CIHM
Microfiche
Series
(l\/lonographs)

ICIVIH

Collection de
microfiches
(monographies)

Canadian Inttituta for Historical Microraproductiont / Inttitut Canadian da microraproductiont historiqua*

1995

Technical and Bibliographic Notes , Notes technique et bibliographiques

The institute has attempted to obtain the best original
copy available for filming. Features of this copy which
may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of
the images in the reproduction, or which may
significantly change the usual method of filming are
checked beljw.

Coloured covers /
Couverture de couleur

I I Covers damaged /

' — ' Couverture endommagee

I I Covers restored and/or laminated /
Couverture restauree et/ou pelliculee

I I Cover title missing / Le litre de couverture manque

I 1 Coloured maps / Cartes geographiques en couleur

n? Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black) /

Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire)

1^ Coloured plates and/or illustrations /
— Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur

I I Bound with other material /

Relie avec d'autres documents

I I Only edition available /
' — ' Seuie edition disponible

I I Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion
along Interior margin / La reliure serr^e peut
causer de I'ombre ou de la distorsion le long de
la marge interieure.

I I Hank leaves added during restorations may appear
within the text. Whenever possible, these have
t)een omitted from filming / II se peut que certaines
pages blanches ajout^es lors d'une restauration
apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela 6tait
possible, ces pages n'ont pas etS film^es.

L'Institut a microfilme le meilleur examplaire qu'il lui a
ete possible de se procure: Les details de cet exem-
plaire qui sont peut-etre uniques du point de vue bibli-
ographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite,
ou qui peuvent exiger une modifications dans la meth-
ode normals de filmage sont indiqu6s ci-dessous.

I I Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur

r^ Pages damaged/ Pages endommagees

I I Pages restored and/or laminated /
— Pages restaurees et/ou pclliculees

Q-

Pages discoloured, stained or foxed /
Pages decolorees, tachet^s ou piquees

r~] Pages detached/ Pages detachees

r^ Showfthrough / Transparence

I 1 Quality of print varies /

' — ' Qualite inegale de I'impression

I I Includes supplementary material /

Comprend du materiel supplementaire

I I Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata
slips, tirFues. etc., have been refilmed to
ensure the best possible image / Les pages
totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un
feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont ete filmees
a nouveau de fapon a obtenir la meilleure
image possible.

I I Opposing pages with varying colouration or
— discolourations are filmed twice to ensure the
best possible image / Les pages s'opposant
ayant des colorations variables ou des decol-
orations sont filmees deux fois afin d'obtenir la
meilleur image possible.

Additional comments /
Commentaires suppl^mentaires:

This iittn is filmed «t the rtduction ratio chtckcd below/

Ce document est f ilme au taux de reduction imtique ct-<lessous.

IDX 14X 18X

t2X

Th* copy tilmtd h«r* ha* bmn raproducad thank*
to tha s*naro(itv of:

National Library of Canada

L'axamplaira filmt fut raproduit grlca i la
SAnaroiit* da:

Bibliotheque nationals du Canada

Tha imagaa appaaring hara ara tha baat quality
posaibia conaidaring tha condition and lagibillty
of tha original copy and in kaaping with tha
filming contract apacificationa.

Original eopiat in printad papar covara ara fllmad
baginning with tha front covar and anding on
tha laat paga with a printad or llluatratad impraa-
lion, or tha back covar whan appropriata. All
othar original copia* ara filmad baginning on tha
firit paga with a printad or llluatratad impraa-
aion, and anding on tha laat paga with a printad
or llluatratad impraaaion.

Laa imagaa auivanta* ont M raproduitaa avac la
plu* grand aoin, compta tanu da la condition at
da la nattata da raxamplaira fllma. at an
eonformitt avac laa conditiona du contrat da
fllmaga.

Laa axamplairaa originaux dont la couvortura an
papiar aat Imprimaa sont fllmaa an commancant
par la pramiar plat at an tarminant toit par la
darniara paga qui comporta una amprainta
d'impraaaion ou d'illustration, aoit par la sacond
plat, aalon la caa. Tou* laa autraa axamplairaa
originaux iont (ilmto an commanpant par la
pramiara paga qui comporta una amprainta
d'impraaaion ou d'iiluatration at an tarminant par
la darniAra paga qui comporta una lalla
amprainta.

Tha laat racordad frama on aach microflcha
ahall contain tha aymboi ■^w- {moaning "CON-
TKiiUED"). or tha symbol ▼ Imaaning "END"),
whichavar appliaa.

Mapa, plataa. charts, ate, may ba filmad at
diffarant raduction ratio. Thosa too larga to ba
antiraly includad in ona a\ >osura ara filmad
baginning in tha uppar laft and eornar, laft to
right and top to bottom, as many frama* aa
raquirad. Tha following diagrama illuatrata tha
mathod:

Un daa aymbola* suivanta apparaitra sur la
darnitra Imaga da ehaqua microfiche, salon la
cas: la symbola ^^signifia "A SUIVRE '. la
aymbola V signifia "FIN".

Laa cartaa, planchaa, tablaaux, ate. pauvant itre
filmts i daa taux da reduction diffarants.
Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour atra
raproduit an un saul clicht, 11 ast filma i partir
da I'angla aupAriaur gaucha. da gaucha A droita.
at da haut an baa, an pranant la nombra
d'imaga* nacaaaaira. Las diagrammas suivants
illuatrant la mathoda.

1 2 3

MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART

[ANSI ond liO TEST CHART No. 2|

1.0 gis li^

^ /APPLIED IIVMGE

^S\ 1653 East Moin Slree)

r.S Rochester, Men Yofk U609 US,

'JS (716) «a2 - 0300 - Phone

^^ (716) 288 - 59S9 - Fq»

■r

^HE NEW DAWN

She felt ralhcr than saw the shadow on his face

THE NEW DAWN

AGNES C. LAUT

ACTHOR OF " FREEBOOTIKS OP THE WILDERNESS,'
"LORDS 01 THE NORTH," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1913

.'-7-

COPYMGBT 1913, BY KOFFAT, VARD AND COHPANT

All Rights Resemd

PDBUSHEI), NOVEHBEE, I9I3

CONTENTS

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

Part I.
The Win for Power.

* PAGE

WARD STUDIES THE SECRET OF SUCCESS . . ii
WARD ADOPTS A NEW CREED OF LIFE ... 26
WHEREIN TOM WARD'S WHITE SHIRT CON-
TINUES TO PLAY AN INTERESTING PART

IN THE SCHEMES OF MISS FATE 45

WHEREIN TOM WARD GOES ON THE FIRST

RUNGS OF THE LADDER 56

A DOUBLE CROSS AND A DOUBLE SHUFFLE

AND THE PRICE OF POWER 66

THE REWARD j,

vn.

VIII.

IX.

XI.

XII.

Part II.
In the Fullness of His Power.

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE go

WARD'S CREED IN PRACTICE jog

MORE OF WARD'S CREED IN PRACTICE . . 1,6

THE CREED AND A GIRL ijj

THE CREED WORKED OUT BY LITTLE MEN

AND LESS BRAINS ,jj

THE CREED IN THE LITTLE MAN WITH A

CONSCIENCE jjo

CONTENTS
Part in.

„„, PACE

XIII. THE CREED THAT THE GREATER POWER

WINS

XIV. THE CREED IN A WIFE

XV. THE CREED WORKED OUT BY PLEASURE

SEEKERS

XVI. THE CREED AND THE LABOR LEADER ' 'Z
XVII. AFTERWARDS

2XX

XVin. ONE W.\Y TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE j.,

XIX. TO STRENGTH AND WILL-ADD PURPOSE 2,0

XX. THE CREED ON EXHIBITION ... .^^

XXI. THE CREED IN ACTION

XXII. THE MOMENTUM THAT PUSHES US FOR-
WARD

XXIIL BY-PRODUCTS NOT included' IN LEDGERS 33"

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVTII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV

Part IV.
Power Triumphant.

THE CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS ,60

UNMOORED

OLD FRIENDS IN STRANGE PLACES . . 387

MADELINE MEETS THE GRIM SHADOW -or

AFTERWARDS

41 r

WHEN LABOR ADOPTS THE BRUTE CREED 4^8
WARD REVISES HIS CREED .

BUT IT IS TOO LATE °

THE DAWN '' ''

476

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF .... .g^

THE ARMAGEDDON

THE GREAT FACT OF ALL CREEDS .' .' .' ' .' ^

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A woman, with black hair massed at the neck, entered

disdainfully

(Outside Cover)

She felt rather than saw the shadow of his face. FrmUsp;
That she was being watched" .
"So she pointed"

PAGE
260

310

THE NEW DAWN

PART I
THE WILL FOR POWER

CHAPTER I

WARD STUDIES THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

The young fellow studied the face of the great
capitalist as he had never before studied any face
in his life — youth wresting secrets from age; trying
to solve the riddles which youth has not yet had the
experience to understand.

The elder man stood erect, hands in pockets, be-
hind the wicket of the sh!p yards' office. Clerks
were paying out checks to the long lines of work-
men — seven thousand there were in the lines where
the boy stood. In the president's appearance there
was nothing remarkable. He was slightly bald, and
clean-shaven except for a close-cropped mustache.
A hard firmness of jaw and massiveness of shoulder
power and chest gave evidence of strength and reso-
lution to battle with tasks— perhaps, of sheer de-
light in the game of life being complex and difficult
and baffling. He reminded the young workman of

THE NEW DAWN

la al rt Ih Tu" ""= P-^-^-Kile. muscu-

lar alert ,n bra>n and brawn, with crushing force
hidden away somewhere in his personality H
yes were cold, unemotional, steady, seeing L end
from wh,ch h.s will would never swerve, ^treng'h
• • • • strength o( body and mind; Will the

r k'°or St''"' '"= ^'■P"'^ • • ■ • '"^ ^ shining
mark or star that was the man, with the

qu.ck judgment that leaps to conclusions and he
conscence that scruples at nothing . Con

'"^""^ , Why, this man would have no con-

c,ence except the consciousness of failure! Ward
looked at h,m and knew these things as surely as
he knew that the president of the co .pany had the
cold blue eyes of a woods hunter!

Superfically, the president of the ship yards re-
sembled the general ru.. of prosperous people He
was well groomed, but not so well-dressed as to di
rect attention to dress. Above all, he was piritu-
w I 'fi'r'^'y. -'^-'l-tly healthy-"fit •• That

^ at man^, '""^ "°^''"^" '°°'^'='l '"^'=^ '° the
great man s eyes-no remorse, no pity, no thought

of good or ,11, only masterful purpose bent to an

unswervmg end; but wait . . i f the Ld Z

s7dL^r:;j:rtr'^^°-j^r-'— ^^^^^

sidle, and, if the aim receded as this man advanced
he would pursue. The boy knew this in a vague
son of way from his own life. As a little chap fiv
".g a starving sort of life on the edge of Shan^
Town, he remembered that his sole ambition had

THE Sr-CRET OF SUCCESS 13

been to get a footing— any kind of footing— in the
big ship yards. When he had gone home to tell his
mother that he was to be messenger boy at a do!-
lar and a half a week he had been so mad with hap-
piness all night that he could not sleep; but, inside
of a month, he had set his aim to advance to the
p ace of the boy who helped the blast furnace men
Now, at eighteen, he was second furnace man, earn-
mg seventy a month; and it had been forcing itself
on him for the last year that he could not save much
more on seventy a month than he used to at a dol-
lar and a half a week. Something amiss in the
home off the edge of Shanty Town absorbed all his
thrift and foresight like an absorbing sponge; but
that did not quench his desire to get on. He was
furnace man now; but he knew progress would be
blocked unless he did one of two things— joined the
iron workers' union, or lifted himself to another
plane of work. He was using his hands now. Un-
less he could climb up where he would use both his
head and his hands— and that was what he was try-
ing to read in the face of the president As
fast and far as the aim receded, this man would pur-
sue It.

Young Ward felt strangely moved. If it had
been in a religious meeting instead of in the long
lines of the ship yards' workers waiting for their
pay, we would say he was undergoing a change of
heart, a rebirth. It was half attraction, half fear
wholly admiration, and not a vestige of the jealous
resentment which many feel toward those who beat

14 THE NEW DAWN

them in the game of life. Ward was keen to get
into the arena to play the game of life with all its
odds and handicaps, and never a whimper for one
of theml

The long lines kept moving up to the pay wickets.
The men kept shuffling out as they exchanged their
checks for cash envelopes; and Ward knew exactly
where many of those fattest pay envelopes would
disgorge themselves before Monday morning. The
chasm between the man behind the wicket and the
man in front of it was wider than the chasm be-
tween Lazarus in Heaven and Dives in Hell. Why
.... theboy asked himself; and again the realiza-
tion came Given .... Strength ....

Will .... Purpose: the result blazed in letters
of fire ... . There could be only one result ....
Success ....

Then, the singsong of the pay clerk calling out
.... Tom Ward .... six-six-eight — eight ....
He was only a number .... yet, only one of an
infinite number of moiling millions; and the earth
was limed with the bones of the dead of such as he.
As Ward signed his initials to the pay list he felt
his employer eyeing him. It caused a tingle of hope
that was ridiculous; for the great man may not have
noticed him; still less, suspected that he was planting
a seed in the mind of a smudgy hobble-de-hoy in
blue overalls, destined to overshadow nations in its
growth. The stillest hours may be the greatest
hours; for the birth of a new thought dated from
that moment.

Th • SECRET OF SUCCESS ij

When he left the olficc, young Ward did not
board the tramcar with the other workers. He
wanted to be alone .... to think! He had a
vague consciousness that men, who didn't stand back,
alone and aloof, detached from vei-min and vatr..
pires, from sponges and parasites .... to think,
were sure to become dray horses, oxen yoked to the
treadmill of bootless toil — muzzled oxen, too, per-
haps, not permitted to snatch at grain trodden from
the mill of toil for other men. His thoughts were
running he had no idea where, though he knew if he
did not succeed in realizing some of them that he
world be in a maelstrom of life-long discontent.
Wc think that material things dominate life, how
much we earn, how much we .-.pend, what we eat and
wear; but here was a grimy youth earning and
spending much the same as seven thousand other em-
ployees in the ship yards; and what marked him
out from the others forever was the new thought
born in his soul ... the resolution to Strength
. . . and Will .... and Power!

Quickly crossing the commons, he struck along
the river road through the woods. Neither the
flakes of cloud rose-red in the sunset, ncr a shimmer-
ing haze of spring hanging over the gray-green fields
in a veil— caught the eye of young Tom Ward. His
thoughts were chaos; and out of chaos are flung
new stars. Just above the apple bloom and lilac
hedges a star picked through the gray twilight, a
diamond point in a veil of mist; but the star rising
for Ward unknown to himself shone far down life's

THE NEW DAWN

hazy trail beckoning from a rosy glow raved with
hope, quivering and pulsing with a new electrifying
fire; and its name was .... Success . . . that
much he knew ... He was going to do the thing
called . . . Success; or die game and at it!

f le scented blossoms gave a riotous sense of new
lift . . . joyous life .... life at the foam
.... as though he had kicked off rags and tatters
of a mean sordid existence, as he nightly kicked off
his grimed overalls, and leaped, washed and clean
and keen to the race tracks of life, where he was
going to run to win, whether or no! The spring
lights flickering the gray-green fields were not edged
so bright a gold as the hopes thrown off by his own
thoughts. It was not the ticklingi of vanity, of
passion at its spring tide in the veins of youth. The
ideal he w.is building in flashes of thought and de-
termination and fiope was not an idol with sawdust
stuffing made up of ego; he didn't see himself be-
coming a little tin god set up on the necks of other
men, spoonfed with adulation, slathered with flat-
tery. It was zest of the joy of life .... the race
. . . . the game ... the pursuing ... not the
winning! Success didn't consist of getting hold of
tangible chunks of something and sitting hatching on
it like an old hen till life became addled and rot-
ten ... . Success consisted in this game-thing, this
coursing the race track of life . . . this aihieving
and pursuing a fleet-footed aim higher and farther
and wider afield .... He'd found the secret of
life ... of youth ... or being ... of doing!

THE SPXRET OF SUCCESS 17

. . . Once hidden by the woods Ward threw out
his chest, tossed down liis dinner pail, drew a deep
breath of the spring air, and uttered x boyish yell
of exultation! . . . Life .... was good
spite of hard knocks in Shanty Town! Life ....
was wine in pulsing joyous veins! Hope, rose-red,
edged with gold, suffused itself through the bright
future of his ilreains .... Success .... Success
at any price of body or soul, time or work ... he
was going to have this Success Thing .... if
Strength and Will and Purpose would do it I

To be sure, there were hanilicaps; so there were
in all races; but the fleet of foot left handicapf be-
hind! For seven years he had done a man's work
with a boy's body, supporting a father whose sole
belief was that he should increase the race — not
maintain it — and whose belief took form in eight
more children than he could suppoit. He had been
handicapped by burdens that others had Dound,
handicapped by lack of education, by lack of train-
ing except such as the hard and effective knocks of
life afforded, by lack of a start where his ancestors
had left off. Tom Ward senior having fallen be-
hind in the progress of the race, Tom Ward junior
must make up lost ground. He remembered just
before the mortgage had been foreclosed on the old
farmstead, which his ancestors had won from the
Indians at d worked for two hundred years — was
it the fifth or sixth baby that had been born? .
he couldn't remember that; but, anyway, the doctor
was in his mother's room ; and the pale-faced little

THE NEW DAWN

girls— the others of the family were all girls— were
standing at the foot of the bed; and a little red-
faced mite of something human lay muffled in white
beside his mother; and the doctor had looked frst
at the mother s weary face, then at the wan little
girls, then at himself, at that time, a sturdy farm
boy of ten.

"How is it your eldest boy is such a husky little
piker when the others aren't?" asked the doctor
genially. '

"Oh, I guess I had hopes and dreams and happy
thoughts before Tom came," his mother had an-
swered. He hadn't known, then, what she meant.
1 here came a queer look to the doctor's face. He
blew his nose like a piece of pulpit artillery.

"Well, Tom's a throw-back to the good old
stock that pioneered these New England hills," the
doctor had said.

"Yes, Tom resembles his grandfather," his
mother had answered. Then, his father had come
in, red-faced, wagging his beard. As a child he had
not understood, then; but he realized now. It was
his mother's inheritance that his father's blundering
had dispersed; and even then all the children knew
that the father resented people talking to his mother
—hated her superiority. Perhaps, it was the gruel-
ing ar J gnlimg of that daily sad spectacle in his
childhood home that had rooted out of his own
nature any jealousy to superiority. Anyway, he
was "a throw-bark to the good old stock," whatever
that was, and had ten times more energy ir. lis little

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS 19

finger than the rest of the family had in two gener-
ations. Then, the mortgage had been foreclosed;
and his people joined the procession of the thou-
sands who flocked from farm to factory, exchanging
the birth-right of broad acres for the mess of pot-
tage in town tenement. They had never quite come
down to tenement life. His earnings as messenger
boy had paid the rent of a small house on the edge
of phanty Town, between the woods and the sea.
"We can keep our bodies and souls clean here, at
all events," his mother had said wearily as the boy
had passed stove pipes and broken crockery and
backless chairs and babies down off the farm wagon
into the little shabby house.

But to-night, with the rose-red of the sunset aslant
through the lilac hedges and the rose-red of his reso-
lution tinting ihe future with the pure, steady light
of one guiding star— his courage took a leap out
beyond all handicaps. He understood now what
"a throw-back to the good old stock" meant. By
the light of the furnace, when he was fireman to the
night shift, he had read the ship yards' library
voraciously. He also knew now that if some men
had not leaped beyond the heritage of their handi-
caps the human race might yet be slinking through
the jungle in pursuit, not of stars, but prey.

Sweat was oozing from his shaggy hair in beads.
His temples pounded like hammers. Ward knew
the pain of concentrated joy in the birth-throes of
his hopes. Strength .... Will .... Purpose!
The secret ... he had it at last! He was going

THE NEW DAWN

to "make the race tracks of life hum, by God; and
Devil take the hindermostl" He was sick of in-
competents, of unfits, of sponges and parasites and
no-goods and grurablers at life, whose refrain was
self pity, and whose fate that of the swine that went
over the precipice into the sea I

Ward sat down on a log with hands linked round
one knee and eyes fixed on space . . . There were
really two worlds ... the Ups and the Downs
.... the On-Tops and the Unders .... the

Commanders and the Commanded Why?

.... Then the same thought back like a battle
cry .... Strength . . . Will .... Purpose ....
The result must be Success; and success meant
power, the game, pursuing a fleet-of-foot aim up
and out and beyond I . . . Ward jumped to his feet
with a second joyous yell.

"Gee-whizz 1 One of the shovel stiffs from your
ship yards, Admiral Westerly; and he's got bats in
his belfry," cried the broken falsetto of a youth in
adolescence; and Tom Ward crumpled up in hot
red-faced confusion; for almost on top of his hiding
place galloped five riders— a carrot-headed boy in
khaki and silk shirt blouse and scarlet tie leading the
way on a pony, followed by the president of the ship
yards and a red-faced man in a military suit mounted
on high-paced, dock-tailed cobs. A smallish black-
eyed boy and a very little girl with shaking curls
came cantering behind on Shetland ponies. Even as
he dropped from the clouds of his dreams to an
earth that he wished would close over him, the young

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS 21

workman recognized the group at a glance. The
little girl was the only child of the ship yards' presi-
dent, whom the boy had addressed as Admiral
Westerly; the other rider, officer of the State Infan-
try, of whose malodorous life not an operative in
the yards was ignorant. The small, black-eyed boy
on the Shetland pony was evincing symptoms of
snickering wh-;n the president spoke :

"A gentlcnan doesn't say thrt sort of thing,
Hebden ! Whsh "

But the little girl was not paying the least atten-
tion to anyone. She was slipping off her pony with
eyc3 intent on a violet bank, when the military man
spoke.

"Pretty damp for little feet and bare legs —
Westerly."

"Louie," called the president, "go back on your
pony this minute! Ground's damp here, and tht

sea fog coming in " and he had flung his foot

stirrup free to dismount, when Tom Ward junior
came out of his embarrassment with a jump, jerked
off his cap and, extending his hand, had given the
little girl a lift back to her saddle.

"By Jove — that was neat," said the military man
to the red-headed youth, whom Ward heard quot-
ing something about "a Don Wan in the rustic."

The president was visibly fingering his vest pocket
for a tip.

"Go on with the children. Colonel Dillon," he
was saying, "I think this is one of our men."

THE NEW DAWN

Ward had put on his cap and turned his back as
the colonel rode off with the children.

"I saw you in the ship yards to-night, didn't I?"
asked the admiral.

Ward felt the electric thrill go from his spine to
I'.is finger tips. The president had brought out a
handful of change and was picking out two quarters.
Ward turned.

"Yes, sir!"

The president put the two quarters back in his
pocket. Ward did not want the tip; but he did not
know whether to feel grim or cynical when he saw
the coins slip back. The president was rummaging
his trousers pockets.

"A dime, ill bet," thought Ward grimly; and he
wanted to laugh at this drop from dream clouds to
a dime's worth of mortification; but Admiral West-
erly did not proffer more coins. He sat rummaging
his trousers pocket with one hand, reining his horse
in with the other, looking Ward over with a search-
ing glance that bored into the boy's marrow. Again,
that electric tingling ran from the woi cer's spine to
his finger tips. At that moment, so far from being
in rose-hued clouds, he felt himself all hands, all
feet, all legs; in a word, a huge lumbering gawk
reddening the color of a turkey's wattle.

"Which 's your department?" asked the president
curtly.

"Second furnace man; day shift now; used to be
night boy — — "

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

"Never mind 'used-to-be'sl' Do you want to get
on — to go ahead?"

Ward was so taken aback that he didn't know
whether to expect some "be-good-and-you-will-bc-
happy" advice, some platitudes about working
classes saving their money, or a round call-down for
intruding on the group of ri icrs to help the little
girl.

"I asked you," repeated Admiral Westerly, "do
vou want to rise?"

Ward was so taken aback that he did not recog-
nize his own voice, nor pick his words.

