THEY WHO SOW THE WIND
I
The information given by the ex-director in regard to the whereabouts
of Charles Halsey was substantially, if not circumstantially, correct.
He had, indeed, done the most unlikely thing. He had taken up his
abode, for the time at least, at the very place to which he might have
seemed least apt to return; that is to say, the home of his
father-in-law, John Rawn.
Many things moved Halsey to this action. In the first place, having
ended his labors, he found no reason for any pretense of continuing
them. Again, although he fully intended to bring divorce proceedings,
and fully intended to leave the city, he was unwilling to depart
without seeing once more his wife and their child, because news came to
him of the little cripple's serious and continued illness. In point of
fact, Grace Halsey, unhappy, morose, and now jealously suspicious, had
brooded over her unfortunate situation in life until she also really
was ill. Halsey grieved over this, in spite of all. As to the little
hunchback, Laura, she had known only illness all her life; and Halsey,
father after all, felt some foreboding which made him unready to leave
for yet a time.
Halsey, in spite of his own bitterness of soul, realized that Rawn
himself was well-nigh crazed by the business situation, and his
conscience misgave him when he reflected upon the sudden consequences
of his own acts. His sense of business honor and of personal justice
told him he owed even so unreasonable a man as Rawn some sort of
definite accounting for his own stewardship, unwelcome as another
meeting between them must be to both.
Lastly, it may be added, Virginia Rawn had sent for him.
When he received her message he spent a night resolving that he would
not go, that he would never again see either her or Grace; never again
would set foot on ground belonging to John Rawn, come what could, let
be lost what any of them all might lose. In the morning he changed his
resolution. By evening of the next day he was at Graystone Hall.
To his surprise, he found it not immediately necessary to patch a peace
with the master of Graystone Hall, for Rawn was absent. The great
mansion seemed strangely and suddenly changed. An air of anxiety hung
over all, the place was oddly silent. The servants went slipshod about
their duties, and their mistress did not chide them. Swift
disintegration of the domestic machine seemed to threaten; mysterious
danger seemed to menace the very structure itself, long of so bold and
indomitable front. Halsey still hesitated--and still remained.
II
Rawn customarily divided his time between the operating headquarters in
the western city and the general offices in the eastern capital, but
now he had found it needful immediately to transfer all his activities
to the latter scene. He did not know of his wife's invitation to
Halsey, for he had started from his office, without even advising her
of his intention, and even without conversation with her by telephone.
He telegraphed from the train, stating that he had been called East on
urgent matters. After that, no word at all came from him. It was not
known when he would return. Halsey could only wait. In truth, he was
little better than a man gone mad himself, and Rawn was worse than such.
Gradually, day by day, hour by hour, the terrible strain of this
suddenly developed situation began to show its effects upon Rawn. He
slept but little after his arrival in the East, showed himself more and
more untidy in personal habits; and lastly, began to seek the false
strength of intoxicating drink. His demeanor in his relations with his
urbane associates daily lost its usual arrogance. John Rawn, late
dictator, became explanatory, conciliatory--a change of mind which had
visible physical tokens. His eye became weaker and more watery, his
shoulders more drooped, his voice more quavering, his address less
abrupt and domineering.
John Rawn was a broken man, and began to show it. Wherefore his late
friends exulted. The wolves, ranged in circle, lick their chops when
the wounded bull totters upon his uncertain legs. Certain large
financial figures in the eastern city licked their chops, and smiled
grimly, wolfishly, in contemplation of John Rawn as he tottered.
III
Yet Rawn himself could get no direct proof of the identity of those now
secretly assailing him. At the directors' meetings of the
International he was received politely and respectfully--with too much
politeness and respect, as he felt, although himself unlike the man
once wont to rule there with an iron hand. He did not dare tell them
of Halsey's defection, could not doubt that they already knew of it;
but he met no queries regarding that or anything else in the conduct of
the western factory's business. No one seemed to know that the most
important of all their factories was closed, after a tedious term spent
in incompletion. His associates all were as polite as himself, indeed,
more so; as ready as himself to discuss gravely and earnestly any
detail of the business which now, as all politely agreed, seemed
"somewhat involved," or "somewhat delayed." No one offered any
criticism of the executive.
But, what was far more deadly to him, the market seemed most onerously
and cruelly oppressive upon the outside investments of John Rawn.
