the reason that it was not listed and for the further reason that it was not sold. It was held in a close communion of hard-headed and close-mouthed men, and there were no confidences betrayed. The thing was too big to conform to ordinary rules. In the center of all this stood the figure of John Rawn, suddenly grown large and strong. He ruled his army, officers, staff and line, cavalry, infantry and auxiliaries, as one born originally to command. He brooked neither parleying nor thwarting of his will—except in one instance. He never made any demands on Halsey, never gave him any peremptory orders after that one day in the office, months earlier, before Halsey made his first trip to New York.

III

These months seemed to have aged John Rawn, none the less. He grew grimmer and grayer, more taciturn and reserved. At the clubs he was one of the most talked-of men in town, and one who talked least himself. As his hair grew grayer at the temples, his jaw grew harder, at the corner of his chin coming the triangular wrinkles which go with hard-faced middle age. Enigmatic, self-centered, he could not have been called a happy man. He smiled but rarely, joked not at all, engaged in no badinage, told no stories, found no lighter side of life, played no golf, had no vacations. Like some vast engine of tremendous driving power he went on his way, admired in a city and country full of able men, as one competent to hold his own with the best and strongest of them all. And still of all his traits stood out the one of self-confidence. He played a game of enormous and continuous risk—fundamental risk by reason of Halsey, incidental by reason of his widely ballooned market operations; yet his nerve held. Moreover, he was learning the price of success—an absolute devotion to the means of success. When he learned that the child of his daughter was not a son, but a girl, and that it was a hunchback for life, a sad-faced, unsmiling child—he set his jaws for a moment, but said few words of condolence, either to his daughter or her husband. He did not smile for three months after that, and never referred to this subject again, after its first discussion with his wife at Graystone Hall; but it cost him no time and no energy lost from business. It only deepened in his soul his growing hatred for Charley Halsey, the man whom he dared not chide.

IV

In the headquarter offices a vast, smooth running business machine had now been built up. Rawn was an organizer. The laxness and looseness of the old railway offices in St. Louis, where he had got his business schooling, were missing in the headquarters of International Power. Employees had small time to gossip in business hours. Out of business hours, it is to be confessed, once in a while there was discussion as to the salary of Miss Virginia Delaware, which was reported a wholly instable affair. It was rumored in stenographic circles that she had taken to wearing very stunning evening gowns. Yet not the most captious—though willingness did not lack—could raise voice against her, or couple her name with any other. Rawn and she were never seen together excepting during business hours; he never mentioned her name in any company. Once or twice a laughing voice at the National Union, where rich men met in numbers, tried to create some sort of discussion over Rawn's beautiful private secretary, but it was so suddenly stopped by Rawn himself that it never was resumed.

Upon the other hand, few could speak in definite knowledge regarding the domestic matters of John Rawn. He was a man of mystery, though one of known and admitted power. He held what he gained; and, as there must have been accorded to him strength of soul, grasp, readiness, courage, he began to be accepted as one of the large figures of his day alike in industry and finance. He had by this time fully arrived in the prominent citizen class in his chosen metropolis. Did firemen perish, John Rawn joined the list of those who aided the widows. Was some neighboring city swept by flames, again he joined—on the front page of the papers—those who gave succor for the needy. Did a famine in India or China sweep off a million souls, John Rawn—on the front page—aided the survivors. He was a member of the leading clubs of the city, a director of the board of the art institute. He bought if he did not occupy a box at the opera, and allowed his name to be mentioned at the banquets offered by eager souls to celebrities of one sort or another who proved themselves amenable to receptions, banquets, addresses of welcome, and what-not, anything to bring lesser names into print on any page, tails to any kite. In short, John Rawn comported himself as a prominent citizen should. Ever he was the kite, never the tail. He loomed a large and growing figure in his little world.