"More than hell I do," was what he managed to
blunder out.

"Never mind the nell; and remove that cap of
yours! It doesn't grow there, does it?"

The president was slowly twisting the invisible
ends of his clone-cropped mustache.

"\Vhat I meant, sir," blundered young Ward,
"was that I'd give all I own "

"Which isn't much," interjected the president.

"Just to get my feet on the lowest rung of the
ladder."

"Hm," ruminated the president.

"I know I can make good if I can just get my
feet on th-; bot'.om run of the ladder "

"Yes, if somebody doesn't stamp on your fingers
from above, or pull you down by the legs below, or
upset your ladder altogether," ruminated the man
on horseback, putting his hand back in his trousers
pocket and pulling out a twenty dollar gold piece.

THE NEW DAWN

Ward made no reply, because there didn't seem
any to make.

"I see you don't let the grass grow under your
feet; or your hat."

"What is he driving at?" thought the boy; but
he had sense enough or fright enough to hold his
tongue.

"Who are these delegate union fellows working
up trouble among the riveters and platers?" de-
manded the great man.

"I don't know," answered Ward. "I have never
been able to afford to join the firemen's union, but
I guess I'll have to at twenty-one."

"Not a member yet?"

"No, sir," answered Ward.

"Can you find out for me if these agitators are
from the foreign yards, and keep your mouth shut
about it?"

"I think so; they are to meet secretly in the fur-
nace room to-morrow — Sunday — when the cleaners
are supposed to be at won; "

"Don't think," emphasized the admiral. "Will
you, or will you not?"

And the answer came from Ward like a stone
from a catapult— "Will I— Yes, I will!" (Strength
. . . Will .... Purpose . . . Power — the boy
was drunk with a wine the great man did not guess.)
The president took the gold coin from his palm
and handed it between his forefinger and thumb to-
ward the grimy faced workman in oily blue over-
alls.

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS 25

;'No, sir," said Ward, "not till I've ear.ed my
price. '

"There may be no price "

laddw-^"" ^" ""^ ^'" °" ''"^ ''"' '■""8 °^ ^'"=

The answer of the president of the ship yards'

company was a dig of the spurs that sent his horse

on the gallop after the other riders. Ward stood

rooted; but as the cob went hurling into the woods

the president turned sidewise and glanced back at

the figure of the young workman. Ward looked up

just at the moment to catch the glance. He felt as

It an arrow had ripped into his inner slumbering

consciousness. He had been picked out from the

mob of other men. It remained for him to make

good. ,

CHAPTER II

WARD ADOPTS A NEW CREED OF LIFE

Right here and now it would be very simple to
preach a httle sermon on the mistake Tom Ward
made at the beginning of his career by choosing
Success as h,s aim instead of Service. When he
thought of his fellow workers as "a mob," he was
on the edge of a precipice, from which Lucifer and
many other Sons of Morning have plunged from
a heaven of dreams to the pit of their own fierv
discontent. We have all heard the allegory of the
man who set out to follow the mountain stream
from US sprmg in the snows down to the sea, and
who made the mistake of setting out on the wrong
side of the tricklet. The trouble with that pretty
parable .s you en n't always follow the mountain
stream tricklmg from the snows. It loses itself
under quaking moss and in swamps. It dips down
under a glacier and takes to curving round preci-
pices, where you would break your neck if you fol
lowed. Bemg good is something n.ore than follow-
mg a silver thread in the sunlight. It is often using
good judgment to find the thread when you lose ^t
and to recognize the thread when you find it; and'
generally, life hurries us into action before we have
26

A NEW CREED OF LIFE 27

time or wisdom to talce stock of our own mo-

When Ward came out of the daze where the
nders ad left him standing i„ the wood eem
ngly-I suppose-he walked home. In rea ity, Z
trod on the vv.ngs of the wind. He did not feci the
earth beneath his feet. All fatigue had go e o
o h.s hmbs and m .ts place was a sort of living

He'd Tl u'"""^ '"^'''"^ '" « "^^ glory
He felt as ,f he had put himself in touch wlh a

aid n" '""? -'T™""^ '"''" ^'"^'h dominated
Syrobetng '""" ^''' '' ^°""^ -"""^'^
Alas for the hopes! They were like a powerful
electnc current turned into a broken wire ending
.n a sputtenng and burning; for, as he emerged frlm
the woods there stood the little house on 'he edfc"

wan i„"th 7' 7^ ''""'^^ "^'="' ""P^'"^^J -d
wan, m the m.dst of an unkempt garden with a fall-

InH ? h- °V''''"'"S '^°'' «"d '°o^^"ing grip
and dashmg hopes^ It had been quite a hous' lo,
m ts day, a seaside pleasure place for some pros!
perous merchant m days gone by before the ship
yards bu,lt up a Shanty Town, and the Shanty Tow,'

zirti °" ''' "^ ""p- Ward look/d it r

over w,th new eyes. There was an old colonia
mansion turned mto a tenement. The porter', lod^
was now a Poli.h lodging house. What made th
d.fference between this place now and long a^o

THE NEW DAWN

The souls of the people inside the houses; and with
new eyes the boy noted as he passed into the yard
the top hinge of the gate gone, the pig weed in the
vegetable garden, the broken slats in the board walk,
a rickety board in the house steps.

"Wha' kep' yo' late?" mumbled a thick voice,
sleepily, from a wooden rocker on the veranda.

Ward had always noticed how his father dragged
his feet. He had never so sharply noticed how
the words dragged in the same inert way.

"I walked!" he answered barely civilly, an un-
speakable rage suddenly flaring up in him.

"Wha' d' y' walk for? Why didn't y' take the
car? Funny thing if other men can ride and my son
has to walk "

"You're mighty thoughtful about your son, all of
a sudden," returned the boy sullenly. He was well
aware that if he had ridden his father would hav;
demanded why he had not walked. The man had
the habit of looking at life with a snarl. Things
went wrong with him because he always went wrong
with them. Ward was now looking at his father
with new eyes. This head was massive, too, but it
was not the massiveness of strength. Where the
president's head had suggested a lion in action this
man's gave the imnression of the sodden stupidity
of a cross-grained ox. His square shoulders
slouched. His great hands dangled loose. Here was
strength, too, but it wasn't the strength of the fit.
A great wave of revulsion went over the boy's being.

"How is mother?" he asked.

A NEW CREED OF LIFE 29

"Oh, she's done a good djy's job, this time ' It's
a boy— this time. That makes two boys to seven
girls; and that's 'bout what girls are worth in earn-
in' wages, tool You're gettin' seventy. Would
take three and a half girls t' earn that. Boy brings
in money from time he's in his teens. Girl never

brings in .nuch and is a burden till "

"Burden?" The boy burst out in a hard laugh
that the wooden-headed sire did not in the least
understand. Though he had not earned a dollar
honestly or dishonestly in ten years, Ward senior
was smh an authority on earnings and savings and
economics in his family's affairs and Shanty Town's
affairs and ship yard affairs as never before spouted
from an apple barrel in a grocery store. The man
rose and gazed dully after the boy. The boy went
to his own room, changed his clothes, and emerged
dressed as if to go out. He sat down to the supper
table without a word. The other children had gone
out. Father and son ate alone. Suddenly, the
father noticed something and threw down his knite
with an unpleasant sneer.

"What y' putt your white shirt on for?"
Ward didn't answer, but went on with his mea'.
The elder man's amused look hardened. "Needn't
think a boy could fool him." A thin girl of twelve
or thereabouts toiled over the stove. She was hot,
white, ansmic, and she shufided her feet like her
father. She wore the deadly pallor of an invalided
woman and was listless with that most pathetic of
all old ages— the ol^ age of the young. The son

THE NEW DAWN

finished his meal and sat back. Something newly
awakened arose in blind, furious, ragmg revolt
against his surroundings. There was the twisted
window-shade that ought to have been rolled. There
was the gate with the broken hinge which one nai"
would have righted. Ihere was the garden path
which an hour's work would have cleared of weeds.
Young Ward hardly knew whether to laugh at his
dreams or at what he saw. Certain it was— one
of the two must give place to the other— dreams of
success, or proofs of failure.

"I aut'd y' whad y' putt y' white shirt on for?"
"I suppose." answered the boy, "if a hog were
taken out of a pig-sty and put in a parlor it would
still be a hog."

"Oh, you needn't try t' fool me by talkin' some-
thin' else I You mind y'rself and be careful what
kind of a trollop y' go trapezin' round streets Satur-
day night."

Instead of being angry young Ward nearly
luughed. He leaned forward with his elbow on the
table and his face in his palm. It was becoming
comical. If Ward senior had been suspicious be-
fore, he was certain now.

"Mary, you bring me that sugar bowl," he
roughly ordered the little girl.

The look of amusement faded to hard contempt
on the son's face. He folded his arms over the
table and leaned forward.

"I guess not," he countermanded quietly. "You
leave that lump sugar where it is, Maryl We're

A NEW CREED 01 LIFE 3,

not going to use lump jugar till the bills for the
new baby arc paid."

The son sat up suddenly very straight. The
father threw his knife and fork to his plate open-
mouthed. I he revolt h:,d come so suddenly his
dull head could not take it in. The little alarm
clock on the k.tchen shelf was ticking the minutes
off so furiously that .t threatened to jump in the
middle of the floor.

"p'j' hear me, Mary?" roared the man. "Vou

tn'hiJ "".h K^.'T""'." "'-• ^'"^ '=»■"■•" hold of the
table w.th both hands and had half risen, leaning
forward so, open-mouthed. Young Ward rose, set
nis chair in, and waited.

fn2' '"S. ^''''' r'^'"^ ^''"' ^'="' «''''«= with
fright. There am t any more sucjar," she stam-
mered in what was obviously a stared lie

Then, I'll git't, myself "

"No!" That was all the boy said; but he ut-
tered it so firmly the father paused. Father and son
glared across the table. The boy's ambition rebelled
against sonship to unworth. He felt a sudden, over-
whelming sense of shame that his father had „o

uTx'/ n, '"''" '"'''°°'' 'f ^°' weakening.
. We 11 see; we'll see," he muttered thickly, mak-
mg to move. ■'

"Sfop right there and now!" ordered the boy
with outstretched arm. "Father, will you be good

plainly, for the first time in your life? No— I'm
across your way !" He had planted himself squarely

THE NEW DAWN

in front of his father. "Just take in the fact, will
you?— that I weight one hundred and sixty-five
pounds; and it's every ounce muscle. You weigh
two hundred pounds; and it's all fat; and flabby fat,
too. It wouldn't help mother if we got into a
fight."

The man had raised his arm, but he dropped it.
"Who's talkin' o' fight?" he stormed in a voice
meant for the sick room.

"Speak low, and sit down," answered the son.
"I have something to tell you."

The burly face dropped angrily behind the table
again, but, for the life of him, Tom Ward junior
didn't know what to say. He took hold of the
back of his chair. What was there to say? The
eyes that had sought the secret of success now
sought the secret of failure.

"Well?" demanded the man. "Have you got
into some mess with a trollop?"

The funny side of it suddenly overwhelmed
Ward. He laughed uproariously. "Yes, yes; that's
It, dad! It's a Miss Fate, you may have seen work-
mg in the offices of the ship yards' company."

"Fate— so that's the huzzy! Office girl all
trick't out in millin'ry an' airs, I s'pose! If she's
in trouble, why don't you marry her?"

The promise of a juicy revelation from the son
had eclipsed all thought of the lump sugar and set
the old man licking his chops, eating voraciously
and ferociously. "Why don't you marry her?" he
repeated.

A NEW CKEED OF LIFE 33

Ward junior sat down in his chair and slowly
lighted a cigarette. "I'm ^-.,,5 to marry her if
sh-j'll have me," he said vith a wry ,,'rin, "but I

don't exactly know how to .'XDlain "

'Well, you needn't think 1 w^.u fxplainin's and
explainin's 'bout a mess any son o' mine's got into
with a flighty huzzy," returned the father, ob-
viously on the point of bursting with curiosity.
"While you're thinkin' up excuses for misdoin's, I'd
thank somebody t'help me mend the pump."

"Somebody?" said Ward junior softly. He could
not remember a day in his life when his father had
not wanted "somebody" to help him to do some-
thing. "Did you look for work, to-day?" he asked
gently. A sense of pity for the inevitableness of
failure had touched the boy.
^ "No, I didn't! What'd be the use? I ain't goin'
t' work like a convict t' have foremen swear at me
like a dog I I ain't goin' to join the union: and you
know, well as I do, if a man don't join he ain't got
a chance at the ship yards. If you didn't do a man's
work at a boy's pay you couldn't hold your job!
Better confess your own misdoin's. As far as work's
concerned— there's nothin' doin'! I tell you—
there's nothin' doin' !"

Young Ward dropped his cigarette in the dregs
of the coffee cup.

"Nothing doing?" he repeated. A great wave
of bitterness and sadness and grimness had taken
the mirth out of him. "There never will be any-
thing doing for a family that lets the grass grow

THE NEW DAWN

"Whad's that'" Ti,„
°^vious,y going off J*;"-;-^^^

-oney for putting yadT to "'^.^ '° ^^ «-'^
ship yard people wan I f !:'^^''- ^ '"^«" '^e
that's all r- ^ ^=!"f g°od work for good money;
"All?"

Tjiedder man grew slowly purple.
'^'^|^^;^!?t^"^^^'^^eardasHepul^

worf? mrtV'y-T '':,•:? ^-'^ ^^^ ^'- «- «■

The beard wagged from the ^^'' "7 '^'' ^'S^'"'"
lap of an angfy bull '"^ """^ ^'''^ ^J*^ ^ew-

retaHatl'al^enn?''' '^/r''^ P-''^^'>' ''^ve
-a perfor„,a„cf L which 'r ' '°"^ '" ^y^^"'"
thicker head is ccrta „ „ '^""' P'^'" ^'^^^ '^e

he rose, chest flu g out sh '^^ °"' '^^ ''^"^^•- but
'^'■^ arms. It ,Z7o, \ "' "''''"'' ^"'^ ^o'ded
with the cau of fat , 1°""'' '^'' '""koning

half way. When he nnl" ^' "" ^'"^ ^^^^''^ng^

"I don't blame vo"^ " 'T ''"^ 'J"''^^-
There is no e. "e for a"f " ?'" ' '"^ =>" ^^ -•
o-- three generatLn "l/ aTu' I ^°^^ .^ -"^'^ ^wo
rut— that's it; and we'-/ ^^^ ^^ 8°* '" a

been wallowi;g in th m^d '° f ' °"^' ^e've
fe the mud— there's something

NEW CREED OF LIFE

and find out^^hat s wTon: 1" '' '? ^^" ^'^'"g''

raponsibrlity which he hn.l h ! ^"S*

shoulder, of 0,1,7. '"''"S °" "'

.« drop r if: s ";™ ■: "'''-"'• "">«•

i'.;'=f,otrs:fr'--'"

fessiI°l'o~''°K r''°''' ''°PP^'^ '■" fhe middle o' con-

yrrXXillt-^^'^'' ---'--- -he Shi;

"Cut that outi" interjected the boy. "If y,.

THE NEW DAWN

were not so jumping keen for the unclean, father
you would notice I was making fun about fate and
luck and that sort of thing. I'm not reproaching
you more than any one of us. I only say— we'd
better mend our ways than wallow round in ditch
water pretending it's God's fault. God has noth-
ing to do with our poverty and failure. Long as
we are stupid as hogs, God Himself couldn't make
us succeed if He tried."

It dawned through the father's thick skull at last
He was ! eing defied in his own house. He was
being taunted with failure under his own roof His
boy, who had been docile as the sheep dog up to
that night— docile or thoughtless— was making fun
of his father, defying parental authority, talking
lightly of some misdoings with a girl in the office
He seemed to have called his father— a hog.

"You— you," he roured thickly, shuffling round to
his son's side of the table, flourishing his arms "I
have a rnind to— thrash you !"

"Don't you hit mel" said the son speaking
quickly; "for if I hit you back— it will— it will—
hurt you."

Midway of his rush the enraged old man paused.
His face slowly purpled till the veins stood out
thickly in his neck and forehead.

"Poor dad," said the son. "I guess you can't
help It! It s the way you're built. You'd pretty
nearly like to knock me down, only you daren't I
guess you'll take it out kicking the dog and raging
at mother and cuffing the kids at family players

A NEW CREED OF LIFE 37

S,v',^"'JT'r T"^' ' ^''PPy '"""^' dad!" The
boy^reached for his hat hanging on a peg of the

The old man could scarcely articulate. The

thetw'-So""'"' '''f ""'^ ^P'^P'-^'^ ^--
the throat Go-go-go from this house forever I

Never darken the.e doors agam. And-and-" h
added magnammou.Iy, "may God forgive your ^n
toward your father." ^

The son passed out to the cool twilight without

1 r ^/"^ '^"' ^"^ ^P^""g f° his face a new
look Manhood Resolute. He had left h s youti
behmd m the ne'er-do-well home. On his squared
shoulders rested a new Manhood

forlr"^'' ^'.- u' *"'" '^""'^'"8 "'^ ^!"^ I bought
for my j^other?' he asked himself out in the garden
Af er all, such disputes were so useless. His fathT;
hadhadnov.s,on. Scales were on his eyes. How
could he see? .\s well take the ho,, out of thi
stye and expect it to change in a parlor us the n an
out of a wallow of failure and expect him to sue
ceed wuhout a change in his on„ heart I

bark I'nf '^" ''""■'■'' "^^^ "^^'"^ ^' did not turn
back to beg an unneeded forgiveness as, perhaps
he stubborn old man secretly hoped. $; fhis Ts
he beg„,nmg of the high .reams! . . He

h"/ h.! "'"'"^''' ■ • • B-^fter have done w"h
the shiftless, wrong-headed, poverty-cursed pis!-

\Vh 'uA . . '^"'^ P*'^ ^"'y 'f« dead! .
\Vho hadsa.d that? . . . or was ,t . "Let the
dead bury their dead?" Nn „,« 7 ,

. . . ixo matter who said

THE NEW DAWN

it, it was the only motto for a true beginning! . . .
He could do better without the home than it could
do without him; but then, there was his mother!
. . . That gave pause to the reckless resolve . . .
A great weight seemed suddenly to come back . . .
A chill swept over h's enthusiasm. It was the last
protest of the old ties against the new creed. Well,
then, if he had to be hard, he must be hard; that
was all !

Strength! . . . Will! . . . Purpose! that was
it! . . . The arms of love round one's neck must
not drag down like a mill-stone ! He still had his
week's pay. His mother should have that, though
it would be sucked down in the quick-sands of six
years' debts. He did not weigh the right or the

wrong of what he was about to do He had

brushed right and wrong aside, with love and pity,
when he took the new creed of life.

Far beyond the moon-etched fields came the rush
of the flowing river drawn by its own destiny to
boundless seas. From farther yet came the muffled
roar of the city's traffic, of multitudinous voices, of
multitudinous feet marking time in a ceaseless
narch. Long ago, men had marched to battle-
fields for laurels. Now, battles were fought on the
markets. In the heat of traffic — man pitted against
man — victories were won. That was the meanii -
of the muffled roar. It was a hymn .... a hymn,
to the God of Traffic!

Ho knew very well, as he stood in the cool of
dewy darluiess opposite his mother's window, he

A NEW CREED OF LIFE

knew better than words could express that he had
not chosen the easier way. The wooden rocker and
his father's creed of a somewhat benevolent, easy-
going Providence were the path of least resistance.
Why had he chosen the harder way? He was not
sure that it would even bring him happiness. He
was not thinking of happiness. He had no desire
for the adulation that comes licking the feet of Suc-
cess; and I am bound to add that the boy had no
mental vision of steam yachts, and race horses, and
wines. Why, then, was he casting off from the old
life? Why have the bold spirits of every age set
sail for unknown seas that sent back their freightage
for the race? Why, but because man would not be
man unless he strove for the Eternal Better? What
he would do with the Power, when he won it, he did
not know. One must first cross the unknown seas.
Somehow, the vision of that other man's success,
and the sting of his own family's failure, had driven
home the truth — one must go up and on, or down
and out; strive, or cease!

The dewy darkness, the cold, white star-light, the
wandering, hushed voices of the voiceless night,
spoke to him in their own language. In cutting
away from a handicapped past he had thrown him-
self as bare of equipment as the most primitive
man into the arms of Nature, man's primordial
mother; and the dew gathered on his fevered fore-
head like a cooling hand — a hand of blessing.

The collie dog sniffed affectionately at his feet;
and through the open window he could hear his

THE NEW DAWN

father storming over the quarrel to the invMid
n-other. Such unctuous phrases as "prayin' for the
boy s good and "power o' prayer for the prodi-
gal, floated out on the night air like the humminr
of beetles. Then, the little girl came in to the
mother s room with the lamp, and the father went
out with a loud banging of the door in a sort of
dumb oath.

It was the boy's chance. With a touch on the
wmdow sill he leaped noiselessly through the win-
dow and sank on his knees at his mother's bed
Ihe httle girl who had lied about the lump sugar
fled to guard the door. The mother lay spent and
wan Her hair was prematurely white; her brow
Imeless, with the light of a marble purity; but
mouth and chin were abnormally small with a
tremor about the lips, like a child on the verge of
tears. He had told himself that her life was past-
his to come; therefore, he must not allow her to
stand in the way of his resolution; but when he
leaned over the closed eyes such a pain gripped
h.m by the throat that he could not speak. Sud-
denly, he comprehended the Gethsemane of such
lives— the weakness that brute strength could crush
and trample, as the ox treads field-flower into mire
Great God, mother!" he laid his face on the
pillow beside her, "how— can I leave— you?"

The woman opened her eyes— gray eyes, full of
a hfe-long wondering at pain. She put out her hand.
His big grasp closed like steel over it.

"What happened with your father, Tom?"

A NEW CREED OF LIFE 4,

. ^h- ""thing. He isn't specially to Man,., t II'
just the way the years ha^c buil hil -'

i u made uD mv m n,I f« •. • • . ° ' ""

the way wevT done alth" """'? '" '^'''^h-water.
home, Ind saw th same oT/h""' ''"^"' ' """=

mmm

You've stood it twenty y?ars and it' T' '°"^"'
in' A,u) ;.' " ^' ""^ ^^"^ ""'y pulled you

rnry""H7r''''^^'--^''"a'wa;Vse:'o

hThand. ''■■"' =• ""'"^''^'^ -" "^ bills into

;'What are you going to do?" she aslced

rise T f '"^ '° '"""'^' '"°"'"' I ="" going to
rise I I am gomg to conquer— conauer .
everything that stands in mv wavT T ''""

bust, mother! Fd rather ZL '^ >. " """'^ °'
;han go on wallop; -^^^"^ X^^^^^^^^

- hell ! It has ki Id'yo - Z ,7 ? ''"' '^^

I'm going to get there or' t T ? ^ '" ''"'' "'

why! I've J „ T ''""''^ '^' 'P"'' °« the

H.-c , ■ ^ . '''' S°^ to— succeed!"

H.S vo.ce was husky, and his hand trembled over

4»

Tin; NKVV DAWN

his mother's. She had closed her eyes. He knew
that she was praying. A stab of anguish choked
speech. In the silence there was a raging conflict
between his resolution and the oM ties, ties so
strong that they seemed knitted into the fiber of his
being. If she had not been lying there so ill, if
she had been a different type of woman — coarse
and self-satisfied and content in the swine life of
failure — he could have gone away light of heart.
But there was the father, greasing the family's way
to ruin with self-excuse — that meant failure! And
here was the mother, who stood for the purest
goodness he had ever known; but it was goodness
under the feet of greed, loo weak to carry the day
against the odds of the i:.ute with the thick neck —
that, too, meant failure ! Strength — strength —
strength — that was the way to Power! Will and
purpose must not flinch!

"Tom !" the eyes opened. What the little woman
said now was the supremely bravest thing she had
ever done in her life. "It doesn't matter! Don't
think of me! It won't last long! I'm only one of
an army of women who don't last long. Don't stay
dragged down by your love for me "

"Tom !" called a chattering whisper from the
doorway, "do go way! Father's coming! Don't
have a scene!"

