i
for some time mrs. rawn said nothing in answer to her husband's declaration. she had known such things before. indeed, with woman's instinct for deliberate self-deception, she sometimes in spite of her own clear-sightedness had persuaded herself to feel a sort of resentment at the conditions which so long had held her husband back; had been sure, as so many wives are, that only a conspiracy of injustice had thwarted him of success. if only he could get his chance! that was the way she phrased it, as most wives do—and most husbands.
but to-day there was something so sincere in his air as to take her beyond her own forced insincerity with herself. she caught conviction from his tone. there fell this time upon the sensitized plate of her woman's nature some sort of shadow of events to come which left there a permanent imprint as of the truth.
"what is it, john?" she demanded. her eye kindled, her voice had in it something not of forced or perfunctory interest. he caught these also, in his exalted mood almost as sensitive as herself.
"then you believe it at last!" he demanded, almost fiercely. it was the voice of his father speaking, demanding of a sinner whether or not she had repented of her former fallen state. "you begin to think that after all i'll do something for us both? oh, well, i'm glad—"
"why, john, i always thought so," she eluded mildly. "when did i ever—"
"oh, i don't know that you ever said it in so many words," he grumbled, "but of course i knew how you felt about it. i suppose a woman can't help that. it was my part to succeed somehow, some time, in spite of you. i always knew i would."
he paced up and down, his coat tails back of the hands which he thrust deep into his pockets. "i'll tell you again, since i have never spoken of this—for fear you'd think me just a little conceited about myself"—he smiled in a manner of deprecation, never for an instant catching the comedy of this, more than she herself displayed proof of her own wish to smile—"i'll tell you anyhow, though you may think i've got a bit of vanity about myself. the truth is, i've always believed in myself, laura! i've kept it hidden, of course—never let a soul know that i thought myself the least bit different from anybody else. you didn't know it, even—and you're my wife. i've been considered a modest man all, my life. yet, laura, here's the truth about it—i wasn't, really! i did feel different from other men. i didn't feel just like an ordinary man. i knew i was not—and there's the truth about it. i don't know exactly how to tell you, but i've always known, as sure as anything, that some day i'd be a rich man."
ii
she sat looking at him seriously, her elbows resting on the table, her gray eyes following him as he walked, his face serious, the imperious lock of hair now fallen across his forehead.
"not that i would let money itself be the only thing, my dear, as you know," he went on nobly. "i wouldn't do that. any man worth while has larger ambitions than merely making money. after i've made money enough, for us—more than you ever dreamed about—after i've succeeded and proved myself—then i'm going to do something for other men—my inferiors in life, you know—the laboring men. i suppose, after all, people are pretty much alike in some ways. some men are stronger than others, more fit to succeed; but they ought to remember that after all they are the agents of providence, that they are custodians, laura, custodians. no man, laura, no matter what his success, ought to be wholly selfish. he oughtn't to be—well, conceited about himself, you know. he ought to be humble."
she still looked after him, wondering whether, after all, he might not be a trifle off his head; but the seriousness of his eye daunted her.
"as for us, we'll move up to chicago first, in all likelihood; maybe later to new york, for i suppose business will take us there a great deal of the time. as to where we'll make our home eventually, i hardly know. sometimes i think we'll come back here and build a real house, just to show these people who we were all the time. wherever we build, we'll furnish, too. i'm going to be a spender. oh, i've longed for it all my life—the feel of money going out between my fingers! not all for ourselves, mind you. maybe you don't quite understand about that—i couldn't expect you to. but after i've done something for the common people, i want to build something—churches, monuments, something that will stick and stay after you and i are gone, and tell them who john rawn was. i want them to say, most of all, that he was a modest man, that he was a kind man, and not a selfish one—not a selfish man, laura."
iii
she nodded, looking at him fixedly, large-natured enough to be just in the assembling of these crude and unformulated ambitions which she knew tormented him. "yes, john," she said quietly.
the next instant his mood changed.
"but one thing they'll have to do!" he said, smiting a fist into his palm. "they'll have to admit that i was john rawn! they'll have to realize that success comes where it belongs. my brain, my energy, my point of view, my ability to command men, my instinct for leadership—they'll have to recognize all that. i'll make them see who we were all the time. why, laura, we've just been walking along a flat floor, more than twenty years, and now we're going to take the elevator. we'll go up now, straight and fast.
"i'm going to make you happy now," he mused. "you've been a good enough wife. i always said that to myself—'she's been a good wife.' i'm going to show you that you didn't make any mistake that night when you took me, only a railway clerk, with a salary of forty a month."
she did not remind him that, so far as she knew, he was still a railway clerk, with a salary which in twenty years had not grown abnormally. but now her own ambitions began to vault: first of all, the ambition of a mother for her child. she accepted all these vague statements as convincing truths; for where we hope we are easily convinced.
