FOUR BEING NO COMPANY
I
Happy in his newly-found domestic delights, Mr. Rawn was perhaps more
careless than otherwise he would have been regarding business affairs,
and that at a time when they needed care. The truth was that matters
still lagged at the factory, as Rawn ought to have known. Indeed, he
did know; but always his curious helplessness in regard to Halsey--who
alone knew the last secrets of the most intricate devices of the
company's property--continued to oppress him. And always here was his
wife to console him and to interest him.
The distance between Graystone Hall and the factory apparently was
becoming greater from month to month. Sometimes Halsey came to visit
his wife, but these visits of late became fewer and fewer, as that lady
became more and more discontented, less and less eager to receive the
attentions of him who had so signally failed to place her where
Virginia sat in power. This alone left Halsey none too happy himself
at the prospect of any of his perfunctory calls; and moreover, he found
himself expected now to be more careful in his attire, in his conduct
about Graystone Hall, where full evening dress tacitly was desired at
dinner, and where an aristocratic chill was habitual at any hour;
things not customary in Ann Sullivan's household on the factory side of
the city. Not that Halsey needed to excite social misgivings. He was
a clean-faced, manly chap, lean, sinewy and strong, and might, save for
his rather toil-marked hands, have passed for any of the throng of
young men who at times came under one pretense or other to visit
Mr.--and Mrs.--Rawn.
II
These, in company with Grace, he one evening found alone, seated on the
wide gallery that overlooked the lake front. He did notice then, as he
never before at any time had noticed, a singular truth--Virginia Rawn's
eyes seemed almost reluctant to leave him. He was half her husband's
age. Moreover, there was something in the somber glow of his eye, in
the occasional look of his face--rapt, absorbed, remote, pondering on
things not made patent to all about him--which held for her ever a
stronger fascination. She wondered if things were known in his
philosophy no longer reckoned in her own; but which once might have
been germane to her as well. She often looked at him.
The evening was clear and cool, the lake stirred with no more than a
gentle breeze. The silver ladder of the moon's light was flung down
across the gently moving waters. The breath of flowers was all about.
Calm, ease, assuredness were here. The voice of the hostess was
delightfully low and sweet. All things seemed in keeping.
Rawn welcomed his son-in-law with his customary largeness of air.
"Come on out, Charles," said he, "join us; the evening is pleasant.
Won't you have a cigar?" He fetched with his own hands the box of
weeds--"Take several, my boy, take as many as you like. I give two
dollars apiece for these by the box at my club, and you can't beat them
in the city or anywhere else."
Halsey listened almost absent-mindedly, and Rawn returned to his seat
near his wife, a little apart on the gallery. The master of Graystone
Hall was intoxicated more than usually this evening with her. She sat
now in the dim light, a cool, dainty and beautiful picture, in blue and
ivory Duchesse satin and filmy laces, gowned fit for a wedding or a
ball, as she always was of an evening at home, with just a gem gleaming
here and there in the occasional glimpse of light which broke through
the windows at the back of the gallery as their curtains shifted in the
breeze. At that moment John Rawn would have been glad to have the
entire world share boxes of cigars with him. John Rawn,
collector--what man on all the North Shore Drive at that moment could
claim such surroundings as these?
"I thank you, Mr. Rawn," said Halsey, taking a single cigar from the
box which his host had placed upon the near-by tabouret. "I think I'll
be content with one. I mustn't get into bad habits; I'm afraid Jim
Sullivan and I can't afford them at two dollars apiece just yet!"
III
He moved now quietly and dutifully apart toward the end of the gallery
where sat a less resplendent figure, that of his wife, Grace. She had
not risen to meet him.
"Well," said he, as he sank into a seat beside her.
"Well, then?" she answered, and turned upon him a face dour,
inexpressive, pasty, almost frowning.
"Is that all you have to say to me?" she began later, as he sat smoking.
"I haven't had much chance yet," he commented.
"No, I should say not! This is the first time you've been here for
four weeks! Have you stopped to think of that? You seem to care
little enough how I get on!"
Halsey paused for a moment before replying. "That hardly seems fair to
me."
"Why isn't it fair? It's the truth."
"Well, I've been busy all the time, as you know. Besides again, when
it comes to that, it doesn't seem to me that you've been altogether
anxious to have me come."
"You talk as though you worked day and night and had nothing else to
do."