Through vision blurred he saw the gray eyes look
up from the pillow with a light that he carried with
him through all his after-life. Then, he was out in
the darkness, with a pain wrenching at his throat,

A NEW CREED OF LIFE 43

There Ul'' ""■? t'=V''"^"'-8 »>- 'i^ht. Some-

ninrh r T^ u' ^"'"'^ °' ^'^' '^' '°"i<= in-
ning hard. Then, he realised that he had torn

away from the home at a run.

"PoorShepl" He stroked the dog', head. It

•Toor Sh!'" "vv"'""'^ '" '*•' P"'"' °f »'- hand.

loorShep! We've cut and run, now, sure ! It's

a^ rocky d ahead, and you go back! Bless my

log! Go, now, go home 1" he ordered
But the collie curled at his feet

bacU°a'r?i' T'^^'f' ''"^' '"'"'^ ^''""''^'l «« with
ba kvvard looks and pauses. "I've done with the

past . . . I ve done wth pity! If I've „„f .„ ,
«in ha d ,11 start now," an'dL huVed?s°tLrtht
sent the dog whming.

.hY'V^-"""' ' "■"''-'' '"'^ 'he twisted window
shade; but th.s, too, had its meaning

Succe^sTl ^'"^ ^'"^ '°"' "''^ ^" "'^^ hampered

Tom Vv"h ''="^,!'"'^^"<=d hir. heart to Success!

Tom Ward would trample all things that lay in
the way of h.s masterful march to Power! He
was qu.te sure that the old way-weakness and
goodness, greed and hypocrisy-Ld to t di ch
Wh.ther the new way led he did not know

Far ahead the ship yards' smokestacks sent up
a lund glare ,ke a sign of blood and fire; the sacri
fice of the World of Work to the God ^f T raffi
The roar of the c.ty, ^he beat of multitudinous feet'
the throb of hammered steel,

•■'--», iiiu WItK

THE NEW DAWN

ceaseless toil — grew distincter as he ran. In an-
other half mile he would be on the new battle-
field of the new age — the muTkct.

Above the stars shone like a blue field seeded
with jewels. The night was drugged with the sub-
tle joy of orchard blossoms. But the young man's
feet were set on the path to Power. Weakness of
spirit in his mother, the avid greed o. flesh in his
father — had made of his heart a thing of flint.
Down by the sea he remembered that he had not
even kept street car fare in his pocket.

CHAPTER III

WHEKEm TOM W.HO-S W,„rK SH.RT CONTINUES TO

PLAy AN INTERESTING PART IN THE

SCHEMES OF Miss FATE

human emotions reffref H„ • l ■ ' '""'^ o' a"

in^u!, regret. He might have naralv^*,)
h.s buoyancy, his rebound, his leap at ^,7^1 ^
arguments with God's scheme of thLQ^/""''
™^ht have added to his'Zrf, h ' a/'fe

the stuP , , . , . , . of Li^; '"■■" ""'y '° '"P °ver
he!el.r nr -""y healthy. Henceforward

to hold „; h "' "'"'"'"' P"'"'"'^'' ^ ''^'^k thought

ean so d d h 'r "T"- "'■' P"'^'^ continued to
leap, so did his thoughts; and he never ceased run

bT the s : T ''T'' " ''^' P'-^ - ^"wood""
by the sea where the president of the ship yards
had found him planning how to grasp Success Hi
only distinct sensations were a hardening aga"
regret over parting from his mother anda^d elirZ
ot abandon to a great current of Life called piie^
That was why he wandered on through the sUrUt
4S

THE NEW DAWN

woods to the very margin of the sea. The tide was

coming lapping in. Warships and ocean vessels

came churning up through the night mist to the

glittering lines of harbor lights not far from the

lurid glare of the ship yard smoke stacks. One

great vessel — he took it to be the wonderful new

dreadnought — sent the arc of a searchlight cutting

the night in a sword of blue fire. Ward saw it

shoot out in the dark like a presence, then swing

piercingly to right and left, slowly, in a sword of

fire till the line of light came mystically over the

glassy sea toward himself. Everything seemed to

represent the current of a great invisible power.

Its gradual silent swing through the dark had a

curious effect on his own spirit — it seemed to bathe

him in the new life toward which he had set his

face — if it crossed his feet and went behind him —

"let the dead bury their dead" — he would regard it

as an invisible sword between him and his past.

It touched the sea i. little phosphorescent gleams

and set the wave-wash of the steamer trail atremble

in electric fire. It lighted up a multitude of idle

craft rocking in the darkness. Then, suddenly, he,

too, was enveloped in the mystic fire. It had swept

far behind into the darkest recesses of the woods —

a sword between him and the past; an Exclusion of

Purpose to cut everything off but his one aim —

Success. While he gazed it had swept over the

harbor again, lighting up a myriad of unnoticed

craft rocking Idly to the tide.

TOM WARD'S WHITE SHIRT 47

Afterward Ward could not recall how he had
spent the rest of the night. He knew he had conned
over every word and turn of expression on the part
of the admiral, who was president of the ship yards
He remembered about the cap to be removed- the
square up-held shoulders, as though the center of
gravity of men who succeeded rested higher in the
body than of men who failed. Unconsciously he
drew himself up. It was as if from the man's atti-
tudes he would learn the secret of the personality
behind the physical expression. His foot was reach-
ing for the bottom rung of the ladder— he must not
be clumsy footed mentally.

"Who were the delegate union fellows working
up trouble among the iron workers ?"_that was the
first thing to be learned. Then, "were the agitators
from the foreign ship yards?" Why should for-
eign ship yards send agitators to America? Why
was this contest for supremacy on the sea a world
contest? The question pierced the dark of his ig-
norance hke the searchlight from the ship— it flashed
mto significance a thousand trivial things which he
understood now for the first time. The young fel-
low gave a low laugh "By Jupiter, if I get that
secret I ve got a search lantern will light to the
top of the ladder, with a fire <1.partment extension
on— and he threw himself down on the shore,
burying his face in his arms as if to shut out the
very starlight The ship yards, then, were in a
world fight-for what? For control of the sea-
of the carrying trade of the world. What a fool he

THE NEW DAWN

had been not to observe these things before. Units
of capital were more than banks for workers' pay
checks— they were fighters, too, for world power.
He lay on the shore dreaming of great ships going
up and down the harbors of the world's seas; and,
all through his dreams, his purpose to master Life
flashed a revealing light like the search arc of the
great dreadnought.

When he entered the main big furnace room on
Sunday afternoon he could hardly believe that any
human being could have been so blind as not to
realize what was going on behind these doors with
the big sign "Admittance to Employees Only."
Many afternoons when he had been cleaning up his
own furnace the labor agitators had been about
with big handbills printed in red. They had been
talking in Italian and Spanish and German to the
foreign workmen. To-day he would have given his
right arm to know what the foreigners gesticulating
in groups were saying to one another. A voluble
German was spitting fire-cracker speech through his
beard to one group. He also recognized a Spaniard
and a Russian as leaders in other groups. A Scotch-
man was holding forth from a soap-box in words
that came out of his mouth tight and hard as stones
from a catapult. Ward linked his arm in the elbow
of a furnace helper a few years older than himself
and drew near this group. The talk was Greek to
the boy. It was of "the great Armageddon— the
final day of reckoning between labor and capital,

TOM WARD'S WHITE SHIRT 49
slave and master. I„ the Great General Strike

would T;;;' ^^"r ""--'ity. color, and ted
would^ay down p.ck and shovel, axe and ham-

as Jth" Tou'tf M^e'; "ST'' "l-'S '^''-'y
own fatheJwho Hlf:,^,''^, IZ^tVl '''
to to 1 ,0 ,,„ ,^^^^^^ ole .,fe_ ref..„,

doing. He was wondering whether he were con

tenjplating a „,asquerade or a sleeping Jdcano

The big fellow called McGee was visibly excTt d'

You wa.t and see," he admonished. "We do^t

s^i^fo^'^tfseTorrrL^I^r" "^ ^^'^

terS^wtS ""' '°" ""^'^ °'- ""'^ ^- '^o?" -
"Bet your life," emphasized McGee "the e=,r^h
IS the Lord's and the fullness thereof-the earth s
labor s the day we unite to demand it. To-morrow
.s ours Feudansm-we have seen. Industrirm-
it IS to-day To-morrow-it's labor's; and don't
you forget It ; and get right in the procession now-
we re demanding eight hours nowl It will be four
hours to-morrow; and three hours next-ill we Ve
down to a two-hour day at $4 an hourl Think
capital can stand that? That scale of wage will
transfer all capital over to labor; and that's our a^m
m the great bloodless revolution. I tel you i"
syndicalism is the thing! Age of force 1^
naetl W7«'- • , ^ °'^'^^ and war is

pastl Were in a new day when capital's going

THE NEW DAWN

to be out of a job! The day every working man
on earth throws down his tools and refuses to work
for wages and will work only share for share — capi-
tal has to capitulate and hand over everything to

"Whether you've earned it or not?" asked Ward.
McGee punched his hands in his trousers pockets.

"Say, Ward, don't turn on that josh ! Has capital
earned all it owns? Feudalism, industrialism, capi-
talism! Those old fellows have had their day!
Now it's oi rs."

"Isn't t' at fellow over there among the foreign
riveters Scotch Calvy?" asked Ward of a big raw-
boned man declaiming with the light of a fanatical
belief in his eyes — he had transferred the passionate
Calvinism of his Scotch up-bringing to as passionate
and relentless a syndicalism — as the only salvation
for the human race. "I thought," said Ward, "that
he was brought over by the company for special
work?"

McGee smiled. "That's the beauty of this sys-
tem," he explained. "We've got our secret agents
everywhere. That is the joke. The company
brings him in to teach our men tricks of the foreign
yards. The railroads give him graft on the q. t.
to stir up a strike and bedevil ocean traffic; and, by
hickory, the fellow double crosses 'em both — comes
over as a delegate for the world union of all labor
for the big General Strike. Why don't you join us?
Do you more good th.m all the books you're ever-
lastingly studying by firnace light half the night!

TOM WARD'S WHITE SHIRT 5,

Listen— hear him pour it into them hot and
heavy I Can't dodge that kind of dope! Old day of

lot of httle kindergarten labor unions is past "

"Fear? What do we fear?" demanded the
Scotch delegate fiercely. "It's your half-way-ups
and on-tops who tremble at the thought of civiliza-
tion toppling down I We are down I We are the
bottom dregs of life! We're Atlas holding the
weight of the world on our bowed shoulders We
don't need to fear. We can't lose anything; and we
may gain everything. He that loseth his life shall
save It; and he that saveth his life shall lose it! In
twenty years we have gained hours shortened by
half and wages doubled. In twenty more years we
can gain the whole world // we hold together We
don't need to fear a fall. Let the present system
smash— smash it !— I say I If you are sent to prison
we pay you a salary for service to the common good
—volunteer for it like men! We can send more
men to prison than the prison can feed! We can
make civilization so expensive that it will have to
hand over all industry to us! Just stand together
to a man! I Won't Works— they call us I Of
course we are! We won't work till the earth and
the fullness thereof is handed over to us. Spain is
cursl Why does the king tremble on his throne?
Because we've secretly tunneled under his old rot-
ten monarchy. Portugal is ours! Why did their
manikin kid king run from his own throne? Ask
the men who threw the bomb! There were more
bombs in Portugal than ever were thrown! Eng-

52 THE NEW DAWN

!n"FWlal7r ^"" ' ^ ^^''y ''°" ""■''= ^°""- strike
cessions?) Germany .s coming our way soon as we
can undermme the army and place one'of our m"n
■n every battalion. The day U. S. workmen l" fc
hands across the seas with what they call cheap
European labor-at the drop of a hat-the wor d

ours, Work stops till the earth is handed ovJr
to us We ve a stronger weapon than shot guns
and bombs m the new system. Capital will nf"

iTbo^^h; 'T"' '.^'''"'^ -'^ fi-^ gun; and

abor throws down the gun " the Scotchman

laughed a hard „, irthless laugh. "Refuse to woX"
he shouted. "Spod tools! Work slowly! Work o
you w,ll have to do your work twice ! Make employ"
ment expens, ye ! We're not fighting for this or that !
We are fightmg to transfer all power, all posses-
ion from capital to labor! The General Strike will
makejhe French Revolution look like child's

"It's like this," continued McGee feverishly, and,
before Ward realised, McGee was the cen'W o
another hstenmg group. Talk was going on i„ a
dozen languages. Ward wandered from group to
group and learned more of the inner working^ of
the sh.p yards than years of service had taught him.
He heard how Admiral Westerly and Colonel Dil-
Ion, though outwardly friendly, were struggling
agamst each other for a control of stock in thf
^.p yards trust. Dillon represented railroads;
Westerly naval mterests; and the balance of the

TOM WARD'S WHITE SHIRT „

miral k^nf fi, ^^"""a'e— boys at school. The aH

that sSs: o t trerSiVi'"^ r^^^^- "^^

ship yards because he killed ! '° '"'^ ^""'^"
them Poles? Thev had If """?'"' "P^- ^ee
and that fellow gbbeH„VL\" ^'■°'" ^"'"'='••
-artia: after B^Zllotl'^'^ T '1 '^°"^^-
McGee laughed uproa ious I' ^The -'"°"-"
yard, there ain't a railr^ f'^' . , ^'" ' « ship
tory in Europe o AmeS '^ ' '''"'' ^ '^'

secret agents ThsVhTnT -7 "' ^' ''^"^"'^ ""^
ism-,/-: «,„,/^i2;'::':S '^ ^ y^"'- ^'^ fade um-on.

"and weVe go "ur J^,?'""'^ ''l""'^'' '^e words,

hicky, we've got con^ .'^u°""'^ '''"'' ^'"d. by

J, rvi, vc got control of the c.ir.V^i,k i ^

We can tap any wire m ru ■ '.'^'^'^^hoard, too!
want." '^ ' '" ^^''■•'stendoin for news we

The two moved careles^Iv (r-r,
McGee giving swif sk £ of "afhTJ" ^""P"
from Barcelona from R / leader— men

sylvania and Wales and tTe'' T T'' '" P^""

Workersof the Wo;id"^„d L ""1 '^"^'^^^'^
young. '^ ""-'d , and they were all amazingly

Toward six o'clock the most of the workmen be-

THE NEW DAWN

gan going home. The furnace men had set the fires
going for the night shifts who would come at mid-
night. The watchman went into the steel plate room,
leaving McGee and Ward alone in the furnace cham-
bers. Ward was leaning thoughtfully against one
of the brick furnace walls. McGee was kicking off
his overalls.

"Why don't you join?" asked McGee.
Ward thought a moment.
"I may," he said.

"Why don't you join now?" emphasized McGee.
Ward thrust his hands in his pockets.
"I haven't a darn dime left," he laughed.
McGee scrutinized him. "Been burning day-
light? You look as if you hadn't slept for a week.
Aw! Cut it all out. Ward! Start fresh! Here's
fifty cents. Send in your name to some of the boys
to-night."

Ward took the coin ai.d looked at it queerly and
thought of a larger coin of a different color which
he had refused the night before.

"Are you on duty to-night, McGee? Do you
mind if I sleep in here?"

For answer McGee smote him on the back and
admonished heartily about "cutting it out" ; so that
later, when Ward came to the fullness of his power,
it was a stand-by for the newspapers how McGee,
"the rampant red," had once loaned Ward fifty
cents to join the unions.

A moment later Ward was alone in the furnace
room. He searched his pockets frantically for

TOM WARD'S WHITE SHIRT 5j

paper and pencil. Then he rummaged the pockets
of McGee's discarded smock and overalls. He
found a carpenter's pencil but no paper. By the
light of the lantern he leaned over and, on the cuffs
of that starched shirt which had opened the con-
troversy with his father, began writing the names
of all the labor delegates. The left cuff was rapidly
covered with enigmatical initials and catch words.
He could not write on the right cuff with his left
hand, so he threw open his vest and dotted down
more catch words and names on the starched shirt
front. Then he recalled that he had to sleep in the
furnace room that night. He surveyed the tell-tale
cuff and the betraying shirt-front. Reaching over,
he picked up McGee's blue smock and put it on
and buttoned it tightly to the chin. Then he left
the furnace room and, with the fifty cents loaned
by the rising young labor leader, bought the first
food he had tasted since leaving the home roof.
When McGee returned with the night shift at eleven
he found young Ward sound asleep on a bencii
beside the furnace. He looked for the smock;
then recognized it on Ward and for a moment con-
templated asking for it; but the boy was plainly
in a sleep of utter exhaustion. McGee smiled. He
thought he had made a convert. Had the sleeve
of the smock fallen back from the white cuff Tom
Ward's white shirt might have played a different
role in the little drama of Miss Fate.

CHAPTER IV

WHEREIN TOM WARD GOES ON THE FIRST RUNGS OF
THE LADDER

The heat of the furnaces ^oing full blast wakened
Ward soon after midnight. He sat up rubbing hi,
eyes and from force of habit was about to pull off
smock and coat when he saw McGee's figure stripped
to the waist silhouetted against the red glare of an
open furnace door raking live coals back and for-

T-""/;^ !. '"■°"^''' ^"""^ memory. He slid be-
hind McGee and went out into the night. There
were stili some twenty cents left of the fifty loaned
by the young labor leader to join the Workers of
the World. Ward knew that the admiral lived some
twenty miles out from the ship yards on what were
known as the Sea Cliffs. No suburban express
would run thert before eight next morning and
Ward was too wise to ' ^ seen going to the head
offices out at the yards. He decided to see the
head of the company out at his house. Tram cars
carried him five miles and, where the street railway
seemed to end in the dark, he could see through the
woods a light in the room of his old home where
his mother lay ill. Just for the fraction of a sec-
ond a longing came over him to go and look in at
56

THE FIRST RUNGS OF THE LADDER 57

onft"tl' ''"'^''* dreadnought still lay far out

of h ute7 "'• "''•'^" '''^ "^°'^'"« '"-flight
ot the turret came swinging through the dark of

the woods he recalled how that blue sword of fi^e

wa to cut h,m off frorn all the Past. Strength

W. . . Purpose! There must be no side-steppin.^

of W.ll, no wabbling of flabby Purpose! '' et Je

terpreted that verse as "the dead in sin " V-„
Ward now had another interpretatr' Why'dX^
the B,b.e speak plainer?-he used to wonder Now

o Gabr'ier '"."""' '■' '' 'P°'"= "''h the trump

stln^ n i """ "'^° '""'= '^"'^ '^°"'d "°t under
stand till they came to life.

Turning, he loped along the shore path like a
runner on a race track. The searchlight kept

bVhr 1 A' ,"""^ "^'' '"'^' ^^"^ the arc of
.ght struck back seaward, he could see the Cliffs
loom agamst the sky.

the^'nnr^' "'? J" the morning when Ward came to
the porter s lodge of park-like grounds, where a
passmg aborer had told him the admiral lived
Stone p,llars marked the entrance. He was about
to go up the driveway when a man came out of the
mtle stone house and demanded what he wanted
; """was dressed in dark ma.oon with a peak
cap and black leather leggings. It was not what he
»^Veri hut the manner of the asking that stung the

THE NEW DAWN

"I have come with a special message for the
president of the ship yards," he answered, not for-
getting to remove his cap.

The fellow eyed him quizzically. "What mes-
sage?" he asked.

Ward felt the steeled muscles of his forearm
twitch. He looked the man straight back in the
two eyes without flicking an eyelash.

"Come now, no nonsense; you say what you want
or get out of here," added the man insolently.

"You'd better go in and telephone up to the
house that I'm here," warned Ward.

"You say what you want or get out," said the
man advancing threateningly.

"I've said what 1 want. I have come with a
special message for the president of the ship yards,"
answered the boy hotly. He was wondering if alt
life would be like this — obstructionists and block-
heads at every gateway up.

"You don't come that over me," answered the
man. "Cranks, beggars, and peddlers not allowed
on these grounds! If you had any message you
could have telephoned it up! You say what the
message is or git off the place — d'y' hear me?"
ordered the man coming forward.

Tofri Ward had had only one meal in thirty-
seven hours. Also he had slept less than six hours
in two nights. Before the man in livery knew what
had happened a ringing swat from the palm of a
great hand that seemed to swing on an arm like
a steel derrick took him over the head, and a fist

THE FIRST RUNGS OF THE LADDF R 59

that hit like a hammer came with unforcwarned im-
pact under the chin; and the maroon livery tilted

back on a parabolic curve that 1/ che driveway

"You sawdust monkey," Ward was gritting
through his teeth. "I don't want to hurt you, but
you get out of my way! If I'd give a message
meant for the president to such a fool flunky as

you I'd be a fakir o« the first bat " and he

straightened up to find himself face to face with
the admiral, leading a Shetland pony in a basket
cart down the driveway. In the pony cart sat the
little girl with the curls— behind cantered the two
boys Ward had seen in the woods that Saturday
night. The little girl was bursting with suppressed
laughter. The two boys were openly snickering.
The admiral smiled.

"Seems to me, Buskins, you got the worst of that
argument," he was saying. "Here, Hebden," to
the red-haired boy with the red tie— Ward noticed
he was dressed in spotless white riding breeches;
the other boy wore flannel shirt and khaki trousers
— "Here, Hebden, I'll take your horse back to the
stable! You drive with Louie in the pony cart;
and don't run him down hill, you know! Go care-
fully!"

^^ "Oh, Uncle Wes " grumbled the older boy,

"and I wanted to try my own horse this morning."

"Let me, Admiral Westerly," exclaimed the other
youth; and he was in the pony cart with his own
horse in tow as he spoke. The three children
trotted on down the driveway. The liveried man

THE NEW DAWN

had withdrawn to the gateway lodge. The admiral
stood, r.^^^^^^^^

out'tf i'"^''l^ 7'^'':'''^' "''^'" g^» 'hat trin^med
out of hitn m the foreign schools."

tio^ '"''''^ "" *"' "P ^"d «°°d « atten-

The admiral led the way slowly a pace or two

eJm in front of an old-fashioned red brick man
sion house. He seated himself thoughtfully Ms"
mind seemed still with the children-fomewLt "
fraught the boy thought. Nothing was saTd for a
moment or two Ward stood waiting, won/e" n'
.f these beautiful grounds and the old weH-S

hom. ffV'^^"'^ g'-andeur where his own old

-^s the" ' ;""'. T''' '''•'^ ''°'^" from labor
-as the speakers of the Sunday afternoon meeting
had declared; or because the soul inside tre man
of he mansion house had some advantage over^Se

rd^:ikt7retr^:^°-^°^^^^-^^--'"

trouble are from the foreign ship yards? Y s s^r

i H "'■ 7t '°"'' °^ '^''^ =»- P^id by the r i :

roads and he recited as nearly as he could all he

it"'^ the afternoon before. ^'

Who told you about the railroads ?"

McGee," answered Ward.

THE FIRST RUNGS OF THE LADDER 6,

Z;.X"."fel." '"''"'■■ ■■''>'«"'•"'>«

Ward made no answer. He felt sq ,f >,• l i
future life depended on no false Love Vow''^ "'°^^

"Yes, sir."
hrs'hinl''^'"'"'"^'"^'''"-' Westerly held out
Ward went blank; then red.

I haven't them That i<! T i,, . T
sir." ^^ haven't them, yet,

"I thought you said you had "

^^ Ward could see the suspicion on the president's

l.Ve?m/cl"t::et!:!!:r^ " '' P^''^ "^^-^ I de-

;;You act like it!" cut in the president.
But— but stumbled the bov "thp,-

af aid Id forget them queer foreign names-^"
Out wth ,t," demanded the president "wT
d'dyoudo? Hide them in your' ap." ^''"

THE NEW DAWN

"No, sir," floundered Tom Ward in an agony
of awkwardness, "I have them writ all over my
shirt," and he threw open his smock and displayed
that unfortunate starch shirt which had played such
a freakish part with Miss Fate from the first.

