"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, evaded1.
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 misanthrope2. 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, brutal3, now. The young woman before him started, shivered. She passed a hand gropingly across her bosom4, 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, deliberately5, she gazing beneath heavy, half-closed lids, a superb, a beautiful woman, a creature for any man's admiration6. He was a manly7 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 irrelevantly8, "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 logic9? 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 premise10 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."
"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 impulsively12 on hers. "Let me tell you something. I haven't sold out—I'm not going to. Where do you stand yourself?"
"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 somber14, 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 premises15, 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 sincerity16 and honesty, and, well—maybe—love, that's all. Just the things I didn't get myself. Have you?"
"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 candor18 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 musingly19, his anger passing, now leaving him meditative20, 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 tighten21 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."
(Rawn and Virginia)
(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 craved22, I reckon."
"I thought I had. But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!"
"You couldn't give it up," he sneered23, "any more than Grace could, and she couldn't any more than a leopard24 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 disciples25 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 twitched26 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 miserable27, 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 ripple28 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 covetous29 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-aged30 man. You're young."
She shook her head. "It isn't possible," said she frankly31, catching32 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 wholesome33 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 illuminated34 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 tune35 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 perfectly36 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?"
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1
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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2
misanthrope
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| n.恨人类的人；厌世者 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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7
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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irrelevantly
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| adv.不恰当地，不合适地；不相关地 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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premise
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| n.前提；v.提论，预述 | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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12
impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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13
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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14
somber
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| adj.昏暗的，阴天的，阴森的，忧郁的 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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16
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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17
query
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| n.疑问，问号，质问；vt.询问，表示怀疑 | |
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candor
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| n.坦白，率真 | |
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musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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21
tighten
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| v.(使)变紧；(使)绷紧 | |
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craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
leopard
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| n.豹 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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ripple
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| n.涟波，涟漪，波纹，粗钢梳；vt.使...起涟漪，使起波纹； vi.呈波浪状，起伏前进 | |
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covetous
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| adj.贪婪的，贪心的 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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33
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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34
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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35
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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