V

Above all, there seemed something uncanny in the unvarying facility with which Rawn made money. There is no real explanation of the difference in money-making power, except that some men make money and some do not. Rawn did, without any doubt or question. Not lacking ability and calmness in judgment, and not lacking full information such as is accorded those said to be upon the sacred inside of the market, he was in and out of Rubber, Coppers, Steel, at precisely the right time. His oil investments in California, played up and down in proper symphony, had made him more than a million dollars, smoothly, easily, simply. The railways market was an open book to him, and Public Utilities seemed something he could gage while others stood and wondered. There are times when some men win. Rawn could not lose, whether he dealt in Ontario Silvers, Arizona Coppers, anything he liked. He was in with the pack when, in these last fierce days of individual and corporate greed, it finished pulling down a republic, and battened, guzzled at the bowels of the quarry. He partook with these of a broad knowledge of the narrowing raw resources of the country, and was in with them at the death. He was one of those to get hold of large acreages of the passing timber lands, he was counted with those who sought the great coal fields for their own; ran true to scent, with these, the trail of monopoly in any commodity which the people more and more must need. In the one matter of his relations with a certain transcontinental railway, Rawn made a quarter million as his share of the three-quarters of a billion taken in sales of mineral lands from the railway's land-grant holdings. That the grants had covered only agricultural lands mattered little, for when the sleepy government at Washington reluctantly took the trail, it was shown a law, cunningly passed a few years earlier, which barred the republic, by virtue of a six-year statute of limitations, from recovering any of its own property! John Rawn often laughed over that. He laughed also when the "suckers," as they called them, bit just as eagerly at irrigation as they had at mines. He often laughed—it was all so ridiculously easy to pull down a country, when the running was in good company! He was a prominent citizen.

(Rawn and Laura)
(Rawn and Laura)

CHAPTER VIII
A PRINCELY GENEROSITY

I

Mr. Rawn went on with the pack. He was in and out of the market. His money grew. His ambition also grew. He felt coming now upon him another change. He said to himself that he was now about to pass up, into yet another era of his development.

One day, after his usual day's routine, he closed his office door, took his car at the curb, dropped in at his club, imbibed the two cocktails which were now his evening wont, and again emerging, nodded to his chauffeur in the fashion which meant "Home!" They passed on out again through the floating crowd of various and often vulgar vehicles, northbound—shrieking aloud in a vast united chorus, demanding speed, speed, and yet more speed—along the throbbing arteries of the city's population. At last he stopped once more at the front of Graystone Hall. "Forty-five minutes, Dennis," said he to his driver, snapping his watch. "Twenty-one miles; you'll learn it after a while."

Mr. Rawn was in exceptional good humor. He was at peace with the world and with his conscience. He looked about him now calmly, with approbation in his gaze. His gardeners had done wonders. The walks were solid and well kept, the greensward sound and flourishing. These late stubbed and desolate trees were now wide, green and branching. The crocus borders were unbroken, the formal monochrome beds, here and there upon the lawn, showed clean-cut and distinct. The tall pillars of his motley house even had a green veiling of ivy, swiftly grown by art, and not by time. On a terrace a bed of foliage plant, thirty feet long, grew in the shape of a word—a magic word—"Rawn." If any passer-by wished knowledge as to the creator of all this, he might read as he ran—"Rawn."

Rawn passed up the steps and looked out through the long hallway from the rear of the house, or rather its real front, which lay upon the lake shore. Beyond, he could see the faint curl of the distant steamers' smoke against the horizon. He stopped for a moment, drinking in the scene, of which he never tired. There were birds twittering softly in the trees about him. He caught the breath of flowers, coming to him from the halls within. Yes, it was an abode suited for a prominent citizen.

There came to meet him now the quiet footfall which he had come to expect, not always patiently or with pleasure, as the natural end of his day's labors; his wife, Laura, had never forgotten this daily greeting of the old-fashioned wife to her husband, as the latter returned at the close of his day's labor.

II

He stopped as he heard her slow tread upon the stair. She was coming to meet him. She always did. He, John Rawn, controller of men, a man born to succeed and going yet higher, had only, after all, an old-fashioned wife!

It was an emergency this evening. He was accustomed to meet emergencies. He had come to-night prepared to meet this one.

"Laura," said he, after the servants had drawn the curtains and left them alone in the central room, whither they had repaired after dinner; "sit down here, I want to talk to you a while."

"Yes, John," said she quietly. But she looked at him startled. Her face grew suddenly grave. Be sure the brute advancing to the poll-ax knows its fate. That was the look in Laura Rawn's face now. "Yes, John," she said, knowing what blow was to be hers.

He motioned her to a seat beyond the little table and seated himself opposite. Reaching into a bulging pocket, he brought out a thick bundle of folded papers; long, narrow papers, most of them green, others brown, or pale pink. He pushed this bundle across the table, so that his wife must see it. She reached out a hand, but did not look at it.

"What is it, John?" she said. Her hand tarried, her face went still more weary and gray, became even of an ashier pallor than was its wont.