The president didn't smile. In fact, he didn't
believe. His eyes bored into Ward like a gimlet.
Suddenly he seized the boy by the right wrist and,
in a sudden twist, brought Ward almost to the
knees with a forward jerk. The jerk brought the
cuff of the white shirt down out of the blue smock—
It was literally peppered, scrawled, charcoaled back
and forward in big sprawli- ■ hieroglyphics written
m a dull carpenter pencil. The president put his
eye-glasses up and carefully scrutinized the cuff.
Then he looked up at Ward. The boy was trem-
bling. The eyes bored in and out of his soul, of his
hopes, of his ambitions, gimlet-wise.

"Where did you sleep last night? Has anyone
seen these?"

"No, sir, no one; I slept in a dark corner of the
furnace room and took Sam McGee's smock to

cover it "

"Where did you sleep the night before?"
"In the woods."
"You have told no one of this."
"No, sir."

"Why didn't you go home?"
"I ran away from home Saturday night after I
seen you, sir."
"Why?"

THE FIRST i;UNGS OF THE LADDER 63

"Because the spirit inside our home is no good,
sir I 1 want to rise "

The president didn't speak for a moment but
he relaxed h,s hard grip so Ward could stand erect
again.

"You want to rise ?"

"Yes, sir; that's all the pay I want! I want a
chance to nse I If I don't make good you can throw
me out to the dogs-all I want is a chance to get
my feet on the bottom rung of the laddc^to
rise "

"It's a long climb," said the admiral. He had
'eaned back against the rail of the seat and was
shaJmg his eyes with his hand. "It's a long climb
my boy I '

"I know, sir, it is long and hard; but there's a
top to It; and it's just as long the other way down-
ana there s no bottom-it's hell there-I bin there "
There will be cruel feet trample from above
on the hands as you climb "

"Won't be no worse, sir, than the kicks I'd get
at the bottom." ^

Ward saw the admiral looking at him through
the fingers of the hand shading the eyes. The face
wore the same troubled expression as when his
glance had followed the receding children.

"What do you want me to do for you?" asked
Westerly finally. "Remember, we can never ply
a dollar more than a man earns for us and is worth
to us. if we pay him one, he must earn us two. If

THE NEW DAWN

you ask high pay remember you'll have to do harder

work to pay for it "

"I ain't thinking of pay, Admiral! If I can't
make myself so you'll want to pay me high you
can tnrow me out! I want to be taken from the
furnace room and ts be put in the marine engineer-
mg department "

"But, good Lord, boy, you've had no train-
ing "

"That's just it, sir; I want permission to take
lectures two hours a day at the technical school."

The admiral rose from the seat and stood draw-
ing the riding whip through the palm of his left
hand. All suspicion had gone from his face. There
was a brightness in his eyes— beyond that Ward
could read nothing.

"I don't know whether it is a kindness or not,"
he reflected, "but you've demanded your price and
you shall have itl Go up to the house and tell the
butler to show you to the library and give you a
piece of paper! Write down all the names as dis
tinctly as you can and lay them face down on the
big red table! You will go and hunt up a respec-
table room for yourself! Learn to keep yourself
to yourself ! Then buy yourself some decent clothes.
If the spirit mside your home is no good you were
right to leave it; but keep yourself to yourself and
your plans to yourself! Remember that! Put that
in your hat I You will absent yourself from the ship
yards for a week. Then report at the engineering
department. I'll speak to the head of the tech-

THE FIRST RUNGS OF THE LADDER 65

sjr ^"'" ''^'^^' *"« boy. hardly able to

n'^r1\i:7ylfZr^' ''^-^'^ hundred a

throw you to trdog '°2/tha""^''^ T"^'"
on the staff." ^ " *''^" ^"y °ther man

woIrntrs,zte"v; "r " °"^ ^"^ '•^

diVectionofthe Lid* if ''*'"'"' ^^"^ off in the
opera. ^'''^''" ''"'"™"8 the air from some

CHAPTER V

A DOUBLE CROSS AND A DOUBLE SHUFFLE AND THE
PRICE OF POWER

It was never necessary for the admiral "to cru-
cify" Tom Ward or "to throw him to the dogs"
as he had threatened; and neither did young Ward
ever crucify his opportunities by swerving from his
purpose. The course in the technical school he
mastered with ease, because he never heard a lec-
ture without thinking how to apply it in his daily
life. To the room he had engaged that morning
his chief sent him off to buy clothes and rent an
apartment he had now added a second with a bath-
room between. The second room he fitted up as
a laboratory where he tried out every experiment
of the class-room. He had continued his member-
ship with the Workers of the World as well; and,
as he grew older, encouraged the foreign leaders
to round up in his rooms for beer and cheese after
official meetings, but he never took any leading part
in their deliberations himself; and of the workers
McGee was, perhaps, the only one who suspected
Ward of having other interests than the consumma-
tion of the Great Social Revolution. Sometimes
Ward grew restive if the talkers stayed too long,
66

A DOUBLE CROSS j,

Spanish-it was on . ttl ■T'"''^ ""''''"'^ '"
proof a^orSn" wtZtTT V° ''""^*-
some information Tn FrJnchlouT'T'^'"'''^
that there were nickel 1;~^°^^ ""= °^^^^ t^o
as well as in re^thCir; '"''"? ^^"^'^^•
of war ships could never be n'.'r*''' ''"''''^'"^
the CaledoSia mines on ; Se no' H ""^ '■"
to a huge fellow of ,V. '^^^Oee, now developed

dropped. ^ ' °"" his jaw

"What's the matter?" askeH W,.j
bottle of beer ''' ""^ork-ng a

"You

may use 'em, and

string

THE NEW DAWN

'em, and ferret out their plans; but I'm damned if
you'll use me," he glowered.

Ward poured out the beer and set down the
bottle. He, too, had filled out to a robust manhood
and stood as powerful as McGee.

"Keep your shirt on, McGee," he said, "and,
when you cool down, explain yourself."

"Explain?" McGee snapped his fingers again.
"I guess Judas didn't explain when he sold Christ,"
and he bolted from the room with a loud banging
of the door.

Ward's glance went round the group of specta-
tors in a flash. The German socialist had set down
his schooner of beer.

"Poor poy," he said, "his sister have gone bad;
and he iss beside himself."

All the men looked sorry for McGee and the talk
went on about the armor plating. So the years
slipped past so fast that Ward never knew they
were going — all he knew was that he was climbing
as fast as they passed. Did he pause at this period
to help half-way-ups; to hoist derelicts; to give a
lift to other men's burdens? Candor compels us
to set down that he did not. His own family he
sent West with his first year's earnings and placed
on a large prairie farm; keeping the title to the
farm in his own name. On condition they stayed
there they could have the use of it always, he said.
Once, when Ward had received a promotion to the
position of first engineer at a salary of $5,000 a

A DOUBLE CROSS

year, duly chronicled by the press, which had picked
him out as a rising man, his father somehow secured
money enough to come East. When young Ward
came home one night he found the old man sitting
in the apartments, and the hall boys wore a wry
smile.

"Why, Tom, my boy, but I'm glad to see y'."

"I'm glad you are glad to see me, father I It's

the first time I have ever heard you say a civil word

to a child of yours," retorted the son, not sitting

down.

If the old man had been a saint undergoing mar-
tyrdom for glory he could not have looked more
injured.

"My boy," he said, "I'm your father 1 If any-
body has a right to share your good fortune, surely
it's your own father."

Ward saw what was coming and did not leave
the bars down.

"Right," he repeated dryly. "You ,ire one of
the men who claim all the duties of .iJldrcn without
paying any of the dues of a father. You c?me here
to try to live with me "

The old man got purple with rage but he had
ensconced himself solidly in the most comfortable
chair of the room.

"I'm needing a little medical attention," he whim-
pered. "Have y' any speerits about?"

"There are doctors in the West," retorted Ward
curtly; "and the kind of spirits I am going to give

THE NEW DAWN

you we'll buy right down at the wicket of the Union

station-

He was unlatching the Yale lock of the apart-
ment door.

"You're not agoin' to turn y'r own father out?"
cried the old man in fright.

"No — I'm not; though I remember not so long
ago my father turned me out, though I had supplied
every bite he had eaten for seven years. I am not
going to turn you out! I am going to take you out;
and if you were any other man but my own father
I'd have the porter up to kick you out, but I have
some respect for myself if I haven't any for you!
We'll have our supper at the station. I am going
to buy your ticket and give you a hundred dollars
and put you on the train ! Then I'll send my sisters
fifty a month as long as they live; but, if anyone
of you ever again crosses the Mississippi to come

East I'll cut that allowance off. Come " he

flung open the door.

The old man had grown livid. His lips were
trembling. He grasped the arms of the chair fran-
tically, as if to defy force. Ward rung the bell for
two porters.

"Call a taxicab and bring along the bags," he
ordered. The old man rose from his chair and
followed like a whipped dog. The father whim-
pered all the way to the station. The son refused
to relent. He had seen those whimpers alternated
with the braggadocio of the bully delude his mother
and drag his family down to the ditch. At the sta-

A DOUBLE CROSS 71

tion he gave his father a whisky which loosened the
old man's lachrymose self-pity and threatened em-
barrassment. Ward then handed the old man over
to two red caps to be put to bed in the pullman.
The episode saddened and hardened him for days,
but he neither justified nor condemned himself for
It. He considered it an esst.itial part of the climb
up. He had waited at the station till the train
pulled out. As he came out on the street a Sal-
vation Army officer was holding forth to a group.

"I wonder if that steam hoists some men up?" he
asked a listener.

The officer was reading the account of the devils
cast out of the man that sent the swine over the
cliff into the sea.

Ward suddenly burst into a laugh as he listened,
ihen he hurried off.

The years had passed and Ward never once met
the admiral who had given him the chance to reach
the first rung of the ladder. All drawings and
plans were presented to the general manager; but
Ward had vaguely learned that the president was
breaking under some pressure. Westerly spent
much time abroad. Dillon, the railroad man,
bulked larger in the directors' conferences. Wages
had gone up a notch every year. Profits hadn't; and,
except for government battleships, orders had
shrunk every year. To Ward's amazement he
learned that, apart from coasters and the navy, his
nation had less than a dozen ships in international

THE NEW DAWN

trade on the high seas. This controversy of ship
vrrsiis railroad; powerful foreign pool versus puny
domestic marine; wages versus profits; capital ver-
sus labor; the fit versus the unfit — fasci.-'ted him
like a world game of chess. He used to play the
chess game over in his mind at night when he war
pottering in his laboratory, or listening to the argu-
ments of the World Workers. For their aims he
cared less than a feather's weight. What he wanted
was to get at the motives, the mainsprings of action,
the direction of aim — of all the men on the chess-
board. Some day he knew a master hand would
grasp and direct all those puppets and he whose
brain and hand could swerve the aim would con-
trol all the commerce, all the gold, all the power
of all the nations of the world. The curious feature
was he knew, in his heart of hearts, that only one
other man of all these puppets saw the Armageddon
coming; and that man was the labor leader who had
evinced such violent distrust — McGee; who had
given him the fifty cents to join the union long ago.

One day the general manager came hurriedly
from a directors' meeting to Ward in the engineer-
ing office. Ward was busy over prints of the new
torpedo.

"I say, Ward, do you know any of those foreign
chaps on whom you could absolutely depend to
translate some very important letters to the French
and German experts — I mean without any twist of
expression that would betray our plans?"

Ward laid down his pencil. "I know them all,"

todi-

' Do
1 Irn

A DOUBLE CROSS 73

he Mid: "hut I would not like to trust plan, to
men who arc spies for foreign yar.l,. I could trans-
late them for you or dictate straight in FVench and

ticrman if you like "

"What? Are you sure of yourself, W.uJ
meal terms in both French and Ger.u. ..r '

"Absolutely sure," answered W:n, .l,'„vly
you thmk I've monkeyed with n,>chiiurv ^i
pickled in oil for nothing? Do you thinV r , culti-
vated those ranting fools every Sunday nl.ht r,r
cght years for nothing? I've been waitin-- >or th.s
summons, he said.

"Ranting fools, eh?" The words seemed to give
the manager assurance. "Come, then, at once," he
said. If you don't fall down on this it means a
place on the board."

When Ward entered the directors' room he sav
the admiral closely for the first time in these eight
years. Westerly sat at the head of a long ma-
hogany table. He had aged greatly but held him-
self with exaggerated erectness, like a soldier front-
ing a foe. He was thin, almost attenuated, and his
hair had grown snow white. One hand heid eye-
glasses of tortoise shell frame and black silk guard
before his face; the other had a sheaf of documents
which he was scanning. Ward noticed that both
hands had a slight tremor as of a man nerve stru^c
At the other end of the table sat Dillon, gr an
older fatter more rubicund, with a red wattle of
grizzled flesh connecting his chin and his neck. The
mans life was notoriously evil; and the mottled

THE NEW DAWN

face and dulled eyes bore the stamp of it. Even
Ward in his hermit life of work had heard tales
of it. McGee it was, one Sunday night, who had
said: "If men like him was poor they'd be lynched!
Law! Faugh!" At the table also sat two youngish
men — one about Ward's age, with red hair and red
tie ; the other black iyed, a mere boy. Ward recog-
nized them as the cousins who held the minors'
stock in the ship yards— the boys of the horseback
rides long ago in the woods by the sea, and up on
the driveway to the Sea Cliff mansion house. Heb-
den was cracking jokes with the old colonel. Trues-
dale sat with a bored look, as if wondering why he
was present in a business conference at all. The
admiral was dictating letters to a typist without look-
ing up. Ward took the typewritten letters and went
out to translate them.

"Bring them up to my house to-night at ten,"
ordered the admiral as Ward receded through the
door.

This time he went out to the Sea Cliff mansion
house in the company motor car. He laughed to
himself as he whisked up the driveway past the
porter's lodge. The obstructions in the gateways
of progress didn't matter so much, once you had
learned how to dispose of them. The butler di-
rected him straight to the library. Apparently he
was unannounced, for the admiral sat in a red
leather chair before the fireplace with his arm round
the shoulder of his daughter, who was on a foot-

A DOUBLE CROSS 75

rest before the fire. The chandeliers were heavily
shaded m red, and the Venetian shade of mosaic
green on the h'brary table gave only a tempered
hght. Ward stood in the door for the moment,
waiting some sign of recognition. The red flame
ot the fire played on the face of the girl. She
looked to be not more than seventeen; and was in
tears.

"I can't marry Mr. Hebden if he doesn't propose
to me, papa," she was saying.

"And, by Heavens, you shan't marry that ob-
scene old man if he crushes the shipping interests
to an eggshell," vowed the admiral.

Ward stepped back in the hall and asked the
butler to announce him. When he reentered the
library the daughter ha,^. gone. The father still sat
before the fire shading his eyes.

"Come in— sit down," he said absently

"Here are the letters and the translations," said
Ward, not accepting the invitation to sit down
The admiral took them, switched on stronger

^^w rM^' ''^''' ^'^'"^ ^''' B'««" and looked
at Ward. His look rested.

"Where have I seen you?" he acked.
Ward noted with regret how thin the voice had
grown.

"I think you saw me in a scrap with your porter
eight years ago, sir, when I was trying to bring a
message up to you about the labor delegates from the
loreign ship yards."

"Ah; are you the lad who wrote all the names

THE NEW DAWN

down on your shirt? I have wondered what became
of you. Wanted a leg up the ladder of life, or

you

something— didn't you? Well— how have y„u
found It? Did the feet above trample the fingers
below "

"That hasn't bothered me as much as the hands
below pulling a fellow's leg," said Ward.

The admiral put on his glasses, tilted the table
shade so that the light fell on the young man's face,
and scrutinized him.

"Glad to see you've made good," he remarked
absently. "If one repentant sinner causes rejoicing
in Heaven I wonder what kind of hilarious time
the angels have when one man of all one helps makes
good. Sit down"; and he went carefully over the
letters one by one.

"Been abroad?" he asked.
"No, sir."

"How have you learned a technical speaking
knowledge of French and German?"

"Cultivated the foreign delegates you sent mc
to interview eight years ago."

"And did you take down all the lessons on your
shirt?"

"No; I tried to soak a few on the tip of my
tongue and lingers."

"You've succeeded very well," commented the
admiral.

Thereafter Ward was frequently called up to the
iea Cliff mansion to take dictation in foreign Ian-

A DOUBLE CROSS ,7

furniture or oL /x^V sL IZ . '"""""'^^
Ward didn't know whf her to 1° '"'"i°' ^""'^'^•
that she didn't trertSrt ° J, ''"'""^ "^ P'"^^''
descension of an upperse™ ''^g JP^^ -- -"-
him ; and her airv ^L.^Iu '""P'^ '8"°'-^^

and feet in her oresenre H ( 1 ? *" ''^"'^^

couth co..on s';r irthe";retc;r: "^' "";
fine statuar- and v^f !»► t"^'=sencf ot a piece of

raw produc't-hf /ever :: th P^'^'^''^^^'^ ^° 'he
by the woman :„ her He J. "^"Z",'"'" «--d
but was as in,! adm/red the statuary,

Milo pa ste c'.stTh t"';'." '" ' ""'^- ^^^ ^

becausJ it "d n^ttorklnt 'i:- ''' '"'''' ^^'"^'

I'urpose! That,, I « ^'■''^'■''«' '^"'"g

ary did not «tk in/o . "' '""' "^ ^'"""'"' ''""

house Th. '.""i^thmg impending in the great
nouse. The serving men looked anxlo,,, W !
h«d a sensation that Admiral Well" ,
posely keeping out of the wny W nd Ln T"

open window blew the ferns ak');:rtlrcl:"

•wwev t'- •^■k ir r

7«

THE NEW DAWN

fountain. Ward caught a glimpse of Dillon's purp-
ling face against the window — the apoplectic col-
onel held the admiral's young daughter firmly in
his arms in an eiwbracc that was a farce at the
fatherly and boce close resemblance to the leer of
a wanton satyr. He was calling her his "child — his
old friend's baby," and more of the same ; but he had
kissed her twice upon the lips, and the girl's face
was scarlet. Beneath her lidded eyes was a frenzy
of fear; yet a greater fear seemed to rob her of
resistance.

"Just say the word, my dear, just one word, and
your father shall be set free of these hell hounds
that are destroying his business "

The girl had drawn her lips as far away from the
mottled old red face as she could reach; but he
held her girdled tightly round the waist.

It came to Tom Ward in a flash, in a sort of sixth
sense, as it had come to him that night when the
searchlight swung round his feet like a sword; as
it came again that morning long ago on the drive-
way, when he saw the admiral's troubled look follow
the receding figures of the children ; as it had come
that first night he came up to the library and heard
the father vow she "should not marry that obscene
old man though he crushed the ship yards to an
eggshell." Tom Ward's heavy boot — and it was a
big one — came down on the vitrified brick of the
fountain floor with a clump like the hammer of
Thor.

,f'\v9iam)'%

CHAPTER VI

THE REWARD

"As I was saying, admiral, " began the colonel.
His arms had freed the captive us by magic and
the girl had vanished rather than fled— VVard saw
her vault through the window into the shrubbery
before the old colonel had slowed his ponderosity
round to face, not the admiral, but the head en-
gineer of the ship yards.

He gave Ward a piercing look as of an old satyr
caught in misdeeds. Ward's face wore a mask.
He had elevated that number eleven boot on the
edge of the marble fountain and affected to be tying
his shoe lace. It was not the pose of a picturesque
hero; but it was effective. The old colonel's face
lighted up with the glee of a sly young thing of
sixty who had not been wanton after all.

"Oh, hullo Ward," he said. "Been wantin' to
see you for a long time." He was clap-him-on-the-
shoulder, diffusely, profusely affable— oh, a devil
of a fellow, all puffed up in his chest, with his wat-
tles reddening and purpling, purpling and reddening
as he panted out asthmatic wheezy greeting. "Been
wantin' to see you for a long time ! I understand

you're strong with labor and that kind of thing "

fto

THE NEW DAWN

Ward had tied his shoe and now elaborately
turned up his trousers leg before he took the number
eleven boot off the marble edge of the fountain.
For years after, though Dillon came to eat humbly
from Ward's hand like a whipped dog, the old
colonel used to tell that story of the big financier's
gawky manners— "why, >^-'d seen him with his own
eyes put a dirty boot — a positively dirty boot — on

the Venetian fountain " of such recollections is

the history of the great composed. The .-pisode of
what the colonel had seen c\ en got into the papers.
What Ward had seen was never published for
reasons that may be inferred. Ward clumped his
foot down, straightened himself — and the colonel
never knew just how tense Ward's steel muscles
had grown for a second — then he walked across to
the open window beside the colonel.

"Yes," he answered, literally forgetting the ex-
istence of the admiral's daughter, "I've tried to
keep my hand in with the labor situation always.
I like to know not what men tell me, but the real
motives behind what they tell me "

The colonel offered young Ward a cigar and
looked .vice at him.

"Dtc ced pretty monkey — my friend, the admiral's
daughter," he puffed, lighting his own cigar first and
offering Ward the remnants of a ma^ch.

Ward took the match and threw it out of the
window and put the cigar in his pocket.

"The admiral's daughter?" he questioned with-

-:-in^wa^v '•

THE REWARD gi

out changing an eyelash. "I didn't know he had
one. I never see her."

'i'he colonel's face lighted again. "Yes- been
wanting to see you about this labor situation for
a long time! We railroad men are supposed to be
hostile to shipping ocean interests— water freights,
in fact; but we were not, my boy! Let me tell you
there isn t a railroad in the country to-day doesn't
own its own steamships "

"You mean the railroads own all the coastal
ships. I know thai " -nswered Ward. "It keeps

the freights " he w.s going to say "up" but he

changed and said, "it keeps water and land freights
level '

"Ves; my boy, on the level, that's why we're just
as keenly interested in the welfare of our sailors
as our tram hands. Now, this seaman's bill pro-
viding more comforts for the crews, better wages
better fare— why can't you get together with McGee
and push that through Congress? McGee won't
deal with me-thinks I have the cloven hoof and
that kind of thing— won't listen to a word from
me; but, if living conditions were improved on the

ships. It wouldn't be so hard to get sailors "

Ward could have laughed in the old man's face.
1 he bill was designed to make it so difficult to man
ships at all that the ship yards had wondered if it
were blackmail to compel "a buy off" from them;
suspect

railroads. Ward had warned McG.
but McGee had accused Ward of b

ee against it;

eing

pot-

THE NEW DAWN

bellied straddler; of trying to save capital by shav-
ing labor." McGee had fallen into the trap head-
long. The bill needed only the backing — sincere
or insincere — of the ship yards to get a favorable
hearing in a Congress distracted by the fact that
the country's flag was \ ^.i.shing from the seas.

"You want mc to ; , down to Washington and
lobby for that?" aske>. Ward.

The colonel blinked. No — that was a bit direct;
but couldn't he stir up these crazy fool World
Workers, or what did he call 'em, to clamor so
loudly for the bill that Congress would tumble to it
without any lobbying?

"I'll try," said Ward.

The colonel became apoplectic with gratitude. He
put his arms round Ward's husky shoulders. He
invited him to his down town apartments on a cer-
tain "gay" night.

"Excuse me, Colonel," Ward disengaged himself
from the clammy embrace. "We'll have to have
it a little plainer, and in contract form, black and
white, signed by you. I'll get the men to push
behind M:Gee on that bill on condition — well — in
a word — what's my reward? Where do I come
in?"

The colonel purpled. "I hold the proxies of
scattered stock in the ship yards for the railroads."
he aaid.

"I have known that ever since I was born," an-
swered Ward.

THE REWARD

Dillon blinked at the end of his cigar and spunked
the ashes off through the open window.

"Wt can give you swift advancement," he prom-
ised.

"Too vague," answered Ward. "I am on a three-
year contract now. If I do this it may hurt me with
the ship yards and undo eight years' work. I've
got to have a contract 'or something tangible better
than I now have — say ten thousand a year for five
years. I don't know that I care to tie up for more
than five years "

The colonel blew a hot oath out with his cigar
smoke and informed Ward that, by Blank, he wasn't
the Standard Oil Company or Steel Trust; they
weren't burning dollar bills in fool salaries.

Ward sat down on the edge of the window-sill.

