THE SECOND CURRENT
I
"Charles," said Virginia Rawn, "Charley--" And always her white hand
touched his shoulder, his arm, his hand--"You really mustn't go.
Believe me, you'll both be sorry to-morrow. You don't know what you're
doing! You're only angry now. You'll both be sorry." Her eyes
glowed, evaded.
Halsey shook his head. "It's all over, so far as I'm concerned." His
eyes, glowing, sought hers.
"Why, Charley, boy, that's all foolishness. Don't you know how wrong
it is to talk in that way? What hasn't Mr. Rawn done for you? And
she's your wife!"
"He has done little for me and much for himself," he answered hotly.
"As for her, his daughter, she left me for him and what he could give
her. She liked this sort of thing rather better than what I could do
for her. She weighed it up, one side against the other, and she chose
this. Most women would, I suppose."
"Charley, how you talk!" Her voice, reproving, none the less was very
gentle, very soft. "One would think you were a regular misanthrope.
The next thing, you'll be saying that I was that sort of a woman
because _I_ live here. Of course, other things being equal, any woman
likes comfort. But you seem to think that we all would choose luxury
to love."
"_Don't_ you--don't you all?" demanded the unhappy youth. "Some do, of
course. Would you? Haven't you?" He was reckless, brutal, now. The
young woman before him started, shivered. She passed a hand gropingly
across her bosom, across her brow.
II
There was a strained, very strong quality in the air of Graystone Hall
that evening. Thought seemed to leap to thought, mind to mind,
swiftly, without trouble for many words. These two at last looked at
each other face to face, deliberately, she gazing beneath heavy,
half-closed lids, a superb, a beautiful woman, a creature for any man's
admiration. He was a manly young chap. He stood a victor, as she had
seen but now. He gazed at her out of eyes open and direct. Reckless,
brutal in his despair, he now allowed--for the first time in all their
many meetings--his heart to show through his eyes. For the first time,
their eyes met full.
"You must not ask that," said she quickly. "I wouldn't want to tell
you anything but the truth about it." She was breathing faster now.
"What is the truth about it? I want to know if any woman is worth
while. I'm down and out myself, and it doesn't matter for me. I just
wondered."
"I used to see you often about the office," said she irrelevantly,
"when you came in to see Mr. Rawn. I rather thought Grace was lucky,
then! I was just a girl then, you know, Charley."
"What do you mean, Mrs. Rawn?"
"Nothing. What did you think I meant?"
"I didn't know. I've never dared think much. I supposed everything
was going to come out right somehow. Now it's come out wrong. I don't
know just where it began. Don't you see, Mrs. Rawn, it's all like a
faulty conclusion in logic? It builds up fine for a long time. Then
all at once things go wrong--it's absurd, and you wonder why. Well,
it's because there's what you call a faulty premise somewhere down
close to the start. If that's the case, there isn't anything in all
the world is ever going to make a conclusion come out right. I reckon
there's a wrong premise somewhere down in my life, or ours, or in
this!"--He swept an arm, indicating Mr. Rawn's opulent surroundings.
"I'm only a woman, Charley. Maybe I don't understand you."
"Well, I'll tell you. There's wealth, luxury, everything here. Where
did they get it? They took more than their share."
"Now you're talking like a Socialist. Mr. Rawn tells me you are a
Socialist, Charley."
"I don't believe I am. But I believe a good many would be if they'd
gone through what I have. Now, what those two took, they took from
me--what you've got here you got from me. I don't mind that. The big
trouble is--the wrong premise about it is--that what they took they
took from this people, this country. And there are so many who even
are hungry."
"Oh, we'd never get done if we began that way! All success does that
way, you know that. Not all can be rich." Her eyes still came about
to him.
"Yes, all success succeeds--until that wrong premise comes out. Then
there's trouble!"
III
"Are you going to sell us out, Charley?" she demanded suddenly.
"I never sold out anybody. I'm the one that's been sold out."
"Aren't we your real friends?"