"It's a trifle, Laura," said John Rawn. "Look at it. There's bonds and gilt-edge dividend-payers for just exactly one million dollars!"

"One million dollars, John! What do you mean?"

"Look at it, see for yourself."

"But, John—what does it mean?"

"It means a great deal, Mrs. Rawn, a great deal for you. It took some work to make it on my part. There are not ten men in this town to-day who could draw out of their business clean, unhypothecated securities for a million dollars. I've seen to it that all these are registered in your name. It's my gift to you, without reservation."

"John, how could I thank you—but I don't want it! I've not earned it, I wouldn't know what to do with it. You're always so—so kind, John, with me. But I can't take it! It's not mine!"

"It is yours, Laura. And you've got to take it!"

"But I don't want to!"

"I want no foolishness," he said sternly. "That money is yours. You can use it as you like. Of course, I will counsel with you as to reinvestment the best I can. I don't want to see the interest wasted.

"I don't ever want to see you in need," he went on. "I don't counsel loose investments. My lawyers will also tell you what to do with your money, and they'll put up to you a list of good, safe, savings-bank investments, the kind that fools and sailors ought to have. I'll help you choose, if you like. I don't want to be ungenerous. This is your estate."

III

"My estate!—But, John, I'm your wife! I don't care for this money. I don't understand it, and I don't want it. I want to be your wife, John, the way I always was—I want to help—I want to be useful to you all the time, as I've always tried to be."

"Precisely, Laura, and I appreciate that feeling very much. I feel the same way. I want to be as useful as I can to you. We have always been loyal to each other, faithful with each other; I know that. There are not ten men worth my money in this town to-day who can say what I can—that they've been faithful to their wives as I have been to mine. You've been a good woman, and you've worked hard. You say you haven't earned this money, but I think you have. We've been useful, yes, to each other. But when we can't be any more, Laura, why then—"

The tears burst from her eyes now. He frowned, that she should interrupt him, but went on.

"It shall never be said that I was unkind to you, Laura. Indeed, I shall always feel kindly to you—always remember what you have done."

"But you don't, you don't, John!"

"I don't? What do you mean by that, Laura? Isn't there the proof? Isn't there a million dollars lying right in front of you on that table? And you say this to me, who have just given you a cold million!"

"That's it, it's a cold million, John," said she bitterly. "It's cold!"

"Good God! The unreasonableness of woman!" said John Rawn, upturning his eyes. "Now I've thought all this out as carefully as a man can. I've denied myself, to take this much capital out of my investments and set it aside for you. I can make five millions out of that money in the next five years. But no, I reserve it, and I give it to you without stint. I give it to you for your estate, so that you shall never know want—more money than you ever had a right to dream of having. You do that for a woman, and what does she say? Why, she doesn't want it! Good God!"

IV

"John," she said, struggling for her self-control, "you might at least tell the truth."

"What do you mean—the truth?"

"It's some other woman, of course!"

"I swear to you, Laura, it's nothing of the sort. I've been guilty of no act with any one—" But she shook her head.

"Don't I know?" she said. "It's always another woman. She's a young woman, whoever she is. Why don't you come out and tell me the truth, John? How long before you're going to be married?" The tears were welling steadily from her eyes, under the last of the many and bitter torments which are so often a woman's lot.

"I say to you again, Laura, there are no plans of that sort in my mind!"

"Then how long will it be before our—our—" She could not say the word "divorce." She had been an old-fashioned wife.

"I've no plans as to that. I was only wanting to discuss the matter quietly to-night, without any disturbance."

"No," she said, "I must not break down! Tell me, when does it come, John?" But still the tears came, steadily, and she made no effort to stop them.

"When you like. I would suggest that you quietly go to some other place, Laura. That will be best for me. Why—" he added this in a burst of confidence, "—there wouldn't be twenty people around town would know you'd gone! I can keep a close tongue, and so can you."

"But, John, why should we? I've never crossed you in any way. I've always tried to do what you liked. Why should we part? I'll be willing just to live along here quietly. I can't bear to think of going away. I like my things. John," she said suddenly, and seemingly irrelevantly, "who told you about all these things, these collectors' pieces that you've been getting for so long?"

He winced with sudden self-revelation, astonished at this intuition on her part. He had been sincere in his statement that there was no other woman in his affections. He had only forgotten that he had no affections. He flushed now, but tried to pull together.