"Colonel Dillon," he said, "let us lay off our
masks and quit bluffing 1 You, as a railroad man,
want this legislation to go through before the open-
ing of Panama to put the steamships at a disad-
vantage against the railroads ! In a word, to keep
freights up to their present level of all land routes.
All right! If this legislation goes through the
steamships are hamstrung, boycotted, tied in bow-
knots; and you've got the end of the rope tying
them! One single minute's saving in the freights of
the transcontinentals would pay you the salary I
am asking," and he rattled off detailed figures at
which the older man gasped.

Dillon smoked three cigars in succession without
speaking. "It's such a conditional gamble whether

THE NEW DAWN

you can put it through," he said, "let me suggest
another arrangement that wouldn't fall on the rail-
roads! I hold the proxies in ship yards' stock for
the railroads! Suppose we let you hold that stock
as dummy — I'd rather not appear in this, consider-
ing my friendship for Westerly and his daughter!
If you held those proxies you could easily vote your-
self in vice-president — eh?"

They heard the admiral coming slowly and feebly
across the fountain floor.

"Have that ready in a contract at your apartment
to-morrow night and I'll put the union behind the
demand," said Ward.

The admiral nodded to the two men perfunctorily
and gave Ward some signed letters to carry back
to the ship yards' office. To Dillon he gave such a
look as a victim might give to an executioner.
Ward's comment as he passed out was that the old
man was "not strong enough to handle the hog."
The gentleman so designated called from the open
window to Ward on the drive way "not to hurry";
he'd "pick him up in the limousine and run him in
to town."

Ward proceeded slovly down the driveway, per-
fectly aware that he hnd one hand in a railroad
scheme; the other in a ship yards' plan. The aim of
his life was slowly framing to rivet these two to-
gether in the great wor'd trust. Midway down the
driveway he paused. On the bench where he had
been interviewed by the admiral eight years before
sat the admiral's daughter. Her face was still crim-

THE REWARD

son. Her eyes questioned him with horrible shame.
Ward took off his hat and sat down beside her.
I he cnms >n on I r cheeks deepened. Plainly, this
was the kmd nf girl who would never know how to
defend herself from anything in life-a hot-house
product that needed hot-house walls and high tem-
perature Ward intended in the most impersonal
way m the world to have a hot-house some day.
What he said had nothing personal in it whatever-
Do you know exactly how many shares of ship
yards Admiral Westerly controls?"

The girl's eyes flashed the most furious anger
bo her. was another man angling her father's ruin
through her.

;'You had better ask him," she retorted, rising.
Sit down," ordered Ward; "for God's sake don't
Hy ott at a tangent the way women always do and
spoil the best plans! For your own sake listen—
for your father's! I'm not prying into your father's
aftairs; but once, long ago, your father did me the
only favor any human being has ever done me He
gave me my chance to get my feet on the ladder-
and now I'd like to repay him. I saw that hog with
you through the ferns. Your father is afraid of
h.m in the company! You were afraid to resist
him! I clumped my seventeen boot on your china
fountain on purpose to scare him off! By hccky
I wanted to get my clutches in his red jelly neck-
but, when you've an aim ahead, never lose your
head— use it— use such swine as Dillon; then throw

MICROCOPY •ESOLUTION TEST CHAKT

(ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2|

1.0

Iff lllaii
^ lio III 2.0

1.8

1^5 llllil.4

^ /1PPLIED IM/1GE Inc

=^ 1653 Easl Mam St-eet

ITi^S RocMeslef. Ne« York 14609 USA

'.^S (716) *82 - 0300 - PMone

^^ (716) 388 - 5989 - fox

THE NEW DAWN

them over the cliffs into the sea. Just learn how to
protect yourself from them — that's all!"

She was sitting almost as rigid as the marble,
looking straight into his soul; and, let it be set down
to her credit, or discredit, that she was a little
piqued — this was the first man she had ever met
whom she could not stir.

"How can you repay my father?" she asked. "If
you are going to do anything, do it before the direc-
tors meet next month; or they will depose him."
"If your father had Dillon's proxies would that
give him control by a sure big majority?" he asked,
twirling his hat and never seeing her. She noticed
that his nails were not manicured properly.

"Would it?" she cried with little ripples in her
voice. If Ward had not been gazing afar, listening
to the siren of his own ambition, he would have
heard those ripples and seen the look; and his soul
might have bounded to meet her quest of youth,
looking for a great love; but he was twirling his hat
and thinking — thinking. "Why, half Dillon's prox-
ies would secure father," she cried.

Tom Ward sat silent a moment — then spoke ab-
sently and apart from the subject. "Most women
are babbling fools," he said, "and spill the pail soon
as the cow is milked; but I reckon as your dad's life
depends on it you'll hold your tongue! I want to
repay the favor your father did mel If you doubt
that then you'll believe that, in repaying the favor
he did me, I also want to do myself a bigger favor!
You avoid that obscene old man — take abed sick

THE REWARD

or something— just don't see him for a while ! You
girls think a man like that loves only you! Bahl
It's only an old dotard's frenzy— he'd hug and slob-
ber that bronze dancer kicking her heels above your
fountam if you put a flounce on it! But it's dan-
gerous for a girl as green of life as you are ! Look
here— don't let us deceive ourselves! You avoid
that old goat and let me take care of you! In a
month I'll have all Dillon's proxies or give him a
tussle with the labor unions! If your father will
hitch up with me we'll control the yards; but, look
here, don't let us have high-flying nonsense! You
have no more interest in me than you have in that
block of wood under yon tree. I'm uncouth and
rude and raw! I have no more interest in you than
in that bronze dancer on top your fountain; but I
need fine finishing in my scheme of life! You need
protection— hot-house atmosphere and that kind of

thmg! Well, then " he was speaking still

slower, still more awkwardly, "just to make secure
your father will always stand by me if I double-
cross Dillon, why don't you — marry me?"

Did ever a swain utter more brutal, blunt, awk-
ward proposal? The girl had listened with wild,
amazed, widening eyes.

"I'll leave you free— so help me God— free as
your own father would," he added, with a sudden
flush.

They heard the chug of the colonel's limousine
commg round the curve of the driveway. Before
Tom Ward had got his awkward lover wits gath-

THE NF.W DAWN

cred together she had bent her beautiful neck, kissed
his hand, and sprung into hiding behind the shrub-
bery; and Ward swung lightly into the front seat
of the moving car.

The next day Admiral Westerly and his daugh-
ter sailed abroad; and, when the directors' meeting
came round, Tom Ward found himself holding not
only Dillon's proxies but Westerly's. He was easily
and unanimously elected vice-president at a salary of
$25,000 a year; but the rescue caine too late for the
admiral. He died from a stroke of paralysis at
some Mediterranean resort. When Ward heard
that Dillon was sailing for the Mediterranean he
cabled to the dead man's daughter and secretly took
swift passage for Southampton. There he was
quietly married to Louise Westerly. I am not quite
sure if even at this stage she did not feel herself a
puppet in the game. Hebden was on the home-
bound steamer and ministered to her self-pity. Why
had she taken this rash step before giving him a
chance to declare himself? It was not a happy
home-coming to the Sea Cliff mansion house; but
the years rolled on with Tom Ward's plans; and
sometimes he remembered his wife and sometimes
he forgot her. As to that seaman's bill — the price
of his power — he had spent all his eight years' sav-
ings setting the labor unions and the press shouting
for it. Then, when the thing took form in Wash-
ington, he quietly hung it up in one of the Congres-
sional committees and asphyxiated all demand for

THE REWARD

it from press and public. When the growing world
ot traffic began encroaching on the Sea Cliff he
wrote h.s wife a blank check to build a new mansion
house— which the press described us "a palace"—
down in the millionaire square facing the park.

PART II
IN THE FULLNESS OF HIS POWER

CHAPTER VII

WARD S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE

It was colossal !

The man ran his big hand through the tuft of
yellow hair that stood up from the crown of his
head in a crest, and feeling his temples beady with
sweat began mopping at his forehead. Rising im-
patiently, he threw open the window sash and leaned
out in the cool of the winter night. The stars shone
clear as steel over the snow-padded silences of a
white park; but the man did not see them.

He was looking to a far future, like the long
avenue that ran to the twinkling lights of the city
down there below the park. It had always been
at way; the light ahead, receding as fast as he
pursued; the shadow of his past, behind; thvnew
reaches, the endless distances, opening to th. ' ore,
beckoning, baffling, leading on to new battl> j -;lds,
new conquests. The odd thing of it was — you i luld
not stop going! Life was a road without stop.
There was always the grim shadow of yourself be-
90

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE 91

hind— of what you had done, driving you on with
momentum to do more!

The future was not so rose-tinted as it had been
thirty years before, when Ward sei cut from the
httie, unpamted house behind the woods. The gold
edges of hope had turned to the steel grays of con-
Hict. What was hope at nineteen had become a
struggle at forty-ninc; a struggle, a conquest, a
triumph! To succeed you must fight; and once into
a hght It IS come out, under or on top; and to hold
what you have won vou must keep fighting' That
was why the gold had turned to gray, and Ward's
future at forty-nine— while dazzling as a mid-day
sun — foreshadowed storm.

He had succeeded beyond the outermost reach of
hope! His dream had been to succeed and . . .
stop; but, now, he was unable to stop. He could
not rest satisfied if he had wished. There were the
yelping foreign rivals ready to leap at first sign of
weakening. Weakening in him meant gain to them.
Feace had to be a victory, a continuous victory, a
victory reenacted at every step of the way. These
market place battles were worse than primitive club
They never stopped. They made life one relentless
ceaseless fight. '

It was when planning a defensive campaign
against rivals one night that a cipher cable had
come to Tom Ward, which read:

"// we combine av/A foreign steamship pools we
can control the commerce of America through carry-
ing trade." ■'

THE NEW DAWN

The cable was signed by his liuropeaii manager.
Ward read and reread the message. I hen, he be-
gan pacing the hbrary. 1 lere, at last, was a chance
to conquer all rivals; rival railroad and rival coal
mine, by levying tribute on all they shipped. If he
missed this opportunity he must keep on fighting —
or be beaten off the stock market, and drop out.

That was the way the idea first came. Then,
with a meteoric suddenness, out of chaotic thoughts
flashed a light .... the light of a tremendous
possibility .... a chance to stop this cut-throat
game of competition in ocean traffic forever! If his
own home rivals would only come together in an
understanding, what was to hinder controlling the
commerce of the world through its carrying trade?
Steamship and railroad could levy surer tribute on
the commerce of all nations than Roman conqueror
ever exacted from shackled captive, or subjected na-
tion. At most, the Roman conqueror never exacted
more than a few pennies of tribute from subjugated
kingdoms; but the world carriers by water and rail
could exact a fifth of all a nation ate or wore,
shipped or bought. As his mind ran along the lines
of a new century's possibilities. Ward saw himself,
not a plutocrat drawing tribute of gold from all
men and all nations, but a beneficent Power binding
all nations in a gold-riveted peace that must last
forever; because he, who controlled the seas, con-
trolled the world. He laughed as he bit on his
cigar and thought back all the long, tumultuous,
crowded years. Ship yards had led to steel. He

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE 93

had been the man to induce the ship yards to com-
bine, then to induce steel to buy into ship yards;
and steel had led to railroad control ; and what use
were railroads if foreign ships wholly controlled
entrance to world markets? What use reducing
tariffs to the American public if the foreign steam
ship pools advanced rates to cover every reduction?
Please note that at this stage Ward considered him-
self an altogether beneficent factor in public life!

The idea of combination, or consolidation, had
not originated with Ward. Other men had at-
tempted the same thing more or less successfully
with oil, and steel, and machinery; but the idea came
to him now, because the things of which his wealth
consisted— food supplies, coal, railroads, steam
ships— tottered on the brink of ruin through com-
binations abroad.

Let him but grip the markets of the world, he
could hold the fighting grounds of earth; and the
ntw century might witness the last, great struggle,
the Armageddon, for possession of the whole earth !
The more he thought the more alluring the chance
seemed! First, the human family had expanded to
a clan; then, a tribe; then, a race; then, nations of
different races. What next— what but the gradual
spread of the few big powers over more and more
of the world's surface till there came the last great
struggle for possession of earth? And then, who
must will— he, who held the markets in the palm of
his hand?

Ward walked faster and faster, finally throwing

THE NEW DAWN

himself in a leather chair with the remark, "Kings
ran climb up on a shelf! They've had their day.
I could buy up half a do/i ii I'^urupcan kingdoms
with my wife's dress allowance. Kings I Kings!
What are kings?" He laughed stertorously. J'.ne-
miiis said that he assumed this attitude of contempt
only when he had had hn'f a dozen glasses of cham-
pagne; but the wine that intoxicated him to-night
was the daring of his own world-wide ambitions.

There would be opposition ! . . . Ward jingled
the coins in his pockets. There always had been
opposition from the night he had left the little, un-
painted house, and sent the dog howling with the

stick Oppositions and howls I

.... As if any man would throw up the sponge
for opposition and howls! To be sure, some of
the opposition would be more serious than the dog's,
but not much. Love that impeded was always more
dangerous than unity that challenged. There was
the merciless grapple with enemies over that brib-
ery business, when recalcitrant legislators had re-
quired encouragement to do as desired; but when
the elections came round he had trodden those legis-
lators into a mire of defeat from which there was
no resurrection.

Ward bit the end off his cigar. "It had been a
great fight," he told himself, as he struck a match,
"but you could always depend on the public being
fooled before elections, or after elections! ....
It just took a coin put near enough a man's eye to
shut the world out! You could depend on the man

WARD'S NEW CREFD IN PRIVATE 95

with a coin in front being a fool ! Yes . . . there
would be opposition!" Ward smok. >.

The yellow hair standing up in tufts, the promi-
nent temples, the hard-set lips, the square jaw with
clean-shaven, massive, double chin— were silhouetted
agamst the back of the old Venetian chair like a
face in bronze. There was something abo it the
broad, flung-out chest, the muiicular hands, the pow-
erful shoulders, that resembled the statue of a
gladiator. It was a face without appeal, without
response. It was a calculating face with strength
or iron, will of iron, purpose of iron. \<o shadow
of expression suggested a line of approach. This
face would smile at flattery as it smiled at hate It
would crush friends readily as foes. I/ it leagi. '
Itself with others it would be to suck the strength or
opposition out— then, fling dead weight aside.

The library table was old mahogany with legs
of carved lion's feet. There were fire tints in the
green, favrile shade of the study lamp that had
cost the inventors more than twelve months' work
would have brought Ward thirty years before in the
factory. On one wall a tapestry represented the
Romans conquering Gaul. Battle scenes by great
masters hung on the opposite side. The other walls
were packed with books. A bronz' Napoleon stood
in one corner. Cssar's bust on the mantel faced
the plaster cast of a woman with the laurel crown
of victory in her upheld right hand. A tiger rug
lay before the fireplace. Though the room indi-
cated luxury, it somehow conveyed the subtle im-

THE NEW DAWN

prcssion of all the arts ministering to a great, fight-
'"Ki aggressive force; and the force seemed per-
sonified in the man sitting intent, with face of bron/e
outlined against the antique carvings of the high-
baclced chair.

A slight tap sounded. The heavy door opened.
A woman with black hair massed at the neck en-
tered disdainfully. She was of a willowy figure
with a sinuous motion that at once piqued and held
attention. A neck of the lily-stem order corre-
sponded with a face pale almost to pallor. Thin
lips, arched brows, an oval forehead, wearing a
light of snouldering rebellion, heavily lashed,
Lrown eyes — all gave the same impression of scorn-
ful languor. Where the gliding motion piqued, the
poise of the head held aloof all reproach. It was
the kind of face that all men noticed. The majority
of men looked twice. Men with confidence in self
kept on looking. Women were either repelled or at-
tracted strongly, and at once. There was such plain
evidence of hidden fires that tlie face set you guess-
ing at first glance. It was a face that would defy
everything, dare everything; but few would risk call-
ing down the I'ghtnings. Mrs. Ward had bitter
enemies without the making, and friends without
the lifting of her hand.

Ward likei' these things in his wife. She seemed
to supply what money could not buy, strength could
not grasp. He had seen one languid flash of the
fire smouldering in her eyes transform an enemy
into a life-long friend. If Ward had been attempt-

WAKDS M- VV CRi:i:i) IN PRIVATE 97

ing to win over an enemy he «ould probably have
HT.ttcn a check. One lift of th. drooping eye-lashc,,
one glance of qu.et scorn for incomprehension, and
his wife had conveyed the subtle intimation of a flat-
tery so delicate that it was undetected. She sc -ned
to envelop the people she met with a char,,, that
gave the sense of being exquisitely happy; or else
she aroused an instant distrust

Ward didn't understand, but he li^ :. the stimulus
of surprise m h,s wfe. He felt, sor.,ehow, that the
element of uncertainty in his wife had always held
h m true He ,,ked to watch the flitting expressions
of her face, disdam-perhaps, disdain of hers f,
most of all-smouldering rebellion, ardor so dv e
■t seemed just beyond reach, a whole world of un-
spent tenderness hedged round by the imperious
reserve; out he did not like her to know that he
was watching. That brought a gleam of conscious-
ness to the face and spoiled the play of lights It
was the one fault he found in his wife's beauty
Anyway, Tom Ward did not permit himself the
diversion of remembering his wife very often, at all
io-night, he arose, slightly annoyed at the inter-
ruption.

"Well!" She sank languidly back in the chair
tapping the grate fender with her slipper "Do
turn on more lights!"

He switched the ch.ndelier into a bla.e, pushed

?romts'cigar." '"'''' '"' ''"'" ""^"'"^ ^'^
"Well!" There was the faintest lift to the

THE NEW DAWN

arched brows, the faintest curl to the thin lips.
"Aren't you glad to see me?" She held out her
hand to the fire so that the lights shone pink be-
tween the fingers.

"What is it?" asked Ward. Why did women
always want a man to be saying things that would
tickle their sensations?

Mrs. Ward waited just long enough to compel
her husband to look at her, which Ward considered
a great waste of time. Why did women always
chop a conversation up with long enough pauses
for a man to dictate half a dozen letters to a ste-
nographer? It was vanity — that was all; just to
make men look at them. At the same time he ac-
knowledged that she was worth looking at to-night,
and possessing, always. The pallor had given place
to two dull, red spots on her cheeks; and heavy
shadows lay under the eye-lashes. She was saying
nothing. Even her hands became motionless. There
was the play of a flame on her face that might one
day break out with — Ward didn't know what. Why
did women want to make them happy, anyway? He
knocked the ashes from his cigar by way of break-
ing her reverie.

"Have you forgotten," she asked, "that this is
the first .... night home — the first night in the
new house?"

"Women think more of houses and things than
men, Louie! The house is all right! You've man-
aged finely."

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE 99

"You know we are to have a reception for a
house-warming?"

If the din of a world conflict had not been in
Wards ears he might have heard the tremor, the
caress w,th which the words were uttered; but he
had replaced the cigar in his teeth and was smok-
ing with his glance cast up to the ceiling. There
was that quick look of scorn which Ward had seen
conquer enemies; but his thoughts were far away

Zr hZ^'u'^^ A^u^ 1°"^'^ P"''"'- She knotted

her hands behind her head with a sharp tapping

of the pointed slipper on the tiles. ^ ^t" ^

"Are those flowers from our place?" asked Ward

that h?' "l'^'"^ '' ' ''""^'^ '" ^" ^°"^g^' f-ling
that he ought to say something.

"And have you forgotten that the night of the
reception will be an anniversary?" she asked lightly.
What of?" Ward had begun pacing. ''Oh
our marriage! Pshawl I didn't mean to offendi
Wha are you flushing for? People ought to get
■Id of fee ings m this matter of fact age," he apolo-

1\TL7^T^''- '7T '"°^^' L°"'^' -hen men
get settled down to the hum-drum, life can't go on

being a honeymoon!" He did not see his wife's

hands quiver. He would not have known what he

had said to cause it. Wasn't it 1 fnrt ,^0 ■
,., , »»asnt ir a tact, marriages

d!d become hum-drum? So he blundered on "If
a woman has children, Louie, she hasn't time to
keep thinking of her own sensations. I have often
thought you would have been happier if you had
had children. Here you are, with the finest place

'i 1

100

THE NEW DAWN

of anyone I know, and, sometimes, I think you don't
get much out of it."

Her arched brows lifted. "Well, don't begin a
quarrel! I hate what is vulgar." She could always
deal those stiletto stabs. "It's a very merry home-
coming! It's a record first nighter!"

"What is she driving at?" thought Ward.

"I was making out the list for the reception
you wish to go over the names?"

Ward had put on his coat and was gathering up
his gloves.

"Names? Same people as usual, I suppose? In-
vite no one who is not of advantage to you. Culti-
vate only people who are useful, Louie — that's my
rule! If you are going to make a house of refuge
out of your drawing-rooms you'll get a pretty con-
glomeration!" He paused at the door.

"But there might be a difference of opinion about
people of advantage," she returned, coming out of
her reverie. "For instance, there's your rubicund
colonel, who put his wife insane by — we'll call it —
cruelty. We'll invite him, with that young Mr.
Truesdale, because they are directors "

"Louie, business — thank God — isn't a ladies'
.lub! Dillon is an influential man. There is no
call to stir up rottenness in his private life. Pri-
vate life is nobody's concern "

"And what about that young artist, the Miss Con-
nor, who he' -ed us with the art gallery?" asked
Mrs. Ward. "We paid her barely a third of what

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE

lOI

Will you consider her a

her panels were worth,
conglomeration ?"

J7T'!^ ^''■'•. ^" '°"'' ^""^ ^y"' »"d forehead,
and that sort of th,ng? People lost their money?
Paints, doesn't she?" demanded Ward, depreciat-

JShe's a splendid creature," his wife flashed up.
It might help her to obtain orders for portraits
■ f she were seen here! Money-money-money!
Self-self-self! Scramble for more! I'm tired
to death of the life! I loathe it-I tell you ! You
thmk I should be thankful to live like a great ogling
doll 1 tell you-I loathe the pretense and the false
ness! Private life is no concern, isn't it? How
would you like me to live up to that code? If we

can t put out .- hand to a deserving young girl "

t>top . . right .... there, Louie!" He
closed the door and came back to the mantel
Louie, now that you have begun it I want to ask
you a question. Are you taking that young girl up
for her own sake, or Hebden's?" ' ^ « ^

"What do you mean?" she hedged, with a smile
or contempt.

"Pshaw!" Ward slapped his gloves down on
the mantel, and seated himself on the arm of his
wife s chair. "You know very well, Louie, that I
trust you for all time, anywhere, under any pos-
sible conditions! Temptations?— Rot!— There are
"0 temptations for a woman in your position with
everything to lose! But I . . . . don't
trust any man ... . alive! Understand?

102

THE NEW DAWN

I don't trust any man alive? Don't deceive your-
silf! That's what plays the mischief with you
women! We men may wink when we don't choose
to see; but we call a spade .... a spade! But
you women .... you women .... who would
take to bed at the sound of our spades .... you
tag your emotions up with a lot of high-faluting
names, . . . soul, . . . friendship, . . . yearnings,
. . . sympathy, . . . kindness, . . . that sort of
thing! I declare it's like youngsters pretending fire
doesn't burn till they get a blister! . . . Then,
there's fine hysterics! The hysterics wouldn't mat-
ter! Cold water cures that; ... but look here,
Louie, you take my word . . . cold water doesn't
wash out a burn!" He had thrown his arm across
the back of the chair and was watching his wife's
face through half-closed eyes.

"What a beautiful theory of life," she murmured,
toying at her rings. "All friendship; tainted! All
kindness — cloaked treachery "

"Rubbish," burst out Ward. "You women are a
bundle of emotions! You like to be loved the way
cats like to be stroked ! It tickles your vanity. You
call it friendship, lou like to feel that a word, . . .
a look, ... a touch of your hand, thrills some fel-
low so life is blank without you; but, the trouble is,
... the thing is catching! First thing you know,
life seems flat without something that other nerson
supplies. You can't fool a man any more than he
can fool you, if he plays the same game! You
get him so wound up that he's got to find out where

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE 103

you're at! He draws back, just to see how much
you 11 dare. Then " Ward snapped his finger-
away you women go, drawn by the cords of your
vanity, . . . sympathy, . . . kindness, . . . friend-
ship, . . . pshaw! Next thing, both fools get them-
selves compromised— talked about! Then, they ar-
rive at the don't-care stage; and, . . . ihiit,
as I know men, ... is pretty close on . . '. dan-
gerous!"