"No. You ought to be, but you aren't. The only friends I've got are
over there in the factory--Jim and Ann Sullivan, Tim Carney--a few of
the working-men that stuck it through. They've killed five men for us
over there. Their sluggers are out all the time. As for me, I don't
fit in, either there or here. Look here, Mrs. Rawn," he went on,
turning upon her suddenly and placing his hand impulsively on hers.
"Let me tell you something. I haven't sold out--I'm not going to.
Where do you stand yourself?"
Her eyelids fluttered. "Charley," said she, "you know better than to
ask me that."
"Yes, I suppose I do," he answered slowly and bitterly. "You stand for
this place, for everything that money can buy. Have they made you
happy? I often wonder--does money really make people happy? Are you
happy?" His eyes were very somber, very direct.
"I wonder if I am," said she suddenly; "and I wonder how you dare ask
me. Oh, I'll admit to you I've been ambitious, and always will be.
But do you know, some time I'd like to talk with your friend--with Ann
Sullivan!"
"_Then_ you'd begin to get at life. You'd be getting down to premises,
then, that aren't wrong--with Ann Sullivan and her sort!"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, well, I reckon you'd only find a little sincerity and honesty,
and, well--maybe--love, that's all. Just the things I didn't get
myself. Have you?"
"Why didn't you?" She ignored his brutal query.
"Because I'm a theorist. Because I'm a visionary and a fool, I reckon.
Because I like to see fair play even in a dog fight, and the people of
this country aren't getting fair play. Because I'm the sort of fool
that Mr. Rawn isn't. There's the difference!
"Are you happy, Mrs. Rawn?" again he demanded suddenly, since she still
was silent. "Tell me the truth. I think you know I'm not going to
talk. I'm going away somewhere--anyhow for the summer. I suppose,
maybe, this is the last time I'll ever see you--in all my life."
She felt the candor of his speech and replied in like kind, smiling
slowly. "No use my lying," she said. "You know I'm not happy. And,
yes, I know you'll not talk. Who _is_ happy? We all just get on just
the best we can. I can take my joy in making other women envy me.
Isn't that about what all women want? Isn't that the height and limit
of their ambition? Isn't that success, so far as a woman is concerned?
Don't they cling to it, all of them--till they get old? I suppose so,
but I know it isn't happiness. Yes, I'll admit to you I do miss
something." His eyes rested upon her, searching.
Unconsciously she looked down at her wrists. The red mark of his
fingers still lingered there. "I'll have to ask Ann Sullivan some
time," she laughed.
"One thing," answered Halsey. "She'd tell you that she isn't trying to
get the envy of her neighbors. I don't believe she'd be happy in that!"
"Oh, but she's fresh over--she's not American yet, don't you see? She
hasn't had a chance--you can't tell what she would do if she were rich."
IV
"There are two ways of looking at it," said Halsey musingly, his anger
passing, now leaving him meditative, relaxed. They were talking now as
though there were not two others, unhappy, waiting on the gallery near
by. "I'll tell you something, if you'll let me talk about myself, Mrs.
Rawn."
"Go on; I'm glad!"
"I don't suppose you care for things that interest me. You called me a
Socialist. I'll admit that I studied a lot about that, attended their
meetings, all that sort of thing. Maybe that made me think. It seems
to me that money is rolling up too fast in this country now--we're all
mad about money. It's like the big apple with no taste to it. I had
it offered me to choose between those two, and I took the little apple
that to me seemed sweeter.
"Now, I've perfected that invention. It'll make somebody rich any time
I say the word--any time I like that big apple and not the little
one--any time I like that success which comes from outside and not from
inside. But I've figured that that doesn't mean happiness. Maybe I'm
wrong. I don't know. Somehow I believe that Abraham Lincoln, or John
Ruskin, or Jim Sullivan, or Tim, or Ann, or Sir Isaac Newton--any
thinking person--any philosopher--would come in with me about this. I
broke up the machines."
"Why--where it meant ruin?"