"but how soon, john? you see, there is grace, our girl."
"she'll wear diamonds and real clothes."
"i wasn't thinking of that. i was thinking of her education. grace ought to go to some good girls' college in the east. you see, you and i didn't have so very much education, john," she smiled.
he frowned in answer. "we didn't need so much, so far as that goes. books are not everything. there's plenty of college men who don't amount to anything."
"i didn't so much mean books. but you see, john, we've lived rather carelessly. we've not been very conventional, we don't know very many people, and—maybe—we don't know much how things are done, you see. now suppose we were giving a dinner, and you had to take out the guest of honor—"
"nonsense! i reckon any guest'd feel honored enough to come to my house. i'm not worrying about that. cash in the bank is the main thing for the guest of honor. as for the girl, she'll have as much education as we had, and that's enough."
"but i want her to be a lady, john."
"can't she be?"
"i'll want her to marry well, john."
"won't she? if she has money, can't she?"
"but i want her to be prized for herself, for what she is."
"she'll be our daughter, and won't that be enough?"
"but herself!"
"she's our girl. i don't see where she'd find better parents."
"i was just thinking—about her education—that a little finishing would help her. we wouldn't always live just as we are living now, and she ought to be prepared for better things. we read about things, but what do we know about them? grace ought to know."
"i don't really join in your anxiety, mrs. rawn," said he largely, "but that'll all come, if it's needful."
"it's needful now. grace'll be a young woman before long. you see—" she flushed painfully as she spoke—"i don't want to see her grow up awkward. i don't want her to feel as though she hadn't been used to things, you know—to be ashamed of herself and her—her parents. not that i care so much for myself—"
there were tears in her eyes—tears of reaction, of hope however badly founded. she had toiled long and patiently.
"why, what's the matter, laura?" asked her husband.
"i'm getting to be almost old, john—i'm almost an old lady now! i've got gray hairs. i'm forty-five."
he shook her by the shoulders playfully. "nonsense! we're almost of an age, and i'm just beginning life. grace is only a child."
"she's eighteen past. that's why i asked you how soon—tell me, have they really raised your salary, john? if we could only have two thousand dollars a year it would be all in the world i should ask."
"salary!" he guffawed. "two thousand dollars a year! say that much a month, a week, a day!"
"you're crazy, john! what do you mean?" indeed, some doubt of his sanity now began to enter her mind.
"read in the papers about the daily incomes of those big chaps, those really great men back east, the fellows who run things. every one of them made it out of nothing—not one of them had any one to give him a start. we've no right to say that i can't do as well as they have. the start's the thing."
"but what has happened, then? i never saw you so stirred up before in all my life, john."
"i never have been."
"but what is sure—what can i depend on for grace?"
"death, taxes, and a woman's curiosity are all the sure things. i don't know anything else that is sure. no man can give all the details of his life in advance."
"in advance?"
"oh, it hasn't all actually happened yet, of course. i won't begin wheeling home a wheelbarrow full of gold every night for quite a while. but some day i may!" his lips closed grimly.
iv
"grace'll be a young woman before long," his wife still mused, irrelevantly.
"let that take care of itself. i'll deliver the goods."
she allowed herself a smile. "they are not delivered?"
he flushed at this. "you think they never will be? very well, i'll fight it out alone. at least i believe in myself."
"but what's happened? what do you mean, after all?" she put her hand upon his arm as he passed. he flung himself into a chair opposite her, his own elbows on the table as he faced her.
"you can't understand it, laura; but listen. there are two ways of getting rich. you can make money without brains in real estate, other people building you up rich. that's luck, not brains. a great many of the great fortunes—take astor's, for instance, in new york—have been made in that way. but that's a fortune which you o.k. after it's made, and you don't know anything about it in advance—it's too far in the future. you don't hear of the ones that are not made. astor used his best judgment and bought land up the island, where he thought people would go, but he didn't know they'd go there. that's as much luck as brains. we call luck brains when it makes good.
"but there's another way of getting rich. that means real brains, and not luck. it means deliberately figuring out what people are going to do. there is only so much room on the surface of the earth. but there's room in the air for millions and millions of basic ideas."
he gloomed across at her, but she kindled, as ready as ever to travel with his thought.
"look at a few of the big ideas which have paid," he said. "give the people something they haven't had; get them so they have to have it! cinch it first, and sell it afterward—and you're going to get rich. granted an idea which takes hold on the daily life of the whole people, and there's no way of measuring the money you can make.