His wife gazed in the fire, tapping the brass fen-
der with her slipper.

''I didn't know you could be such a philosopher."
"That's all right," returned Ward, wagging his
head, feelmg that, while he could not foil her repar-
tee, he could crush her oppositi^ v,ith a brutal
frankness. It dawned on him that, when a woman
arrived at the don't-care stage, she might be a diffi-
cult argument.

"What has all this to do with me?" she asked.
Ward hardly knew whether he wanted to kiss his
wife or to crush her. He felt a something that his
strength, will, purpose, could not conquer!

""*Vhat I want to know is whether you invite that
artist girl here for her own sake, or Hebden's?"

Again the long pause without answering that al-
ways tantal'zed Ward. Time was money— and
money was power.

"Do you know," she began slowly, "I couldn't tell
you which it is that I invite her here for? She is
very fond of me— I suppose you will say that tickles
my vanity. Well, perhaps I like my vanity tickled

•! It

104

THE NEW DAWN

as much as you do your sense of power! Then she
is so delightfully fresh, so unspoiled, that she actu-
ally has faith in people — you and me, for instance,
Tom. I suppose you will say that tickles me some-
where else. Anyway," she lifted her eyelids disdain-
fully, "what have you against young Hebden?"

"Against Hebden? Well, Louie, I'm not fond
of killing mosquitoes with a hammer! Let me see:
... to begin with, he's so small and sleek and wrig-
gling in his ways you can't follow him with the naked
eye ! Sort of snake-in-the-grass, covering-something-
up chap ... I call him! Always oily and up-
and-coming and on the — watch ! He's a chap
wouldn't say anything out and out against a woman;
but he'd give that sickly smile of his and shrug his
shoulders and raise his brows and tell a whole book
of lies without a word! He'd rob a woman of her
character with his mincing ways, while he'd make
love to her if she were fool enough to listen. Pos-
sibly I sec things in him that a woman would not see
in time to protect herself from him. I like a man's
man — Louie !

"As a matter of fact," continued Ward glumly,
"he isn't a man among men."

"So much the oetter for him, after all you have
said."

"Como, Louie, this is serious! Hebden isn't
worth a serious thought from anyone! Don't you
forget that. H,; isn't worth a little sneer from you "
Suddenly he laid his big head on his wife's shoulder.
"Louie, you are a beautiful woman; and you know

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE ,05

it; and you like to hear about it-only, he careful'
Do you remember that night when you were a Hirl'
and you and your father rode into the woods, and a
big, lubberly fellow helped you to the saddle "

that— -•^°"'' """" '° *'" '"' "^'^ y°" ^^"«

"Yes I was" Ward hurried on, as if to parry
one of her little stabs. ^

Mrs Ward broke into a merry peal of laughter.
Ihats your character, Louie I You've got to
have a tram of men dangling round with six-for-a-
cent compliments. Fellows grease their way to your
favor w,th flattery who are not fit to blacken your
boots. We v-e got on pretty well without any high-
falutmg sent.ment-you and I, Louie-but, listen,
when a man ,s not a man among n,en, I don't care a
chuck whether he's artistic, or religious, or a supe-
rior person, there is something wrong with him-
rotten at the core! If you are taking up that girl
for Hebden s sake, don't you deceive yourself that
he IS the man to marry a penniless girl after the
course he has run for forty years! But, if you are

taking her up to draw Hebden here " Ward

paused thoughtfully.

''Go on," taunted his wife, smiling.
"Being beautiful, you are vain enough to mistake
a warnmg for jealousy," said Ward; "but, if you

draw Hebden here for his own sake "

The proud head lifted. "What'" she demanded.
Oh— just that," he answered, drawing a chrysan-

io6

THE NEW DAWN

thcmum from her corsage and crumpling it to a
pulpy mass with one grip of his hand.

He passed out without another word. She heard
the door close as he flung from the hall. She sat
motionless, white, stonily unbending in her pride, as
he in his power. He might break her — bend her,
he never could. No regret st)ftened her; no wonder
at the reason for the man's rage. Regret had been
crushed long ago, as she felt her nature gradually
petrifying under his power.

Whose fault was it? Ho-.v came her lips to utter
words that now rushed back like the hiss of snakes?
It had been a loveless union. What had love to do
with Tom Ward's creed of life? As to that, she
had never made even a pretense of deceiving herself.
All she knew was something in her hungered. Iliis
self-centered existence was a torture. She clasped
her hands in a long shudder. The canker-worm of
an intense self-pity had begun to gnaw.

The library door opened.

"Mr. Hebden," announced a servant.

"May I come in? I met Ward driving off."

A tall, slender, ruddy-faced man with reddish
gray hair, receding forehead, close-set brown eyes,
and a small chin came stepping lightly over the tiger
rug. The hand extended was white and dimpled like
a woman's, except that the ends of the fingers were
stubbed.

"You are in trouble?" He paused midway of
the rug. "Surely, my good angel told me ! I've
been longing to see you all day. What is it?"

WARD'S NEW CREED IN PRIVATE 107

.h T"'!"'"^:!' '''' ""'"^ ""'"^'y- ""' J=ig"i"g to sec
Mic^hand. I vc only lost another illusion— faith i„

_ And Mr Dorval Mebdcn turned that answer over
■n h,s mind. He had caught the barriers down and
was not the man to send those barriers up by one
raise step. r j >•-

"Shall! go?" he asked. "Am I one of the men-
or may I come under the classification of an old
fnend. I only wanted to talk to you about giving
an order for a portrait to that artist protegee of
yours, Miss Connor."

He was always so very kind, so ve.y sympathetic,

n„'''TH K^P' 'ct'"^ '"'"^°"' '•'•y'"e it, was Mr.
Dorval Hebden. She d,d not answer at once. Then
she looked up with the slow smile that won her so
much love and hate.
"No— stay," she said.

CHAITI'.R VIII

ward's rRI.tl) IN PRACTICE

Tf.n minutes afterward Ward had forgotten all
about the little rencontre with his wife. It is the
advantage of the active nature that it never has time
to curdle. Ward was not the man to let a woman
obscure his aims. To be sure, he would hardly
treat a woman the way he had the dog. But, then,
if a butterfly persists fluttering in your eyes, you
must brush it aside, whether you cripple the pretty
wings or not. That was Ward's sole philosophy on
the relations between men and women. While his
wife's highly wrought emotions were still centered
in a sort of morbid enjoyment of her own wretched-
ness. Ward's schemes for world dominion — the
struggle that the new century was to witness — were
taking more ilcfuiitc shape.

A very small object of tenacious enough grip will
throw a train from the track. With Ward it was
a question of clearing obstructions. There were
rivals a few to be cleared from the way. He
touched the tandem thoroughbreds with his whip
and the sleigh cut the park driveway in a fashion
that bounced the coachman up and down on the
io8

WARD'S CRfFD IN I'KACl IC . ,09

rear scat. Ihc ni;-ht air was keen. Vard felt the
race of buoyant lif. in his veins. The park road
was clear. He gave the glossy bays full rein.

"f.ct's see what you can do," he said.
The bays shot out long-necked, clean-footed,
straight as arrows to the mark. He could feel the
sensitive mouths quivering as he tightened rein It
was a poetry of swift motion. They raced for love
of the race— fierce, not at tightening rein, but slack-
ening pace, with sheer abandon to the impulse of
superabundant life.

"Sec— their feet scarcely touch ground! That's
something like it— it docs them good," cried Ward.

"Ves, sir," gasped the coachman, bouncing up and
down.

One touch of the whip sent the snow-laden ever-
greens pn.t in a blur. A dog set up a howl but
stopped to scramble from the way.

''That's a good sign," laughed Ward.

"Yes, sir," hiccoughed the coachman, as the
sleigh broke silence on a deserted city square.

"The cars," warned the man in a bounce.

A policeman turned to look.

"It's all right," called Ward.

"You're driving too fast," saluted the officer.

"Why don't you catch them?" Ward laughed
back.

The thoroughbreds took the bit in their mouths
and kept the pace. With a quick twist first to right
then to left Ward reined the horses back before a
massive twenty-story structure of gray stone. Fling-

THE NET DAWN

ing the lines down he was out before the coachman
could grasp the bridles.

"Al'ys somc'n up when 'e drives so fierce," ob-
served that functionary.

Above the pillared entrance of the building stood
the figure of a colossal man on a stone globe carved
in bas-relief. Ward had insisted on having the man
carv-d on top instead of below. 'I'o the architect's
obji 'on that the design violated tradition Ward
had responded, "Never mind tradition! I'll make
a new story for the old globe before I finish 1"

When a man has not wasted one second for thirty
years, and has sold c\ery second of thirty years to
the highest bidder for hands and brains, and has
not given one second of thirty years to the service
of any soul but Self, he can usually show results.
Ward could show very tangible results. They were
mainly eml)odied in an organization called "The
Great Consolidated." Though the Great Consoli-
dated guided legislation and business on two conti-
nents, it wai not definitely known just what the
Great Consolidated meant. Some said it was "a
trust" ; but that was disproved by a law suit in
which the members of the trujt melted into such
thin air that they could not be found. Others said
it stood for "a secret understanding amo.ig gentle-
men." If that were so, Thomas Ward was the
only gentleman to enjoy the privilege of the secret
until such time as the results materialized to daz/.lc
a gaping public. The name arose from the gray
stone building which housed the Consolidated Rail-

WARD'S CREED IN PRACTICE ni

roads, the Amalgamated Coal Companies, and the
Intcrnatumal Steamship Pool. If more credit is
due him who climbs from the bottom of the ladder
than one who begins half way up. very great rrcdit
was due Tom Ward. Me had come a long way in
these thirty years. It is the first thousand feet that
stretch the unused muscles of the mountain climber
and give fettle for the rest ot the day. So the first
fifteen years tested the mettle of Ward. They were
years of hard work, and underpay, and night study
—not of books, but of things— experiments to im-
prove the machinery on which he worked Ward
used to say that "the first fifteen yenrs were mainly
on the pirpcndicular."

One morning the world awakened to find that the
young workman had become president of the ship
yards' company. After that Ward's progress was
not a chmb; it was a march. The newspapers were
still drawing inspiration from his life when he as-
tonished the public by combining half a dozen mines
and smelters and steamship lines into one company
with a capital that turned brains dizzy. That capi-
tal stood for all that ihe smelters ever had done or
ever could do, all the equipment they had ever
needed or ever could need and for a great deal
more, which was not explained to the public, except
as a rare chance for that public to buy stock. The
public seized that rare chance with both hands.
U ard had no difficulty in promptly converting all
his stock into coin. The public helped him. It was
eager. 1 le preferred the coin. The ethics of the

112

THE NEW DAWN

thing did not concern the public — all the public
cared for was the glaring, enviable fact that the
transaction left Ward with millions . . . millions!
The public wanted a try at that sort of thing. Tom
Ward offered the public that try.

Two doors led from the main hall to Ward's
office. One was marked "General Business" and
the other "Private Secretary." Both were frosted,
with screens of netting inside, so that nothing could
be seen from the hallway; but in the frosting of
the general office was a scratch no longer than a
pen point. Opposite this Ward paused. He could
hear voices in a low tone. Passing to the next door
I e had entered so suddenly that a little, yellow-faced
man sprang up nervously. At the exact moment of
the president's entrance the secretary had been fig-
uring the profits of their last "deal." Ward passed
to the inner office. Obadiah Saunders stroked his
black beard thoughtfully, rubbed a thin hand across
hi^ arched black brows, and again drew two long
fingers through his silky beard. That trick of the
hands had given him the sobriquet of "Silky" among
the messenger boys of the basement. The desk
clerks had another nickname for the secretary from
a habit he had of oiling his palms. They called him
"Lady Macbeth," which was unjust to Obadiah
Saunders. His hands were only expressing an inno-
cent desire to oil the wheels of things. The bu-r-r
of an electric bell sounded on Saunders' desk. The
secretary responded by stepping softly into the pres-
ident'o office. Ward was in a swing-chair with his

WARD'S CREED IN PRACr.'CE 1,3

back to the door, both hands punched down his
trousers pockets. Obadiah Saunders softly shifted
from one foot to the other. Then he drew two long
hngers through his silky beard.

"Others put in appearance yet?" demanded
Ward.

"Both gentlemen have been in the board room
for half an hour." Saunders glanced furtively from
the Hoor and back to the floor.

"How did you find 'cm?" Ward wheeled right
about. °

Saunders oiled the backs of his hands with alter-
nate palms, then glanced from the floor and back
to the floor.

"Colonel Dillon may be written down safe— abso-
lutely safe ! He will bring the ship yards' companies
mto an ocean pool."

"Yes, your moderate men always choose the safe
side," mterrupted Ward.

"When there are millions on the safe side," in-
terjected the secretary.

"Oh, yes; that's th^ way of your moderates, your
safe and easy n,en When the shark and sword-fish
have had the.r fight, tuckered out— small fry sail in
to steal a meal !" ^

.< }" !"'' T"^ '^^ secretary balked at that word
/". r ^° .fy '^' '^"^'- if "'•■'s "not judicious";
and^ judicious' sounded the key-note of the secre-
tary s ambidextrous morality.

"Anybody could guess that Dillon would choose
the safe side," continued Ward, taking out his cigar

114

THE NEW DAWN

case. "But how about the young fellow, Truesdale,
who is just back from Europe to manage affairs
of the coal carriers?"

Saunders shifted from one foot to the other,
then glanced from the floor and back again. "You
can hardly say he resembles Dillon," began the sec-
retary tentatively. "He's not outspoken."

"Close-mouthed proposition, eh?"

"Yes . . . yes," the secretary studied the carpet,
"but the sort of mouth to take the bit and . . . and,
in fact, . . . bolt!" and Obadiah p:ianced up from
the carpet.

"Sort of chap to bolt and smash, ... eh?
Well, ... he can have all the smash h; wants!
Has Dillon been sounding him?"

An oily smile exuded from the secretary's sallow
skin.

"Dillon, sir, paints prospects to beat a gold
mine !"

"And what does the young chap say?"

"He offers Dillon a cigar."

"He does, does he? Then, . . . he'll do! Show
'em in," ordered the president.

"But there's something else," interposed the sec-
retary. "There is another reason why we should
come to an understanding with this young man."

"You mean there may be a strike since we re-
duced wages?" asked Ward sharply.

"No, sir." Saunders lowered his voice and
glanced furtively behind him.

"It's the accident in Shaft lO, when the men were

WARD'S CREED IN PRACTICE 115

killed! Kipp, the engineer, warned us of that acci-
dent "

"Haven't you settled all the claimants?"

"All but this Kipp fellow! He's holding out for
a higher price ! He might make trouble 1"

"Well, we don't object to trouble, Saunders!
No man need think he'll chase the devil round a
stump with me "

"It isn't that!" The secretary moved a step for-
ward. "When Kipp examined Shaft 10, where the
bottom fell out of le mine, he found we had gone
a hundred yards into Truesdale's ground. You
know his mines supply these foreign colliers. I
had suspected all along; but this fellow Kipp — the
engineer — knows !"

It was not the fact that the Great Consolidated
had encroached on Truesdale's mines that troubled
the secretary. It was that Kipp knew. After which
announcement Obadiah shifted from one foot to
the other, raised his glance, and drooped his glance,
and stood a picture of patient grief.

"Confound the fellow," blurted Ward. "I am
not prepared to admit what you say ; but we'll fill her
up — do you understand? We'll jam Shaft 10 tight
to the top! Have that done to-morrow! Show
Dillon and Truesdale in!"

CHAPTER IX

MORE OF WARDS CREED IN PRACTICE

Ward lighted a cigar as the secretary threw open
a heavy oak door with a Jelt dummy to prevent ob-
servation. The great man did not rise to welcome
his visitors. He was enveloped in wreaihs of
smoke, through which the half-closed eyes took keen,
quick, complete measure of his men. The first was
rubicund, rotund, so corpulent that liis flesh shook
and gave the absurdly small feet a waddling mo-
tion. Age had added to the waist-line and taken
from the worthy Colonel's hair since first Tom
Ward had met him that night long ago, when the
ship yards' president and his friends had ridden al-
most on the top of a ragged youth in blue overalls
sitting in the woods by the sea. Whimsically
Ward's mind flashed back to that night when he
bargained for a place on the first ru" g of the lad-
der. He had ascended that ladder and many lad-
ders above that one, and now he was about to essay
the last climb to a world ascendancy — to a place of
power from which he and his American associates
could dominate the commerce of all the nations of
the earth. Why had Uncle Sam built the Panama

MORE OF WARD'S CREED 117

Canal ? Was it to help the commercial needs of the
United States on all the Seven Seas? Ward knew
that, apart from a few coasters, Uncle Sam would
not have a dozen ships of his own to go through
the vaunted waterway. Could he hut organize in a
copper-nveted union all the ship yards and railways
and coal supply companies along with two or three
weak, independent steamship lines, then, by joining
small foreign steamship pools, he would be in a posi-
tion to give those "big fellows" abroad a twister
that would teach them not to jack up rates against
Amer .n commerce, not to act as bandits of the
high seas to prevent the expansion of American
shipping. Dillon would fall in, of course— he was
ship yards. Also, he represented steel. Both would
benefit from the growth of an American marine-
but there was the uncertain factor of this young fel-
low Truesdale, whose mines supplied the foreign
colliers in American ports. If Truesdale's little
mines and little tubs of coal ships didn't come in—
that would give an advantage to the big ship pools
abroad. Of course, Truesdale must simply be
forced in— that was Ward's verdict. Where had he
seen the young fellow before, anyway? What was
it about him brought back that night when he had
first seen his wife and helped her as a little girl up
into the saddle? Could it be possible! was this the
man grown from the b yy whon. he had seen at the
president's house years ago, when two boys were
setting off for schooling in Europe?

Through the cigar fumes Ward noted the swarthy

Ii8

THE NEW DAWN

face of a tall young man with a clean-cut brow, alert
black eyes, straight nose, and a chiseled sharp chin.

"Clean-limbed youngster; but, . . . too light,"
was the verdict.

"I've just been explaining, . . . just been explain-
ing . . . the extraordinary position, . . . the ex-
traordinary advantage, ... I might say, ... of
the situation in, . . . in coal for Panama tiafSc,"
wheezed the fat man, sitting down with some diffi-
culty. The stub of a cigar in the corner of the
pursed lips, the upturned nose almost submerged be-
tween the protruding checks, the chin creased and
rolling, gave a peculiar porcine profile.

Ward laid his cigar down and looked to Trues-
dale. That young man justified the secretary's re-
port and remained silent.

"Why, yes," argued the colonel, quite satisfied
that the other had agreed in thought, if not in
speech, "it's just as I was telling our friend here —
our young friend here — chance of a lifetime." That
utterance having exhausted a second wind for the
Colonel, there was silence.

Ward looked to True'dale. Truesdale waited.
There was the faintest suspicion of sarcasm about
the young man's immobile features.

"Gentlemen," Ward's hand crashed to the desk
with impatience. He liked to use "safe" men; but,
in broad schemes, he preferred brains. He was ad-
dressing both men, but he spoke directly to Trues-
dale. "If one farmer persists in sending his pro\'i-
sions to market by the old, slow wagon road, and

MORE OF WARD'S CREED 119

another farmer sends his in the express flyer— it's
pretty certain whi-h farmer's provisions will reach
the market first; which will bring the highest price "
"1 hat's what," nodded Dillon, winkir.cr one little,
white eye.

"This is the age when we must either go forward
or drop out," continued Ward. "There are too
many in the game for us to play dead weight, or act
the welcher! We've either to get up and run, and
run fast, or get off the track, out of the way. It's
that or be run over!"

''. . . Or be run over," conned Dillon, shutting
both little eyes to view the mental picture better.
"And, if all the farmers combined to own the
railroad, it would be better still," argued Ward
"They would get the profits of the freight as well
as the profits of the market."

Truesdale smiled. The great financier's reason-
mg sounded so much like arguments in old German
halls, where students drowned socialism in pots of
beer, and emitted anarchy in clouds of tobacco
smoke. Ward saw the awakening interest and went
straight to the mark.

"By the strike in the foreign mines— coal, silver,
gold— we can control the output of the world—;/
tve combine! We can control the prices of the
world—;/ Ke combine! Railroads and steamships
must have coal. We can control the foreign carriers
of the world—// we combine! Once get your grip
on the foreign steamship carriers" -Ward paused
to read anticipation in the young man's face— "Eu-

I20

THE NEW DAWN

rope cannot grow all she needs. Get the carriers,
the transportation, and you've got possession of the
world's trade/ For a hundred years the foreign
steamships have buncoed American commerce. We
have paid more to have our traffic carried across
the Atlantic than all the captured nations of the
world ever paid to Rome. We have been the cap-
tive nation tied to the golden chariot wheel of Eu-
rope. W^e have paid more to have our traffic car-
ried across the ocean than the gold revenues of Peru
sent of old to Spain. Why? Because we have no
ships. Because the foreign ships have us buncoed
and buffaloed. Why are we always short of gold
■n America ? Because we have to pay our freight
bills to foreign nations in gold. What have we built
Panama for? Apart from a few coasters, we
haven't an American ship to send through the
canal. Gentlemen, look at that fact and stop shout
ing about the achievement of building Panama 1
We can build a canal, but we can't build a ship.
Look at that fact, and chew on it ! Tell me a single
U. S. ship, independent of the coasters, which are
owned by the railroads and barred from the canal,
which can enter Panama ! Coasters don't expand
our commerce to foreign nations one dime's worth.
All right — what's the situation? We have a canal,
the biggest achievement since the discovery of Amer-
ica, and we practically haven't a ship engaged in
foreign trade to use it. Now, the I. W. W.'s have
brought about a strike in all foreign coal mines.
From private information 1 judge it is likely to

"^ §

MORE OF WARD'S CREED ,a,
last a year. Gentlemen, do you see where that ffiv«
Z ''■' -^ p-^-dle? It gives us the advant "etc
fore.gn sh.ps for the first time in a hundred year.
If our sh,p yards get together with our coal mine "
where are the foreign ships to get coal ? The pow^;

W^rthe V"f r' ''' ^--P-tation' Ji
draw al the gold of the world to its pocket. By

nmJ- 1 ^'PP^"'"8 "°«-' • • • It's happening

"o IvThe' T" "'^' '='"'= "•'''' '^'^ clenched'fist-
only the returns are spread among a dozen dif
ferent companies ! What I propose is that "e com
b ne now, when the foreign depression gives us tJl
advantage-combine now-.„^ ,/,, ,,lj, „"/ ^
^orld,s ,n yonr hands! Bar fuel, and v.here a e

o mg actones? Control fuel and y'ou con7o

Get hnl. ■r'/'^f "■"'■''' ''^^ ff°' f° have fuel !
Get hold of the fuel and you've got the world a
your own pnce! Give us control"-he uttlred the

wor..vn^ hronousstrokesofhiscleSS;

ontne.esk— give us control . . . of the fuel

TdltTat^"'rr•^''^'^-•'^^'«°'"^-

price vl ^ ^ "'•'■' 8"'"e '" P^'y 0"r

cu th;oat"hr'l-"'"''7°" ""^'■•«f='"'l. without anv
cutthroat hagglmg and competition! The foreim
stnkes g,ve us the whip-handle-// .. .„;i;;:;^'^"
Its a b,g proposjtion-it's a big proposition!"
wagged h-Ta'd^"^^"'^ ^"'^ ""'^ ^^''^ ^^" -<^

122

THE NEW DAWN

The young man sat suddenly erect. Ward leaned
back to let the incoherent suggestions work. Not
what he had said, but what he had left unpaid,
startled Truesdale.