"Because they'd tighten up the grip of a few men on the neck of the
people! I don't know whether you call that being a Socialist or not,
and I don't care. Change is coming. It's not the fault of the poor
that it's coming. It's the fault of the rich. I broke them
up--because things can't go on this way, money rolling Up all the time
for a few, and life getting harder all the time for so many. God
didn't make the rivers and the mountains and the forests for that
purpose--to give them to a few. We've got to make changes, and big
ones, in this government, or we're gone. I'm no Socialist at all. I
don't want what some one else has won--if he's won it _fair_. But the
wrong is in our government--the very one of all on earth that meant
fair play. We don't get it--now. Some day we must. I don't see what
difference it makes what name you give the new form of government.
There must be _change_, that's all; or else we're gone!
"Well now, what they wanted me to do was to give that all to a few. I
couldn't do it! By God! Mrs. Rawn, I faced it and I tried, and I
_couldn't_ do it! Maybe I was wrong. Anyhow, here I stand."
[Illustration: (Rawn and Virginia)]
V
"Do you know," she said at length, slowly, "these are things that never
came to my mind in all my life? I never in all my life thought of any
of these things. I only wanted--"
"You wanted to win. You wanted what most American women
do--money--station--power--to be envied; that's what you played for.
Well, you've won! Look at all this about you. I don't suppose there's
a woman in this town more admired by men or more envied by women than
you. You've got what you craved, I reckon."
"I thought I had. But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!"
"You couldn't give it up," he sneered, "any more than Grace could, and
she couldn't any more than a leopard could change its spots. It goes
too deep. You couldn't expect anything different.
"I told you I was a student, Mrs. Rawn," he went on after a time. "I
haven't got much mind. But somehow, while I don't suppose religion can
change business very much, I think of those twelve disciples and their
Master, trying to lift the load off of human beings, trying to lift the
people of the world up above the day of tooth and claw. I don't reckon
they can do it. But you see, each fellow has to choose for himself.
I've had this put before me. I could have thrown in with Rawn---I can
do so yet, right here, now, as you know. I can hold him up, as he
would hold me up, or any one else--I can take his
money--fifty-thousand, a million--I don't think he's really got as much
money as most people think. He's in debt, deep. That's all right so
long as your credit is good. He has had all sorts of credit--and it
depended on _me_--on my invention. It wasn't his. It isn't going to
be. I've told you why.--But you see, I could make him divide even with
me--make him take a third, a fourth, of what I'd won. He'd have to
come to terms. He knows that. All right, I'm not going to do it!
Failure as I am, I've got a few ideas which I think are right. Maybe I
got them from Ann Sullivan--I don't know! Go ask her about things."
"And you won't put back the machines? Not even for me?"
"Not even for you," he smiled. "Not that I know what you mean by
that." He looked at her keenly. His toil-stained hands twitched
uneasily in his lap.
VI
"You're talking about things that never came into my thoughts in all my
life," said she, with the same strange deliberation, the same strange
direct look at him. "But you couldn't expect an ignorant woman to
learn it all in one night, could you?"
"I'm not trying to convert you, Mrs. Rawn. I'm going to leave this
place. You'll not see me again. But I'm not trying to change _you_.
I wouldn't--"
"Listen!" she broke out sharply. "I'm set to do that for you--I'm
expected by him, out there, to change you. Isn't that the truth?
Didn't you see?"
"Yes, it's easy to see," he answered grimly. "It's up to you."
"It's up to you and me, Charley, yes. You can ruin me and all of us by
walking out that door. You can break the lives of those two people out
there, and mine, yes, of course you can, and your own.--You can do all
that. You can make me come down from this place where you say
everybody envies me, and you can have everybody laughing at me and
forgetting me in less than six months' time. You can get me snubbed,
if you like; you can make me wretched and miserable, if you like. Of
course you can. Do you want to do that?"
"It isn't fair to put it before me in that way."
"I do put it before you in that way. But that isn't the worst of what
you could do--you'd leave me unsettled and unhappy for ever if you went
away to-night that way--Charley!--"
"What can you mean--?"
"Things are moving fast to-night, Charley, and we're discussing matters
pretty openly--"
"Yes," he nodded. "I don't want to set a wife against her husband.