"Well, I suppose I could come over--every night after dinner--wash the
soot and the cinders from me, get out my four-hundred-dollar go-cart,
and come over here to call on my wife in my thirty-dollar evening togs,
couldn't I? She lives in Graystone Hall. Where do I live? What do I
get out of life, when it comes to that, Grace? When I do come here,
you begin to nag me before I get settled down. I always used to say
when I was a young man, that if I ever found myself married to a
nagging woman, I'd just quit her!"
"What do you mean by that?" she demanded imperiously.
IV
Again Halsey was deliberate, although he half sighed as he replied:
"Pretty much what I say, Mrs. Halsey, since you ask me. The truth is,
you quit me when I needed you. I have had worry enough from this
business at the factory. I don't particularly care to have all other
kinds of worry on top of that. You had all this place to fall back on.
Your father's taken care of you. But he hasn't taken care of me very
well. The fact is, I've been scapegoat about long enough!"
"You seem to have learned the factory ways of talking!"
"Yes, I don't know but I am getting rather plain, and common, and
vulgar. It's a little different here--even from Kelly Row, let alone
our place on the West Side. I fancy you're getting the North Shore
accent, along with other things.--It all only means that we're that
much further apart, Grace. Did you ever stop to think of that?"
"I've had time to think of plenty of things," she answered bitterly.
"You had plenty of time to think of some of them before you came over
here," he rejoined. "You didn't like what your husband could offer
you, and you chose something better which your father did offer you.
You've quit me, practically. You've not been in our home twice since
you came to live here. I've seen that poor baby of ours only once in a
while since you left our home for this. You've not been a wife to me.
That's the truth about it--I might as well not be married! That comes
mighty near being the situation, since you put it up to me to answer."
"Then what do you mean?"
"The courts would make it a case of desertion, if you force me to say
that," answered Halsey. "Now, I don't want to live on this way for
ever! I'm a young man, and my career's ahead of me! I've got to
choose regarding my life before long! And I'm going to choose. I'm
not going to let things run on in this way any further."
"That's what my father always said! Your career; your life! Where
does your wife come in?"
"You come in precisely where you say you want to come in, Grace. We
get what we earn in this world. If you leave me and take up a life
which I can't share, if you leave my house and don't care for what I
can give you--why there's not much left to talk about as to where you
come in. You come in _here_. I belong over there."
"You're selfish! All men are, I think."
"I'm not going to argue about that in the least, Grace, except to say
that it's the Rawn half of you that said that. The Rawn half of you
can't see anything but its own part of the world. It wasn't the Rawn
half of you that I married. You were different, then. You're not much
like your mother, Grace! And I married the part of you that was like
your mother. She was a good woman, and a good wife."
"You must not speak of her!"
"Oh, yes, I must, and I shall when I like. It's all in evidence.
There's the record." He nodded toward the two dim figures at the other
end of the gallery. "She's very beautiful, yes, very beautiful!" His
eyes lingered on the figure of Virginia Rawn, faintly outlined, cool in
satin and laces.
"She'd like to hear you say that!" sneered his wife.
"I perceive, my dear, that you two love each other very much. But as I
was saying, you don't seem to me, Grace, to be much like your own
mother--you're more like your stepmother, over there, in some ways.
Your mother didn't change. She made good--if you'll let me use some
more factory slang--on the old ways, on her own old lines. That's what
I call class, breeding, blood, if you like--just plain North American
sincerity and simplicity. She didn't pretend, she didn't try to climb
where she knew she couldn't go. That's what _I_ call blood!"
"Thank you! You're sincere also, at least."
V
He seemed not to hear her. He went on. "But you've changed. You
dropped me. Your head was turned with all this sort of thing....
Since these things are true, are you coming back to me?" He found
himself wrenching his eyes away from the cool dim figure far down the
long gallery.
She straightened up suddenly, pale. "Back!--to that? To live in that
hole--?"
"Yes, just back to _that_, Grace. It's all I have to offer you. Just
that hole."
"I'm not happy here."
"Then why do you stay here? Why don't you come back to me?"
"Because I couldn't be happy over there any more, either! I know it.
I admit it. It's got me--I couldn't go back to the old ways, the ways
we'd have to live. Why can't you come here--why doesn't Pa give us
money enough--"
He turned to her now gravely. "I suppose it's the pace--yes, it's got
you, and a lot of others. But I'm not taking that sort of money just
yet. And that doesn't answer my question. I've come over to-night to
arrive at some understanding about us two. I want to know where I am.
There are going to be changes, one way or another."
She turned to him suddenly again. "What's wrong over at that factory,
Charley?" she asked. "Why haven't you made good before this? My
father has been on the point of tearing up things a dozen times! He's
sore at you--awfully sore."