International Power was not hammered, for the reason that there was
little of it out to hammer. The Rawn stock in International, of
course, did not come upon the market. Rawn intended to hold on to that
grimly, fighting for it to the last gasp, trusting to chance to mend
matters for him at the eleventh hour. But ruin in the general market
faced him; and he knew that, with credit gone, the courts would take
for his former creditors whatever property he could be shown to have.
He saw the shadowy circle of the wolves of high finance. Almost he
felt their fangs snapping at his hamstrings.
IV
In these savage hours the mind of John Rawn cast about for rescue, for
hope. No rescue, no hope, appeared except one last desperate
alternative, purchasable not now with cash or power or influence--since
these were gone--but with what other and dearer things remain to a
man--things some men, not rotted with the love of self, keep through
any or all disaster, prize, even above life and all a life's business
success. Halsey! Ah! Halsey was the savior of Rawn--Halsey, the man
who had humiliated him in his own home. How could Halsey be secured?
There might be brought to bear upon him one influence--that of a
beautiful and fascinating woman! What matter if the one woman, was his
wife, Virginia Rawn? He had already hinted to her of her duty. He
wondered now continually whether she had really and fully understood.
He wondered what she was doing with Halsey.
As to Halsey, who knew little or nothing of all these turbulent
emotions, all these crowding incidents, he found his situation in the
great house of John Rawn one wholly to his dislike. He saw little of
his wife Grace after the first conventional greeting on his arrival,
and as to the young mistress of Graystone Hall, she seemed so regularly
to have matters demanding her own presence elsewhere, was so busy with
other matters, as to have small time for him. The disturbed condition
of the stock market was creating a furor in the business world,
reflected, of course, in the daily markets of the western city; but
Halsey had never had many investments, had watched the markets little;
and now, isolated at Graystone Hall almost as much as though upon a
desert island, and too much disturbed and distracted in his own mind to
find any definite interest in business matters, was hardly conscious of
the storm that raged. He simply waited on, unhappily. It seemed to
him there was no place for him in all the world. Why did Virginia
remain aloof?
Rawn, absent in New York, imagined his wife engaged continuously in the
struggle of persuading Charles Halsey to see the light of reason,
although he did not know Halsey was living under the same roof with
her. As a matter of fact, Halsey and she met but rarely. Virginia
breakfasted for the most part in her own rooms, and found, or pretended
to find, something to occupy her for the most part of the day. Not
once did she ask his attendance, not once did she speak with him, when
by chance she saw him, upon any but casual or conventional matters.
She seemed always to evade him; and because she did this, he,
rebelling, sought her out all the more, even while continually
resolving to take his departure, and never again to see this place, or
her, again. He wondered at her reticence, her avoidance of him. He
wondered why she was so pale. He loitered about, unhappily, in this or
that common meeting ground of the great mansion house, waiting to hear
the rustle of a gown upon the stair, the sound of a light foot on a
floor, the touch of a white hand, the sound of a voice--all things
belonging, not to his wife, but to his young stepmother by law.
V
Yes. Without his wish, in spite of her wish, these had become things
desired, the only things desirable any more in his distracted life. He
lived under the same roof with two women, saw either rarely, and rarely
thought of but one--the wrong one. To atone, Halsey lavished all his
time and care on his little hunchback daughter, and had her with him as
much as the nurse and doctor would allow. The child, undersized, pale,
deformed, silent and wistful, and pathetic always, now was listless and
weak, obviously very seriously ill. It wrung her father's heart to see
her. But Charles Halsey wanted it wrung. He wanted to do bitterest
penance for what he now knew was his secret sin. So the ways of
inordinate power, the consequences, for this one or that one, which
follow on inordinate greed, worked themselves on out toward their sure
and logical ending, the mill of fate grinding those primarily,
secondarily, even incidentally guilty.
At this time, had Virginia Rawn asked of him to recant, to relent, to
change, there is likelihood he would have done so. John Rawn, cuckold,
was right in his despicable reasoning. There are many prices which
purchase principles. The weakness which had prompted Halsey to remain
at Graystone Hall on such a tenure--which held him there now, waiting
for a voice, listening for a footfall--was the ancient weakness of
youth before youth, of strength before beauty, of the empty heart
before one offering love, of the mind finding perfect echo in another
mind.
With all his starved heart, all his repressed soul, all his mutinous
body, Charles Halsey loved Virginia Rawn.