"Very well, Laura," said he; "you only prove to me what I've felt for some time. You can't understand me, you simply are not up to my requirements. I'm willing to say you'd be content to live along here, just as we did at Kelly Row. I am not content to do anything of the sort. I've been thinking over this, studying over it for some time. There's the answer." He nodded toward the bundle which lay upon the table.

V

"It's no use trying to make the world all over again, Laura," he said after a time. "We've both done our best, but our best didn't tally. We've hung together. What's right is right. Is it right for me to be dragged down by your own limitations—ought I to stop in my own career to conform to that? Would that be right, now, Laura, for a man like me?—Is it right for any man? If you can't go forward, ought I to go back? If we can't both travel the same gait, whose gait ought to govern? Whatever you do, don't blame me, that's all. But you did blame me—you do now." A grave look sat upon his face. He felt himself an injured man.

"Yes, John," she said. "I do."

"Of course, of course! That's the reward a man gets for loving his wife, treating you as I have. Well, we're not the first to face a situation of just this kind. Things travel swifter now than they did when we were children, or when we were married. What did then will not do to-day. Why blame ourselves for that?—blame the time, the way of the world, the way things go to-day. This country has changed—it goes faster every year. We've got to keep the pace, I tell you, when we get into it. Those who can't must drop out, and that's all there is about it. I was born for the front, and that's all about that. Don't blame me. I've never blamed you!"

"Then, what do you blame, John?"

"Nothing, I say. It's the way life runs. We're married, why? Because we thought we were to have some property to protect. There is much to be said in favor of the marriage institution. It holds property safe under its contract. Property—that's the sign of power! Property is the only reason for marriage; or for government, when it comes to that. Property is the token of power. I've got that! But something else goes with it! Why, Laura, when I look at us both I wonder that I've been patient so long, held back as I have been by your own narrow ideas. If you'd had your way, you'd have set up Kelly Row right where we are now!"

VI

"I'm old-fashioned, John," said she, her head high, though her tears fell free, "I'm just an old-fashioned, worn-out wife, that's all. I'm not so very much, John, and I never thought I was very much. I just did the best I could, all the time. I couldn't seem to do any more, John. I don't know how. I did my best!"

"We all do!" said John Rawn philosophically. "We all do our best. But when our best isn't good enough to keep us up, we go down!"

He spoke generously, gravely, judicially. He was arbiter, in his own belief, not husband. The country had changed since they two had married.

"Yes, there's much to be said for the institution of marriage, Laura," he repeated after a time. "In fact, it is a necessity, as society is organized. But divorce is a natural corollary of marriage. There are contracts, and broken contracts. That's all!"

"What is a—a corollary, John?" she asked.

"It's a consequence; it is something that follows. I meant to say, that if it is right for two people to be married, it is right for them to be divorced when the time comes. It's property, and the consequences to property, which sometimes determine that!"

"But we said, John, when we were married—I swore it with all my heart—'Till death do us part!' It isn't death. I wish it were!"

"No, it's property," said John Rawn.

VII

"But all this serves no purpose," he continued. "I don't want to have you make this hard for me!"

"Ah, God! How you've changed, John, since the old times! How you've changed!"

"So that's it, is it?" he rejoined bitterly, "I've only changed, and you're sorry that I changed. Well, suppose we agree to that. I have changed!"

"What do you want me to do, John?" she asked after a time, her breath still, in spite of herself, coming in sobs. "When do you want me to go?"

"To-morrow, Laura. There's no use waiting."

"Very well; where shall I go?"

"Why, I don't dictate to you, Laura—I leave that all for you to determine. You can be happy as you like, and where you please. I would only suggest, if you ask me, that you take up a residence in some quiet community, a sort of place that seems to suit you."

"Very well, John; I've not many friends here to leave, that's true. I've not been happy here; I never would be. I'll agree to that much. I believe I'll go back to our old town—I'd feel better there!"

"You've good judgment, Laura," he noted with approbation. "What you say has good sense about it. Very likely you'd be more happy there than here. But wherever you go, don't forget your old husband, John. Deep in my work as I shall be, I will always think of you, Laura, with nothing but kindness. I want you to think that way of me—to remember that I've been kind to you, always. You will, won't you, dear?"

She did not seem to hear. Her face was bowed down upon her arms, flung out across the table. She was an old-fashioned woman, and still silly enough to pray to the God who had placed her in this world of puzzles.

END OF BOOK TWO