"Yes? How do you know I haven't made good?"
"Then why has Pa talked so?"
"For the very good reason that he doesn't know any better than to talk
that way. He hasn't got any more sense. He didn't talk that way to
me."
"Then you have got it--you've made the discovery--it'll work?"
"Our machines not only will work, but have been working," said he
calmly. "I haven't seen fit to tell your father. I'm going to tell
you, however, that all this was _my_ idea from the first. If I haven't
been a competent manager, let him get some one more competent. I'll
take what I know with me in my own head. I'm saying to you, his
daughter, that _I_ worked out this idea, myself, and all he did was to
get the money in the first place for it. For that reason I call this
discovery mine, to do with as I like. I haven't been bought and paid
for, myself. I don't want money when it costs too much. I've just
begun to understand things lately."
"Yes, I've worked it out into practical form," he concluded, as she sat
silent. "Your father never did and never can. He's got to come to
_me_, to _me_, right here. Since you drive me to it, I'll just tell
you one thing. I've had this whole thing in my own hands for more than
eight months! The company doesn't know it, he doesn't know it, no one
knows it. I've been just waiting--to see whether I had a wife or not."
"You never told? Then you've been disloyal, you've been a coward! You
took his money--"
"All right," said Halsey suddenly, grimly, "that's all I need. I see,
now. I know what to do now."
"But you _didn't_ tell father!" she went on fiercely. "And we all knew
how much has been depending on that factory. Weren't we all in
that--didn't we all help, from the very first? Didn't I?"
"Yes, you did, you and your mother," said Halsey. "You've had or will
have all you earned. She got divorced from her husband, you may get
divorced from me! It's a fine world, isn't it? We've all been chasing
for more money. Well, here we are! There's a couple over there,
here's another one here. Fine, isn't it?"
VI
"But, Charles!" She moved toward him and laid a hand on his arm. "You
don't stop to reflect on what you are saying! If you have that secret
in your hands, why, don't you see--don't you _see_--"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, even Pa _will_ have to come to you! You won't be poor then."
"I should say he _would_ have to come to me!" said Charles Halsey
slowly. "Yes, I dare say. I dare say, also, I could make a lot of
money whether he did or didn't."
"Listen, Charley. He's got everything, and he wants everything. He's
my father, but he doesn't care. He--he sold me out. What do we owe to
him and _her_? What did he do to my mother? I tell you, he thinks of
no one but _himself_. Yet you and I--we who found that idea and worked
it out, who have it in our own hands now, as you say--you and I have
got the whip in our own hands now, it seems to me."
"You talk excellent business sense, Mrs. Halsey. I compliment you. It
seems that you begin to discover something in your husband and his
possibilities. It's a trifle late, but you delight me!"
"Well, I didn't _know_, you see," she murmured, pawing at him vaguely,
in a fitful and inefficient essay at some coquettish art, grotesque in
these conditions.
She was a woman of small feminine charm at best. She sat there now,
angular, stiff, unbeautiful, the sort of woman no clothes can make
well-dressed. Already she had disclosed somewhat of her soul. What
appeal, then, physical, emotional, moral, could she make to him--a
student, a visionary, an idealist--at such a moment? And did there not
remain that same cool distant figure from whom he had so constantly to
wrench his eyes--and his heart? Yes; and his heart! Halsey's face was
dull red. He was unhappy. The world seemed to him only a hideous
nightmare, full of disappointments, injustices, of wrongs that cried
aloud for righting. Ah, the comparison now was here, fair and full and
unavoidable!
VII
"No, you didn't know," said he slowly. "A lot of people don't. Now
let me tell you a few things more. You didn't know that something like
a year ago your father told me that he'd make me a present of
fifty-thousand dollars the day I could run a car from the factory to
this place on a charge taken from our own overhead receiver-motors."
"A start for a million dollars!" she murmured. "You get _that_--when
you succeed?"
"Yes, that is to say, I could have had that any day in the week these
past eight months--if he really has got that much left where he can
realize on it. He's pretty well spread out."
"Then you have had it--what have you done with the money?"
"I presume I look as though I'd spent or could spend a mere fifty
thousand dollars or so, don't I?" was his quiet answer. "No, I didn't
have it, and I haven't got it. I'll say this much to you, however,
that I ran my little old car over here _to-night_ on a charge taken out
of one of the overhead receiver-motors of the International Power
Company--a motor completed on my own ideas, and by my own hands. It's
mine, I tell you--_mine_!"
"Charley!" She caught him by the wrists, with both hands, eagerly.