"You mean," said the young man, "by combining
steamships and coal mines in America, to reach out
. . . and make a bid for the markets of Europe?"

"If you like to put it that way," returned Ward
cautiously. "The thing has happened already with
oil, and steel, and machinery 1 The question is not
whether the thing is going to take place ; the question
is, who is going to do it? If we don't, some other
combination will! The world is America's market.
Steamships are the toll-gate to that market. We've
got to capture and hold that market!"

"Why, man," said Truesdale, leaping up, "it
means ... it means the transfer of gold reserves,
of world power, to . . . America!"

"And wc . . . are America," corrected the head
of the Great Consolidated.

"// we combine," interjected the colonel ha2:ily.
"Seems to me. Ward, we're sort o' bitin' off more
than we can chew . . . more than we can chtw !
I'm not in these big schemes because of their size,"
avowed the fat man. "Count me out! I'm looking
after number one 1 All I see in this thing is a chance
... a chance, as I was telling Truesdale ... to
get our heads together ... to get our heads to-
fernal I

gethe

1 stop I

nfe

;mg I

jntry

by foreign freig.ts! Now that foreign trade is crip-
pled, prices for coal and ocean freight arc going

MORE OF WARD'S CREED ,,3

lVl7s{,Ht ■ ""'7 '" '""'7 P^''" «-■« clean
Ka our heads together. . . . as I was telling W

True«Hil#. •.' L '' • • • as 1 was telling

'IS 1 was t'.-lling Iruesilalc" fl,„ ^1 ,■ ..

eyesbIinkeU-"kV " f^r'''' ^°'°""^ ' ''«I«=
know • "^ ^'"' "° monkeying, you

know . no cutting prices on the sly, „"

smart tr.cks ,n this thing, ^r r«„ .,* ,,,;! u'e 'like

cap votes! I m not out to conquer Europe,
, • • and glory, . . . and that sort of thing! It'

than f I m underselling you; and you're doing a lit
tie rate-cutting on the sly; and so onl" Th colonel"

';:: ^^''it";:;^''"'' "-'''' ''- ^--^ ^-^^

iterated. ^orse-sense and business," he re-

The splendor of Ward's daring schemes for world

124

THE NliW DAWN

power, wurlil dominion, took on a diltcrcnt aspect,
seen throu^^h tiic itn;i(;lnation of the oi^iing man with
the whcc/.y voice. Ward liad outlined the ambi-
tions of an empir:-builder. Dillon put he case in
terms of the dollar bill. It had such curious re-
semblance to the predictions of those old star dream-
ers in the German universities that Truesdale again
heard their prophecies — foreshadowing the greatest
conflict of all ages; perhaps a bloodless war, but
the bitterest war of all, because it would levy tribute
on all nations; tribute of freight rates on food and
warmth and clothing, from women and children as
well as men, from weaklings as well as fighters,
from all the countries of the world ! It was sublime
in daring, but as pitiless as the campaign of a pagan
conqueror; but, then, since when had war or trade
taken inventory of pity? Since when had war or
trade taken inventory of right? It was like nature
— moving along the linos of pitiless laws — to (?\
unseen ends, to, perhaps, a conquest of the world
by commerce. Foreign ships were tied up by a
strike in the coal mines .Tiid few, if any, of the for-
■^ign ships used oil; and what better than for Amer-
ica to launch her merchant marine?

He was well aware how this grand scheme for
the capture of a world-dominion would work out
practically. It meant the ruin of small coal dealers
and independent steamships. It meant the levying
of tribute on the many for the aggrandizement of
the few, just as certainly as a Koman conqueror
levied tribute when he conquered a nation. It meant

MORE OF WARD'S CREED ,,5

that the plutocrat, were t„ k-come th. kin« u
meant — what else? Tr., 1 1 • • ^ "

volted at fZ . , V"'^-''''--* 'pagination re-

vo tej at the logical leading of his thoughts What

™,cZ:;; ,■':■"'•■■ ^vr^'rT'"''"

tocrats ? K""''"'^': fad the people against pi,,-

'Truesdatir"'"' °'^"*'''"'' ^^"^^ ^""--^d:
goods at t;„,h^°" ""<= ^ g-^r nnd sold better

other g/ocersTh JvT" """'""^ '^ «'^"'- ^^an
fhe „^^ "'=»t you captured all the trade a 'd

;;i should not," asserted Truesdale.

■Mr. W„d," „„..„J T„,„J,fc. ....,,., j„ ^„„

126

THE NEW DAWN

propose to do? How do you propose to do this
thing?"

Colonel Dillon mopped his bald head again with
an air of satisfaction.

"It's just as I was telling Trucsdalc — he had only
to hear your view and he would agree it's the chance
of a life-time, . . . positively, the chance of a life-
time!" It was quite plain that Dillon did not in the
least grasp the world-policy of Ward. What Dillon
saw was the chance to levy tribute on world com-
merce.

Outside, the telegraph wires netted opposite the
office windows hummed and droned an endless chant
of human effort compassing the globe. .Alexanders
and Napoleons had no such weapons as these men
planning the campaign of a world-dominion. Human
puppets guided by one directing brain had been the
best weapons of old-world conquerors. But these
campaigners could harness the seas and speed their
conquering armies — of money, credit, wealth — along
the track of lightnings. Napoleon bought men.
Ward was prepared to buy nations, not by a bribe,
but by purchase in open iicld of steamships, rail-
roads, coal. .'\t best, he uoidtl be prepared when
he had crushed or bound to himself a few rivals, of
whom Truesdale, with his small mines and coal tugs,
was most to be feared, because those mines were
close to the sea and independent of Ward's rail-
roads.

The three men :lrcw their chairs to the presi-
dent's desk. There was a jotting of pencils, a com-

ta,^- mi

MORE OF WARD'S CREED 127

paring of totals, a monotonous tick-tick-tick of the
big clock inside, with the humming and droning of
the wires outside. The secretary ^'.ded in and out
with lists of figures, letting sli .< oi paper fall that
he might linger to pick thcrn 4).

Once Ward threw down the , :nril.

"That will realize fifty millions at once on coal
for lanama alone; and the advance of fifty cents
a ton to finance steamships is so small that the peo-
ple will never feel it."

"Feel it?" wheezed the old colonel aglow "who
cares whether they feci it? The question is-a///
the trade stand it? Will people take to burning
wood? *

"XVe can usually depend on cold weather for two
months," remarked Truesdale sarcastically.

Ward's eyes closed to a slit and he looked at the
young man. Dillon threw off his coat and sat for-
ward perspiring visibly.

n/'"\"r?y' ^'°" ''" ''"P f''« "fes up on wood,
\Vard he suggested. "You've got the whip with
your backwoods railroads . . . keep the wood off
the market, Ward, . . . that's it!"

The next time the secretary was called he let a
pencil fall.

"As I make it out, it's thirty millions to you,
i ruesdale, Dillon was saying.
Truesdale was leaning back.

"I suppose it is perfectly legitimate," he said ab-
sently.

128

THE NEW DAWN

And then the secretary knew, from the lists that
he was requested to bring, that what the newspapers
would call "a deal" was being arranged; that a com-
pany with a capital of billions was to be floated.
The clock ticked on, ... on, ... on ! The pencils
figured and figured. Sweat trickled down the face
of the fat man. His little eyes expanded greedily.

"But . . . but . . . will the public bite?" he
asked doubtfully. "Will they buy our bonds, then
buy the coal at advanced price, then buy the stock
to float the ships."

"Dillon," Ward's head went up with a toss, "you
talk as if this were a stock-jobbing concern ! By
combining we are absolutely certain of holding our
own against the labor unions as well as foreign
rivals. By combining we are free of waste, free of
under-cutting. By combining we compel the world
to depend on us for ships and c >z\. They buy at
our price. Do you think Investment in as safe a
concern as that is going to hang fire? The stock
will sell faster than we can apply proceeds !"

"Look here, gentlemen !" Trucsdale was walking
the floor. "We're shaving wages ! We're advanc-
ing rates! It seems to me between taxing the pub-
lic for higher rates and asking them to buy stock
for us to capture foreign markets through a billion-
dollar steamship combination — it seems to me we
may run up against something called the sentiment
of the free-born American citizen "

"Sentiment be ," the colonel's husky remark

MORE OF WARD'S CREED

129

'Ugh. "Business isn't char-

merged in an explosive
ity."

us _ike that corner store again. You'd sell for the
h.ghest pr,ce that you could get, and pay the lowes
pnce you could pay-wouldn't you?' What's the
Merence between doing that on a s„.all scale or on

''Weirit" Y'"" '^"''^ '^°- 'he papers

Zll' 1?'"'"^ I^te Think it over, Truesdale!
thin? ""'Peihng you to come into this

Whe"„ th '" "^"' '" ■ ^""'^ "'S^'' gentleme ''
v;,V f''^ f'^^etary returned from showing the

r wi^hV' f f^' ^r"^ ^"""'^ - 'h^ --'• "g

on The : u° '^' '^°°'- ^^' ^'-k ticked

chantoft . '^xC '"■" '^""""^'^ 'heir endless

aint r and r ^ 7""^ °' ''^ ^^"'"^ "" ""g

over the I'^'th" ,"?"••, ^^'''^"'sht quiet fell

-nM't^htking?^ '°^' '-'-' °- ^"^ -'" '»'=

da^:^V:rs th" t f ' ''' '"'^-^^ -^ '^-«-

tn .., ! u " '"""""^ "■^'^ profitable was

o St out on that course forthwith ! That had b en
U ard s rule smce he left tho „l,^ 1, r

potency and failure. Sec Vrhi,:;' ' "''l.t Z"--
^.ghtest bungling now and the' chan-ce' ..olid
cjomuuon m,ght be lost! Ward would taL It

"Saunders!"

I30

THE NEW DAWN

The ferret eyes of the secretary looked up, and
then looked down.

"Saunders?"

"Sir?"

"What do you think of that chap Truesdale?
Think he will come in?"

Obadiah stroked his beard thi,ughtfully.

"I can't imagine any young fellow of sense hold-
ing out against that offer," he returned.

"Then you are deficient in imagination," retorted
Ward. "You are judging that man by yourself 1 In
the first place, he's iiidiffcitnt to money. He is also
indifferent to powe.-. He doesn't lack will! He
doesn't lack strength of an obstinate kind; but I
doubt if he has purpose! And he is s^ill in the bib-
and-tucker stage, when a young fellow is troubled
with a conscience ! Get him buckled down to prac-
tical living, he'll get over that."

Again a long silence, broken only by the ticking
of the clock.
"Saunders?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Go to that labor leader, McGee, the ranting
red, you know, who is threatening a strike in our
coal mines about the cut in wages. Pay whatever is
necessary to win Truesdale's men to the union.
Understand? If our men strike, his men strike, too!
He can't afford to stand back! He's got to be in
this fight, for us or against us !"

Saunders wrote a note on a small writing pad.
"Saunders?"

MORE OF WARD'S CREED

131

<-/o to the R V D--I ..

f° charge hi. schedule ^f '{"^'^ f "°^ ""'^
land-they are to han I shipments in-

charge ,,L ^f^^l"^ °X^^ ^° - ^H the extra they

■ •• understand? Get tt 7 ' ^? '" ^'"^ C- «•
our shipments, and th v^Mh TV'^^''"^ ^°^
give us a record of hi? • '^'' ''• '^'^^^ ^^ill

where! Then send .'Ir"''' '^°" "'-'' «"d
-entsgo; Shave his'p f ":?■; "'^"^ '^'^ ''''P"
his salesmen off the fidd'n ^"'^^ ^"^^ Squeeze
Saunders stood as one petrified.

holds a'bar:7;.r:ro;?h ' ""'"^^^'"'^ ■^-"'^^Je

f reat Consohu.;:;;!" ^ tnThr/i-^r'' ^"^

take some more ' The r. . • ^'""'' ^^ "uld

vestors-women and nrn f •" '^^"^'"ed-small in-
who think they arTlT r°;!:^' "^"-°'d ^og-s,
fashioned and'Jn ^..V.f t'^k'^'^r^ ' ''^ °''^-
stock! Give the New York fl^ \'" '' '^''
orders to pick up on tL quit 2elT' ''^"''"^
•'1e Jambs take fright I Sel Ih ^P^'^f'^'^^'ne till
stand, till the stock knnf I ?"' ^'"' y^" ""d^r-

J— -I am afraid " be^n,, .u

"egan the secretary.

132

THE NEW DAWN

"Saunders," interrupted Ward, "we'll sue first!
Get that tunnel filled up — come to me for orders !"

The secretary lifted his eyes from the carpet.

"But the Kipp fellow, the engineer?" he stam-
mered.

"Wants more salary, I suppose," added Ward.

"Wants more silary," repeated the secretary, as
though he deprecated such criminal tendencies.

"Confoundedly unlucky, that whole business of
the accident 1"

Obadiah stroked his beard.

"You have settled all the claimants?"

"All."

"Only that engineer?"

"Only that engineer."

"What did his report say about the shaft?"

"That there would be loss of life unless we re-
paired it."

"And you dismissed him?"

"I dismissed him."

",\nd reengaged him at five thousand to keep him
quiet?"

"I did."

Ward bounced suddenly round in his chair, facing
the secretary.

"He demands more salary? That's it — is it?
Can't you send him to Mexico to examine coal Imids
somewhere .... where the climate might in .uce
him to remain?"

"Wc might sen<l him to Jericho, if he'd go."' The

MORE OF VVAKD'S CKliED 133

secretary lowered his voice. "But he says it's better
pay to stay . . . right . . . here I"

The clock ticked five full minutes before the presi-
dent spoke.

"What do you think he will do?"

"Sell his information about our tunneling into
Truesdale's ground."

"I have no doubts that we'd win if it did go to
the courts," returned Ward. "It's better to keep
him quiet till we've arranged with TruesdaJe. We'll
have to settle him!"

"Yes— we'll have to settle him," agreed the sec-
retary.

"Saunders, it's a funny thing that I have to be
bothered with these annoyances?"

Obadiah assented with a dejected hanging of his
head.

"Why can't these petty trifles be arranged with-
out bothering me?"

It was a current understanding in the Great Con-
solidated that Ward gave few orders to his em-
ployees; but, if they made mistakes, he gave them
ticket of leave and orders in terms that are not usu-
ally printed. "He's coming to it by running all
around it," thought the secretary.

"Here's a staff of men supposed to have more
brains than a hen; and they can't settle a swagger-
mg braggart of an engineer?"

If Thomas Ward had been told that he coerced
his men into doing what he himself dared not do-
he would have denied it. Obadiah took the cue.

134

THE NEW DAWN

"If the Great Consolidated will give me a free
hand I think I can promise to settle the fellow,"
he said.

"You do, eh? Then settle him! Don't report
to me! I leave the affair to you! I hold you re-
sponsible! Lose the papers, if there are any; burn
them. But tell me nothing — do you understand —
absolutely nothing. If you want a check to send him
to Peru, draw on the contingency fund."

An oily exudation spread over the secretary's sal-
low features.

"I'll take a run down to the mines and see him
myself," he said.

And that was all about Kipp, the engineer, who
knew that the Great Consolidated had been taking
coal from Truesdale's mines through running a slant
tunnel into a neighbor's limits.

CHAPTER X

THE CRKED AND A GIRL

"So that was the reason you stopped writing? It
was hardly fair to a pal, Madeline ?"

Truesdale could not have explained why the ar-
tist sitting at her easel seemed different from other
acquaintances. She was good looking, but not better
looking than many a woman of his acquaintance;
and she was obviously quite indifferent to all mat-
ters of dress Theoretically, he liked a well-gowned
woman of the ornamental kind. He liked what
pleased his eye, his sense of proportion, his pride
ot lite. Woman was to be the jewel, the star shin-
■ng out on the hard realities of men's lives. He had
not a high opinion of the motives behind men's
lives. He considered all conduct the result of one
primal instinct— Self ; and self can assume brutal
torms in the strenuous battle of modern life and
primal passions. That was why Truesdale wanted
woman to be a jewel set apart— the prize of exist-
ence; not a contestant in the brute struggle, where
she must suffer defeat.

All that was— in theory. In reality, Truesdale
was sitting in a plain studio at the rear of an art
135

'36

IHE Nl'W nWVN

»Lalcr's store, asking why a girl dressed in a white
shirtwaist and black walking skirt, with a red tie
and leather belt, had broken off a correspondence
on which he had grown to depend more than he
liked to acknowledge.

A woman could ha\ e told Trucsdale that the rar-
est jewels shine brightest in simplest settings; that,
while the dress was plain, it was set to the curves
of a figure whose every motion betokened buoyant,
free life — fire, not grace; that the red tie brought
out the red tints of the hectic skin; and, that the
bronze hair with sunlight in each strand did not
need the art of the French hair-dresser.

But Truesdale did not analyze things. He felt
them — felt the unr'tmdcd light of the brow, the
glad surprise of the eyes, the wondering flashes of
comprehension from the large pupils of the gray
eyes. It was a changing, lustrous pupil, that seemed
to give glimpses of a personality. Self-deception
could not exist behind those eyes. They were too
clarified. This girl could not even lie to herself,
the rarest kind of truth.

Mentally, Truesdale questioned the wisdom of
nature forming a mouth the shape of a Cupid's
bow, and giving that mouth the short upper lip of
a Diana. The effect was a Psyche profile with the
coldness of a Puritan. She would be a huntress; not
of men — but ideas. Truesdale was quite positive
that he did not like women who hunted ideas; yet he
could not help thinking if this Psyche profile ever
met its ideas in the form of a man it might not be

tul; cKi:t;D and a girl 137

such a bad tiling t., I,c tlit- man— provi.lcJ, of a.ursc,
that her ideas ilid ridt prove an illusion.

lor a week after the conferences in the otfites of
the Great Consolidated Iruesdale was subtly con-
snous of a chanse in the attitude of the social and
business world toward himself. Business men whose
names stood for power came up to be introduced to
him One old broker, who had been a friend of his
father, shook hands heartily.

"Congratulate you," he said. "I always told
your father that he ought to have done it ! Day for
mdividualism is past! This is the age of co6pera.
tion, of union! Congratulate you!"

"For what?" demanded fruesdale, slightly sur-
prised.

He had not sent his answer to the proposals of
the Great Consolidated. A native caution, drilled
by a hard-headed father, aroused Truesdale's suspi-
cions of any process /„ get somelhh.g for nothing-
especially ,, great deal of something for a great deal
of nothing. That prospect of thirty millions by a
single sweep of the pen had da^ed 'Iruesdale when
he talked with Ward. Now, the native caution
bade him go slow. A business representing the toil
of three generations of Truesdales must not be
whistled away for glittering prospects. But the old
broker only laughed.

"Can't hoax me, my boy!" The old gentleman
patted Truesdale's shoulder. "You are your father
over again: close, close!"

And the social w.-Id grew still more demonstra-

'38

THE NEW DAWN

tive. He could have framed the mirror of his shav-
ing tabic with the invitations that showered in every
morning. And some of the invitations were un-
framable, waylaying him on the street in the person
of the effusive, elderly lady, who had daughters.
It was in evading one of these that he had turned
to the window in the art licalers' store, and sud-
denly discovered a picture that brought back a
poignant memory of boyhood.

It was a small pastel of a boy and girl treed by a
ferocious pig in a forbidden orchard. The boy
and the pig he did not recognize; but the girl he
would have known among a thousand. It was she
who had led him into the escapade; and, when the
pig's possessor came, it was not the boy in the pic-
ture, but another boy, who received the double por-
tion of a switching. There were the same long
braids of bronze hair, the same fearless eyes, the
same red and white, hectic skin. It was a perfect
likeness as she had been ten years before. Trues-
dale screwed on his eyeglasses and bent forward to
spell out the artist's name. What he read was the
name of the culprit, herself — Madeline Connor.
Mr. Jack Truesdale spent the rest of that afternoon
in the little studio behind the art dealer's store. It
was a quiet breathing space after the adulation of
the previous week.

"Do you remember," laughed Truesdale, "how
mercilessly everybody teased us about that lark?"

"And you used to call me 'red-head'?" she
laughed.

Tin- LREl.i) AND A CIRL ,39

"I^i'l I? I lion't rc.ncmhcr. I used to think

yo r h.,r .as the prettiest tlnn« that I haVer
.ecnwh.n ,t «,, tn,,Kiecl ,,, in the sunlight."

Ihe ar„st lauRhcJ outright and laid down her

hushes. Iruesdale wondered if he had fa^id to
observe n,ez.„ tremors in other voices

. f hat brute thrashed you horribly after he had
^nven otf the p;g. I had seuttled down the othe
sale of the tree just as he caught vou. When he be
Ran to beat you 1 tried to throw stones, but I rl\Z
cecded ,n h,tt,„g you. If you had not got away Lst

|v- you duldunk J would have torn bin. ^bit
can hc^r the swish of that rawhide yet. I ought

oave been put to bed for a week! It was allt'

fault and you never told; and you never cried- I

booh booed all n.gbt aftcrward-I was so sor^-'

And the nch, ripe smell of the yellow fruit

• • . do you remember?" he asked. "The frost

K s,fted through the trees like gold n.ist. It
.Jt: '■ ;^°';;',-5;;^Hc.Perides,with
glow like tb I That back hill used to

I w ; . ' . "-'"" ^""'^ ^'•■'•' heather when
I was m Scotland without a sort of homesick feel
■ng for that old hill. The lights, somel; ne"'"
cemed c,u,te so gay when you were not along I
r member go,ng back to that old orchard one day
after you had been whisk,-,) „ff -.i ^

somewhere ,n 1 , "'^'^ ^'°"' governess

omewhere, and wondermg what in the world made
the change. It was the dreariest sort of feel.

140

THE NEW DAWN

The sunlight was just the same; but I'll be hanged
if the gold hadn't turned blue."

The girl had been sitting with her fingers inter-
knotted round her knees; but, at Truesdale's words,
she took up her brushes.

"I didn't think you were a dreamer in those
days," she said.

"I wasn't! I was just the average beast of a boy
fond of apples 1 But they tasted better when you
were along! I don't believe you remember what
a little dare-devil you were. You once planned to
row me out to the sunset on a plank, because you
wanted to see if there were not real palaces where
the clouds and the sea met. And, my word, what
yarns you used to tell us. There was always one
story about a light-footed nymph that led the wind
a race over the sea to the sunset — that was what
made the ripples, her ladyship tripping with troops
to paradise. I can see you yet with the big leghorn
sun-shade, that one with the poppies, swinging over
your back and yri, up to your neck in the clover
fields picking wild daisies. What a wild-flower you
were; but I suppose this" — he nodded at the easel
and the paintings — "is the explanation!"

A long silence followed, the artist gazing back to
the old orchard, the man watching the sunlight play
on her hair. It was at the old tricks. He smiled
to recall how he used to resent that bronze hair:
the gauzy cobwebs somehow snared his belligerent
indifference. Truesdale found himself wondering
why she was earning her living. There were things

THE CREED AND A GIRI. ,41

he wanted to know, and had no right to ask; lor
he had not heard from her for three years. Mis
eyes glanced over the studio. The cosy nooks with
draperies hung in a fluff, the antique jars full of
flowers, the old prints, the dainty bits of copper and
pottery — all were stamped with her character. He
had always thought other studios cluttery — a collec-
tion of rag mats with holes in them, broken-nossd
china, and old jugs. This one had an air of reserve,
of cool, fragrant freedom.

"I shall have that picture taken from the win-
dow," remarked Madeline presently. "I should
never have painted it if I thought anyone could pos-
sibly recognize it. I did not know you were coming
back to be a great financier."
"Why can't I buy it?"

"You can have it to make up for that pig man's
thrashing, if you like."

"But why can't I buy it," repeated Truesdale.
"I never sell things to friends."
Truesdale puckered his brows. She had been an
enigma as a girl. She was more of an enigma as a
woman.