Neither must you. But the truth is, Mr. Rawn is not what a good many
think he is--"
VII
"Do you think that's news to me?" she asked of him, and looked full
into his eyes.
"Good God, Mrs. Rawn! What do you mean?"
"Much what you do!"
"But you loved him--you married him!"
"Oh, yes, surely. That was some months ago. But you see, there's a
distinction between master and superior."
"I'm very miserable," was his simple answer. "Things are getting too
much confused for me. And now you say you'd never be happy if I left
you now, to-night--"
"Then why go, so long as we are so confused? Why don't you wait? I've
asked you to! Do you expect to settle all this in a half-hour's time,
in a passion of anger? Now listen. Although he's my husband, and
she's your wife, I don't blame you. I'm only asking you to wait a
little. I'm making it personal, Charley!"
"How dare you do that, Mrs. Rawn?"
"Because I have the right to do it! I don't intend to have you make me
more unhappy than I am. I've just told you I'm not happy. I don't
know--" she laughed a little amused ripple of laughter--"but I'd have
been happier if he had handled you as you did him! I'm not talking
just the way I meant to when I came through those doors to stop you.
I'm like you--it's all confusing--_I'll_ have to wait, the same as you.
There's a lot of things to be figured out! I'm covetous of
_everything_ in the world--that _any_ woman ever had--from the Queen of
England to Ann Sullivan! Yes, I'm ambitious, I'll admit that. And
you've set me thinking--I'm wondering--wondering what really _is_ the
best a woman can get out of life."
"Mrs. Rawn, you've got success as you understand it, by marrying a
middle-aged man. You're young."
She shook her head. "It isn't possible," said she frankly, catching
his thought. "I'm far enough along to see that!"
"You know what Mr. Rawn did when _he_ wished to change--he put away
what he had, and reached out for that which he had not. For my own
part, I don't see how any woman could be happy with him. He ruined the
life of one woman, his wife; of another, his daughter. Now, you tell
me he hasn't made an absolutely happy life for yet another
woman--yourself. Oh, it's brutal for me to say it, but it's true, and
you've just said it's true."
"If only it could come to the question of what a woman really wanted--"
she resumed, pondering.
"That's for each woman to figure out for herself, Mrs. Rawn. I've only
said what most American women want. We're living in a wholesome and
beautiful age, Mrs. Rawn!"
"I thought I was right!" said she suddenly, looking up. "Now I believe
I was wrong. Charley!--"
VIII
"It's in the air," she said, as though to herself, after a time,
finding him silent, troubled, pale. "Don't you know, Charley--" She
turned to him.
He leaned toward her now, his lined young face illuminated with sudden
emotion. "I wish I could explain that to you, Mrs. Rawn," said he. "I
feel it, too! Now maybe we _can_ understand! How did I drive my car
over here, charged from one of our overhead motors? Ah, that's my
secret. But I took it out of the air! That motor of ours was in
_tune_ with it--the great power that's in the air, everywhere. Mrs.
Rawn, it's getting in _tune with the world_ that makes you happy.
Nothing else is going to do it! Get in tune with the _plan_! All I've
ever done in my receiving-motor has been to get in tune with the hills
and the rivers and the forests--with _life_."
IX
She leaned toward him now, that on her face which he had never seen
there before. He looked her fair in the eyes and went on, firmly,
strongly.
"I've done that; and I've said to myself that I wasn't going to throw
that away and give it to a few, when it belonged to everybody. I am
unhappy as you are; more so. _I'm_ not in tune with life as we live
it. No, I certainly am not. But I know that to be perfectly happy
we've got to get in tune with the purpose of the world. What is it?
What _is_ that second current? I don't know. What is it? You tell
me--"
"I'll tell you what I believe," said Virginia Rawn slowly, her hands
dropping in her lap, her face pale. "I shouldn't wonder if it
was--love!"
"And _that_ belongs to everybody, not just a few--to every one--not
just to the rich men, with money to buy what they want?" He was
looking at her keenly now.
"To everybody?" She shook her head. "Not always, Charley."
"Why not--Virginia?"