"for instance, you couldn't put the world back to the place where it could get along without refined oil, without steam and electric transportation, and the telephone, and a thousand other things which have made men rich—inventions which seemed little at first, but which were universal after a while. oil, water, iron, wood, steel—we have to have those things. cinch them and sell them. that's the way to get rich, my dear. get an idea, get to it first, and cinch it for your own. then sell it. keep on selling it. give 'em something they've got to have, after showing 'em they've got to have it. teach 'em what they ought to have known without any teaching. some men teach and others pay them for it. after that, all you've got to do is to take it away from them. when you've taken away enough, make 'em crawl—make 'em admit that you were greater than they were. then build your monument and make them keep on remembering you. after that—"
"and after that, john?" she said gently.
v
he did not hear her. he sat staring, as though in the mirror of his own mind. at last he let his hand drop across the table. she dropped her own into his, timidly.
"listen, laura," he went on. "i'll tell you a little of what i mean."
"yes, john, i'm sure you will."
"what's the distinguishing thing about life to-day, my dear—the thing that makes it different from that of the past?"
"why, i don't know."
"a great many don't know. they don't stop to think! that's why so many pass by the open door of success and never get inside. listen, laura. wait a minute—don't interrupt me. speed is the thing to-day. speed, speed, speed; and power! don't you see it all around you, don't you feel it? can't you almost smell it, touch it, taste it? it's on the street, in the house, in business, everywhere—we can't go fast enough. but we're going faster. we'll go twice as fast."
"how do you know? what do you mean? who told you, john?"
"that's my business. that's my idea. that's my invention. that's how i'm going to get rich.
"laura, i'm going to make it possible to gear up our national life, to double its present speed," he went on savagely.
"when they've got it, they'll think they always had it, and after that they all will always have to have it. i'll be there first. i'll cinch it, and i'll sell it. that's my idea. that's not luck. it's brains, brains, brains, laura!"
vi
she leaned back in her chair, sighing. "do you think i could have a silk dress, john?" she said at length, her mind overleaping vast intermediate details.
"my god, woman!"
"could we go to the theaters—i've always wanted to so much. could i go into the country once in a while, where things are green?"
he made a despairing gesture at her inability to grasp the future.
"we could travel—could we go over to europe—could we take grace there, john?"
"as often as you liked!"
"could we have a new gate in the picket fence, if the landlord still refused?"
"oh, my god!"
she sat, trying to rise to the pitch of such ambition, but succeeded only in remaining commonplace. "how did you come across it, john?" she asked after a little.
he smiled. "what did i say about death and taxes and a woman's curiosity? the truth is, i picked it up from a word or so i heard in a chance conversation—two young fellows from the engineering department were talking something over. that young chap named halsey, just out of some college, full of fads, you know. he'd been reading something his old professor had been monkeying over. i got my idea then—the idea of making any automobile go twice as fast as it does, any railway train, anything else—of cutting out a lot of useless human labor, and setting the power of gravitation to work."
"i thought you said this was your own idea?"
"it is my own. what is thrown away deliberately, and picked up, is mine, if i see the value in it. young halsey didn't know. he's just a visionary—nothing practical about him. he couldn't see into this."
"halsey—charley halsey of the offices? he's been here—i think grace—you see, the personal injury office, where she works, is just across the hall from the engineering—"
"well, it's no difference. i'm going to take care of the affair myself. but it might be just as well if he came, once in a while. grace might do worse."
"but you heard him speak of it first?"
"i've just told you, yes, woman! but there was nothing worked out. i've got to furnish the time and money and brains and the plan of working it out. i've never said a word to him yet, of course, and i don't want you to say a word."
her face fell. "i'm afraid i can't understand all these things, john. but i should think you'd take charley in as a partner. that is, if grace— maybe he could help."
"a partner? with me? laura, john rawn has no partners."
vii
she rose after a time, her eyes not seeking his.
"grace will be coming home directly," she said briskly. "i must get supper ready."
"one thing"—he raised a restraining hand—"keep quiet about this. i've told you too much already."
for half an instant laura rawn almost wondered whether this thing might not be true. such things had happened in this country. was there not daily proof before her eyes? and might not fortune reverse her wheel for them also; might not lightning choose, as sometimes elsewhere it had chosen, a humble and unimportant spot for its alighting? who can read the plans of the immortal gods? asked the pagans of old. who, asked laura rawn, devout christian, can foresee the plans of a divine providence?
as for john rawn, he troubled but little over the immortal gods or over a divine providence, feeling small need of the aid of either. he had himself.