"You can give me the things I've got used to having! I'll go back--oh!
I'll go back--we'll go on together! I hate her so--you don't know!"
"That's nice of you, Grace; but you've guessed wrong. I've not got
that fifty thousand yet."
"But you _can_ have."
"Yes, I can. What could I buy with it? For one thing, I could buy
back my wife?"
"But Charley! We're rich! You've succeeded!"
"No, I am poor, I've failed. I'm just beginning to see how _much_ I've
failed!"
"If you don't tell me the truth about this I'll do it myself!" she
exclaimed fiercely. "You've not been loyal--you've taken pay!"
"Your father took his pay from me," was his half-savage answer. "He's
been paid enough! As for me, I don't want any more of this sort of
pay."
"What are you going to do--you're not going to sell out to some one
else?"
"No, my dear, I'm not going to do precisely what you suggested I
_should_ do just a moment ago. I'm not going to sell out. I could do
that, too, and make more than any fifty thousand. The foreman in our
factory, who knows very little, can sell out to-morrow morning for ten
thousand dollars, maybe double or treble that now. The watchman on our
door can sell out when he likes. We can all sell out, any of us sell
out. But we haven't! If there has been any selling out it has been
done by those who built this place here--the place which you found
better than the best home I could offer you."
She sat back stiff, silent, somber. "You--you never mean that you are
going to throw this away, then!" she asked at length. "What earthly
good will that do? Pa'll have it out of you somehow! I'll--I'm going
to tell him!"
"Try it," said Charles Halsey easily.
She had courage. "Father," she called out. "Pa! Come here--at once!"
VIII
Rawn rose suddenly up from his chair at the startling quality in her
voice. "What's that, Grace?" he called across the long gallery.
"Come here, I want you! We've got something to say to you."
Halsey sat motionless.
Rawn approached slowly, obviously annoyed. "If it's important--" he
began. He had found love-making to his young wife especially delicious
this evening, although he mistook her strange silence and preoccupation
merely for wifely coyness.
"It is important!" Grace exclaimed; and rising, clutched at his arm.
"Well, then, what's it all about, what's it about? Come, come!"
"Charley's _done_ it, he's _got_ it--he's got the machines
_finished_--over there--!" Her voice was almost a scream, hoarse,
croaking. She stood bent, tense.
"What's that?" demanded Rawn. "What do you mean? Is that the truth,
boy?"
"He came over in his own car, under International overhead--he told me
so, right now," she went on, half hysterically. "You owe him money--a
lot, a pile of money--he told me so right now--it's worth more than any
fifty thousand. Oh, we're going to have money too. You see!"
Rawn shook off her arm and half flung her back in her chair. "What's
this about, Halsey?" he said. "Is it true?"
Halsey nodded calmly, but said nothing.
Rawn half-assailed him, his large hand on his shoulder. "_Did you get
the current?_" he demanded. "Did you really come over under power out
of one of our overheads?"
"Yes, to-night," said Halsey calmly. "Often before."
IX
"Why, my boy, my boy!" began John Rawn. At once he stood back, large,
complaisant, jubilant. "My boy!" was all he could say. Not even his
soul could at once figure out in full acceptance all the future which
these quiet words implied.
"Come!" he explained after a moment, excitedly. "Let's get to the
telephone! I want the wires right away! I'll make a million out of
this before morning!"
"And write me a check for my fifty thousand to-night?" smiled Halsey.
"Surely I will--I've told you I would--I'll do more than that--I'll
make it a twenty-five thousand extra for good measure. I'll have the
check taken care of to-morrow at my bank, as soon as I can get
down-town! Oh, things'll begin to _happen_ now, I promise you!"
"I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to use the wire, Mr. Rawn," said
Charles Halsey quietly. "And never mind about your check."
"What do you mean? You're going to try to hold me up?"
"No, I'm not going to try to hold you up at all. If there's any
question about that possibility, I can get a million to-morrow as
easily as I can any fraction of a million to-night, Mr. Rawn, and it's
just as well you should know that, perhaps."
"A million?" croaked John Rawn. "You'd sell us out?"
"_No_, I said. I'm not going to sell you out, Mr. Rawn. And you're
not going to buy me out."
"Of course not, of course not," laughed Rawn hoarsely. "You didn't
understand me."
"You haven't understood me either, Mr. Rawn. Now, what would you do if
I told you that after taking my charge for the little car yonder I
turned about and dismantled every motor in the shop--destroyed them
all--locked up the secret, ended the whole game now--to-night? What
would you say to that?"
"By God! I'd kill you!" said John Rawn.