"Why do you deny your friends?"
"It's a prejudice that I've had since my father
bought some of Colonel Dillon's railroad stock be-
cause he was a friend. Yoi' know the Great Con-
solidated wrecked that company- -'took it over,' 're-
organized it,' I think the papers called it— and then
bought up the remnant bankrupts. It would have
been quite right — as the world goes, I suppose—

142

THE NEW DAWN

if the blow had not killed my father. By the time
all the bric-a-brac and paintings were sold, I was
the only thing left for the auctioneer's hammer;
and this is the only way I am marketable. I'm all
that was left after the Great Consolidated finished
with my father. If I have to spoil good canvas that
might make wheat bags, and paints that might im-
prove fences — why " she laughed lightly, "I

make it a rule never to impose on my friends because
they are friends."

"When did this happen?" he asked.

"Three years ago."

"And that was the reason you stopped writing?"

Madeline Connor turned to her box of tubes for
burnt umber.

"Don't you think," she asked, "that the perfume
from those roses is slightly overpowering?"

Truesdale ignored the evasion and raised the win-
dow. He felt timid of himself. Incidentally, he
noticed that sunlight striking hair slantwise turned
bronze strands to gold, and that rose-tinted finger-
nails resembled pink shells.

"So that was the reason you stopped writing? It
was hardly fair to a friend — Madeline?"

"Such a tale of woe to dump on a friend," she
laughed.

"Thank you for telling me all this," said Trues-
dale quietly.

He was surprised to hear his voice agitated. You
cannot tell what your voice may do till you test it;
and such a sense of exhilaration suddenly pervaded

THE CREED AND A GIRL 143

the studio that Truesdale's voice did not stand the
test. So little had been said between them that it
was absolutely nothing; and yet the old glow of sub-
tle delight that had turned the orchard to gold sud-
denly transfused the afternoon dullness with a puls-
ing hope. He watched the slant sunlight flooding
the room. The same witchery played on her brow,
on her lips, in her eyes, as that afternoon in the
orchard. He remembered how the hectic color used
to flush and wane in her cheeks with every chmge
of mood. It was glowing and fading there now,
m bright spots. Truesdale watched the quick, nerv-
ous motions of eyes, hands, face; and framed a new
theory of dynamics, did this practical young man;
though not for a moment did he acknowledge that
new dynamics had entered his own life. Motions

expressed the personality that was it, he

decided; they were the spelling out of thought in

{[°™ from which, it may be inferred, that

^Ir. Jack Truesdale, quite impersonally, of course,
tried to reason what sort of a character this artist
must have, with her sensitive delicate touch and
swift, daring fire.

It baffled him— this new-born fire. What did it
mean? What would be the result when her nature
became fused in the one great fire of existence?
• ... It would be no half and half affair with her.
It would be transfiguration; or the flash that re-
veals darkness .... And all would depend on the
object of her love, on the problematical man.
Curiously enough, the thought of the problematical

144

THE NEW DAWN

man brought a sudden stop to Truesdale's specula-
tions.

"Have you ever been with people, Madeline, who
gave you the impression that you must have known
them . . well? . . . since time began?"

The question had slipped from him unawares.

Madeline laid the brushes down, looked at the
picture with her head to one side, and picked the
brushes up again.

"Exactly what do you mean?"

"Exactly? .... I don't know exactly. It isn't
the sort of exactliness that can be figured out or put
in w'jrrls. Just a whim that two people couldn't
rtcop-; ' '-C each other as kindred friends; couldn't
be so mstantaneously drawn together, unless they
had known each other somewhere before. The
sea draws the river, you know ; because the river has
been there before. And the sun draws the sea; and
it's worth running the whole weary round of exist-
ence just to find one's destiny."

"I c'on't believe I know exactly what you mean."
She ran her fingers down a brush. "When I am with
some people, I feel as if they hud given me wings to
go on with the humdrum .... as if nothing could
be humdrum "

'There tnay be a man," thought Mr. Jack Trues-
dale.

"But it rather frightens me . . ."

"Then, there is not a man," thought Mr. Jack
Truesdale.

THE CREED AND A GIRL ,45

"There is something terrible in the thought that
one can't resist destiny."

"Not if destiny is what you would yourself have
chosen," interrupted Truesdale.

"About that picture," interposed the artist. "I'll
have the office boy take it to your address."
"It may be her art," he thought.
"Yes, about that picture," he said out loud, "as
you used yourself for the model of the girl ; who— if
you don't mind telling me— posed for the boy ? And
who— if it isn't bccret— is your friend, the pig?"

My friend, the pig, was a gentleman of a tenor
voice in a certain stock company that played in a back
yard. I'm sorry to say since that picture was

painted he has been reincarnated "

"In sausages," suggested Truesdale. "And— the
boy?

"Is the very best boy I have known for mischief
since I knew you. True. I met him first when I
was painting in the tenements. He stole food and
wouldn't give his name for fear of putting the po-
lice on his mother's tracks. Mr. Hebden got him
out of gaol; but his mother had disappeared. Mr
Ward took a fancy to one of the pictures of him'
Then Mr. Hebden and Mrs. Ward got him a posi-
tion as messenger for the Great Consolidated. He
ives at the cottage with my mother. He is still mv
best model." '

Truesdale's face grew serious.

"Madeline .... do you go painting in those
tenements .... by yourself?"

146

THE NEW DAWN

"Why not? I am as poor as the poorest; and I
am very much interested in the poor since that stock
speculation, or peculation, made me poor. I like to
study out what makes people poor. Aren't you in-
terested in the great questions of the day?"

"Only in a theoretical sort of way," returned
Truesdale stiflly.

It was one of his prejudices to dislike women who
interested themselves in "questions." Poverty he
relegated to the mercies of Providence and faddish
ladies who called at business offices for contributions
to elaborate charities.

"I hate theory." There was no mistaking the
sincerity of her sentiment. "It seems to me more
theories are made to explain wrong than to prevent
it. Poverty itself is too cruelly real ! I often won-
der if there's no getting to the bottom of the hideous
wrongs beside data put away in office files. Why
is there such poverty? Mine, for instance, was not
necessary. Budd, my boy model, should not have
been compelled to steal for food. He couldn't get
food 'on the square' — as he called it — because the
price of meat, and coal, and bread had gone up.
And the price had gone up ... . there, I stop!
It's like the stock speculation or peculation that

ruined my father. Everybody suffers

nobody is to blame .... and it can't be helped!
Oh, .... I hate your theories! I'm glad I'm a
woman and don't need to have them to justify me!
Somehow, some men get the power to compel others
to sell at a sacrifice, to buy at high prices. The

THE CREED AND A GIRL 147

others have no choice .... they must pay high-
er starve I I don't see much difference between that
and puttmg a pistol to a man's head while you pick
his pockets! But, of course, I am only a woman I
Men would say I am hysterical and emotional— that

all this IS impersonal! The price of every-

thing goes up-why? If I ^ere a man I

should trace that back and back if I had to go to the
deluge "

"Then what would you do?" asked Truesdale
with gentle sarcasm. He awakened to the fact that
the girl's fire might stand for more than a latent
power to love. Her words had an unpleasantly per-
sonal ring.

"What would I do when I got back to the del-
uge?" she repeated slowly, turning deliberately to
him. "God knows what I could do! But two
things I do know: I would not do nothing; I would
not rest supine with folded hands, while the world
writhed in the pain of a curable anguish; I would
not fatten on the ruin of others as President Ward
and Colonel Dillon have been doing ! Oh— they are
rich— I know they are rich— rich enough to pave
the vaults of heaven with gold and buy up half
a dozen Europes; but they are rich men whose names
make the honest rich blush, and the honest poor
curse ! The other thing I know is this : the man who
shows the world how to bring old truth to bear on
new wrongs will be the apostle of a new dawn I"

'Dear

Is it as bad as this?" thought

148

THE NEW DAWN

Truesdale. "This girl is guilty of brains! She
actually believes what she believes!"

If the words had been uttered by a woman fad-
dist addicted to "questions," he could have brushed
aside the sense of personal responsibility. He might
have set her down as one more of the envious
shriekers, of the failires, of the shiftless, obstruct-
ing success; but she was the living victim of the
wrong she denounced; and she was unconscious of
that denunciation having any bearing on himself.
The intensity of her feelings had set the hectic spots
flushing. All the Intent fire flashed to the luminous
pupils of the gray eyes. Her lips trembled. She
bent over a jar of roses as she talked.

"I've thought so much about these things," she
said softly.

In his mental world women with the possession
of thoughts always shrieked them, so that a heed-
less world could not but hear; but these thoughts in
the tremulous voice stole on one unawares.

"Since my father's death life has brought me so
close to things that I riave been compelled to think!"
She hesitated with a tremor of lips fatal to his stoi-
cism. "I can't shut my eyes to terrible facts any
more, the way we women always do when we can!
We're cowards, True ! We shut our eyes to fright-
ful realities; and say little nice things, bits of poetry
about mystery and Providence and resignation ! I
can't shut my eyes to terrible facts any longer — I'm
up against them. True!"

Truesdale did not answer a word. If her lips

THE CREED AND A GIRL 149

would only stop quivering he might have accepted
the situation more airily. Leaning across the table
he took one of the roses from her hand and put it in
his buttonhole.

''I feel like one groping in the dark I"
''Obviously," thought Truesdale.
"But I've come to one conclusion?"
"Have you?" he asked almost roughly. They
had fought things out as children. He was not pre-
pared to g,ve her femininity quarter, if she pressed
h.m too closely. "I never come to conclusions any
more, Madeline I The more I know of modern life
the less I know what to think. You might as well
ask a man to sleep in his babyhood crib as to fit
modern busmess to the Ten Commnndmcnts!"

"But that is only a narrow way of looking at it "
objected the girl.

Truesdale caught his breath. He was not used
to bemg called narrow.

"My conclusion is very old-fashioned," she went
on. "It's just this: no matter what the starting
point IS, when you've traced things back, it's always
to the same cause .... Some one taking more
than his share .... some one encroaching on
some one else's rights .... wrong .... sin
.... just old-fashioned cussedness . . '"

"Oh," said Mr. Jack Truesdale very' imperson-
ally.

It was characteristic of a woman to lead up to
such a childish conclusion; but he did not laugh
How could he explain that the words "wrong— sin"

IJO

THE NEW DAWN

had for him no meaning; that they had gone out
tvith the going out of the old century; that ail the
words entailed had no place in modern thought?
To be weak, to be not fit to survive — that was sin,
the one and only sin of the new century; and nature
wiped the sinner out.

"Oh," smiled Truesdale. "Wrong is rather a
narrow term!"

"It depends on the way you use it," continued
Madeline. "If it means breaking law, scientifi'-
law, health law, national law — seems to me it's a
wide term. But what does it matter what you call
it? The wrong is in encroaching on the rights of
others . . ."

"What rights?" cut in Truesdale tersely.

"Well," laughed Madeline, "I think most of us
have been pretty well stuffed by our teachers about
the rights of 'Life, . . Liberty, . . and Happiness'
mentioned in an old document called the Declaration
of Independence."

"Yes," mused Truesdale, "we boys used to get
our heads cracked over those old rights." What
he was thinking was that the rights had gone out
of fashion, f-.llen before the new commerce like a
house of cards. "Life is made up of a good deal
more than the teach- i tell us," he went on vaguely.
"Each fellow must get the facts bumped into his own
cosmos by actual living."

"My cosmos is black and blue with bumps,"
laughed the girl. "Because I am the under dog I

THE CREED AND A GIRL ,5,

Trf/Tr'«^', ^''" ^' ^" '" hi* own apartments
T uesdale fl.cked the cigar ashes from the sleeve 5

htd :■ "" "" '"" '■"^"''^'^ '''^ 'P--> "to think

hJyr'-T'u"'" " ''°""'" '^'th something in her
head bes.de ha.rpins? And do we like her? I
don t thmk so! And has she met a man w th any

J:"/ T-" '" ''" ''"" =• "P''^' S with two ,t ck
through <t . . . in fact, dollars?-

anJthtrw-haTrrtj."''-^^ '''—'"« paper.
■Ch?nge';"dL'o';"wt''h '''""'' '"" •""•"" - N. V.

~:ri^^r';ir:;t^^^

and mformed the public that Thomas Ward the'

"In the first place, it's a balloon," said Truesdal^

the" ttd'T'- '' ' t^'^^' ^°' crookedness ;•
the third, chanty .s cheaper than justice," and he
flung the paper to the floor. It i, to be nZ I
there were three Truesdales: one'L" a^rS^S

fif

isa

Tilt: Ni:\V DAWN

Thomas Ward; another had contradicted Madeline;
the third expressed conclusions altcigcthcr different
to himself.

lie mused late, paying no heed to call-bell and
telephone. "If she were a man she wDuld trace this
back to the deluge, doggie I Then what — Sir? She
would get wet; wouldn't she? Or she would take
refuge in a Noah's ark of lying platitudes. Women
are all alike in one respect, my bob-tail friend — eyes
on the moon, feet in the gutter 1"

Had Trucsdale given an account of his thoughts
he would have said that he was considering the pro-
posals of the Great Consolidated; but one phantom
glided in many forms along the surface of these
thoughts. Afterward came a shifting dream of
some myth garden with sunlight sifting through
orchard aisles in a golden mist. A form that cast
no shadow glided near . . . and nearer.

"I knew that you would come," he was saying.
Then he wakened dazed from a blinding sense of
elusive reality. Daylight poured through the win-
dow

"A dream," he mused; but he dreamed the dream
over again wide awake. It stayed with him all the
day in a sort of subconscious sense of life promising
exquisite happiness.

chai'[i:r XI

T..E CRUCO WOKKHD OUT „V trrxtE M.s AND
lESS BRAINS

» noise of buzzing whee eToM ''"''''

'Vith a clattering of coa at T K '"'^"'"^'"""y
round the curved track! r., ''°""'"' '''^'^^''^
trestleway, and wh Tk ' / K l^ "^ "^ '^' P""''"'--'

at the foot^oVth '"tnlf ^-l^''-^ '"^'-^' '"e hill
•^'«" of hu,na f^. ;C th ^' T ''" ""'y
Consolidated. ' """" "^ '^c Great

'he huff . . I,,,ff I a r ,

engine that kcvt Z ' '■ ' " "^' ''■"'^' '"'^^'^r

heavy breahinl of V'T" '''""^''"'' ^"''"^' ^he
the jdtinr f fr, rat- '":r''''^," '" '''' -"''=y.
-ingof the fly gcab ; If "m "">• '^'•- h"-
-all seemed iL^c ^ feT; 'I'' "' ^''i ^'•"^'^'

-H a blind, driving, rei;;:s^^v::;ri'rs

'53

'54

THE NEW DAWN

with neither let nor hindrance, neither beginning
nor end, a Thing that embodied itself in one huge,
grinding Machine!

Overhead, the sky reeked with the amber thaw
of a warm sun. The tree-feathered outline of the
hill appeared like a network against the sky. Be-
low, swirled the river, swollen with the pent forces
of breaking winter, swift and cold and relentless,
like the Force of the Machine-Thing. And every-
where the soft haze of gray mists lay, an impal-
pable veil.

But the two men toiling up the hillside saw
neither machinery nor scenery. One was absorbed
in coming at a subject by running all round it. The
other was busy practicing precepts which years of
employment with the Great Consolidated had in-
grained in his nature; precepts which were alto-
gether worthy and commendable when the Great
Consolidated practiced them, but not so worthy and
commendable when practiced against the Great Con-
solidated; precepts to put the screw on when you
have the chance, and get the most from the other
party to a contract when you can force his hand.
One was Obadiah Saunders, secretary to the Great
Consolidated. The other was Kipp, the engineer,
who had been dismissed for expressing the honest
opinion that Shaft lo was unsafe, and who had
seen his prophecy verified by the killing of twenty
men, and who had suddenly discovered that his
services were five times more valuable to the com-
pany as a dangerous enemy than as a faithful serv-

THE CREED WORKED OUT ,;;

Plete. Though Kinn .f 4 7 ^ ''^^" '° «^o'"-
converged tof ve^y'^lr eld 'T "?''k "'•' "^'^''^

■n inverse proportion to htgtj?; Kioo" ^""
gered. "^"Ktn, so Kipp swag-

"We v/ere thinking, Kino " nh,A- u
softly, "we were tW^n^'f^^^^ '^'' '^^'"^
mines in Peru." ^'"^ "^ opening some new

tobacco iith exact" ptcisionT'^ '^'P"'- ^'^^ 'P«

"How much w u'd :„ ask ^TV ''' '■°^'^-

» man to examine them " No'^Zl T n^'^v'^'^

quickly, "not that T , u, ' ^'^'^'^'^ Obadiah

Place/'lf "a chance foTthe '" r^'^^ ^^^ '''^
me see, now '"'"'' ^°^ ^''^ "'^"who gets it. Let

Pii-tsinfortheposi^lirratf^'""'"^^'^^
Inur are, are thur'" 3«t.>rl v.

•'-ad grin. Kipp, s^.^^n.^^Zl^f :7\"

tion. "That is-Kit-I CO ,'r°r'°" °' ^ '^""■
ask too high a salarl " nuZ u u ^°"' ^'''^ '^'''"'t
his,ha„ds'throu:^h^s be^""' "'""^''^^""^ '^-^v

Ain t traveh'n' at present " <,r,o» ,r-

-ng off another chew o7 toba'co. ' °"' '"'^P' '''^-

156

THE NEW DAWN

Obadiah turned in the climb and examined the
landscape below. A big, squarish-built man in blue
overalls passed them, touching his hat with surly
respect to the secretary, winking over his shoulder
to the engineer.

"That's McGee, the I. W. W. delegate, isn't it?"
asked Saunders, gently.

"Looks like him," muttered Kipp.

"How is he succeeding with Truesdale's miners?
Have any of them come over to your union yet?"

"Haven't heard," retorted Kipp. Also, Kipp
waved the hand farthest from the secretary in a
scarcely perceptible signal to the labor delegate now
disappearing in the tunnel.

Obadiah took out b' handkerchief and gently
moistened his lips. "Kipp," he said, dropping his
voice very low, "let us stop fencing! How much —
do — you want — anyway?"

Kipp grinned broadly. He couldn't help it. His
height converged to a small head and he had been
waiting for Obadiah's circling to come to the point
by running all round it.

"Guess I could worry 'long with a matter o' ten
thousand spot down," volunteered Kipp with a toss
to his head, and a hitch to his shoulders, and a rat-
tat-too of one boot on the ground.

Obadiah gasped and put all ten fingers in his
beard at one clutch.

"This is a steep climb," said the secretary.

"I guess so," agreed Kipp.

THE CREED WORKED OUT ,57

him^th" ^T V ''"''^ ''^-we'll have to settle
him, thought the secretary

tunnel running in from the diff " "

H„ '^!1' ^j '"""''" ''°'^'^'^ Saunders, gating far
down the deserted valley. The Machin^For"! had
o e possession of the lonely, mist-gray valley Eve'
the m^an at the foot of the tra.wly hal dSp

fort!?'" 7' T"^''^ '^' '"'^' °f the river, angle
forty-five first hundred feet, then, straight dp the
vem faulted, didn't merge in tunnel ledge « aH
ran off at right angle to the river. That's where I
found out we had run into the Truesdale .^inesl-
were off our hmits a hundred yards."

Yes, I know I Never mind that," murmured

talked"; h"' .'".^ u''°' '"■^ '^^S«" -hen he
talked of h.s work, "when you're down there you'rc

vel with the bottom. I suspected an underground

«ream down there. I advised stronger timbers to

keep her solid. It wouldn't have cosf twolndred

^wo hundred times that hushing up the'claima'nt ;

IS8

THE NEW DAWN

but you don't hush me, sir, not after that accident,
with our tunnel robbing the Trucsdale mines 1"

"Too bad — too bad!" murmured Saunders sym-
pathetically, with a deep intersection of thoughtful
lines across his white brow.

"A'jout a hundred yards back from the shaft the
bottom fell out o' the mine — that's all ! There was
a cave-in or cave-down, with twenty poor fellows
dead under the heap! You've got a lake down
there, black as pitch, scuddin' round without any
bottom to it, far as I could find."

"Were all the l)odies recovered, Kipp?"
"Yes, sir," answered Kipp, grave and stern, "and
I'm thinking it's little you'd care if the whole union
went into that hole, providin' it didn't affect divi-
dends and your stock jobbin' !"

There was a long silence, Kipp kicking his heels,
the secretary knotting and interknotting his hands
under his coat tails.

"We wired you, Kipp, to fill that shaft up with

rocks! We've had enough loss of life . . ."

"Yes — it comes high — don't it?" muttered Kipp.

"We don't want newspapers spying down there!

It was hard work keeping those muddle-heads of

coroners off the scent!"

"And you couldn't have done that if / hadn't
kept quiet," added Kipp.

"Have you filled the shaft up?"
"I've got your telegrams here, sir! Timbers and
rocks all ready at the edge. Could fill her up in ten

THE CREED WORKED OUT

IS9

I haven't done it,

minutes, but I haven't done it;
yet — by JingI"

"Why not, Kipp?" wheedled Saunders.

Kipp grunted a hoarse laugh. "What d' y' take
me for? You've got to settle with me, first!"

"That's what I'm here for, Kipp!"

"'Tis— is it? Well, when the company fixes me
up I'll fill her so the rip o' Judgment Day can't
excavate her!"

"My dear fellow—" they had reached the miners'
quarters when the secretary turned with languishing
reproach to the engineer— "my dear fellow, what do
you take the company for? It's no dime concern
to dicker ovtt a few dollars. Make your mind
easy on ttiat score, Kipp! You have named the
figure. Trust me to write the check!"

"Check be damned!" swore Kipp. "You know
right well the company don't write checks for them
kind o' services! It pays cash! I gave straight
talk on that shaft, and you didn't take it! You've
buffaloed the claimants, but you don't buffalo me!
I've got two cards up my sleeve, either one o' them
worth a good hundred thousand ! There are twenty
men dead, as ought to be alive to-day! There's a
company, I know, as has been robbing from its
neighbor's ledge! Now, you can pay the piper for
your little dance! You're gettin' off cheap at ten
thousand!"

"Well, you needn't shout it, Kipp," said Saun-
ders, as they entered the bunk house.
Kipp stamped.

i6o

THE NEW DAWN

"I'd like you to know right oft that not a single
rock, not a single pebble, not a grain o' dirt goes
down that shaft till I've— got— the cash— in my

pocket!"

"We'll have to settle himl We'll have to settle
him!" thought Obadiah.

"Kipp," he said gently, decisively, "if you come
to my office to-morrow, I'll pay you the cash!—
Now, are you satisfied?"

"I'll tell you when I've got it whether I'm satis-
fied or not," wagged Kipp. "You're getting off
cheap, Mr. Saunders! Every one o' them claim-
ants could get ten thousand in the courts! An'
there's something else!"

Obadiah dropped back aghast.
"Yes, sir — there's something else. Some of you
gentlemen ought to go down, yourselves, and see
that shaft. You ought to report to the directors.
I ain't goin' t' have my report go up as blackmail.
You ought to go down, yourself, an' report!"

Obadiah stood meditating. If the fellow would
only consent to a check, or defer his demands, there
would be time to think what should be done with
this troublesome engineer. "We'll certainly have to
settle him 1" thought Saunders. The huff . . . •
huff of the little power engine far below in the val-
ley, the heavy breathings of the locomotives, the
jolting of the cars, the humming of the flying cables,
the rumble of the trucks— all seemed instinct with a
life that was not human, with a blind, driving, re-
lentless Force, a Force with neither let nor hm-

THE CREED WORKED OUT i6i

drance, neither beginning nor end, a Thing that
embodied .tself in one huge, grinding Machine,
iiven the man at the foot of the tramway had dis-
appeared.

The idea of this Kipp, this engineer fellow, v"th
but little brams, opposing himself to such a Foice—
Pshaw! Obadiah smiled with a sickly scorn of the
fool.

"Well?" demanded Kipp insolently. "What do
you say to your going down yourself?"

A little spark of fire gleamed in the secretary's
rerret eyes.

"Certainly 1 I'll go down— go down, now— with
you!

"There's no hoist running," warned Kipp. "We'll
have to scramble down the ladder, then crawl along
from the bottom of the shaft. Electric lights were
blown out by the shock. We'll use lanterns. It's
^".."ght— it's safe. There's no fire damp!"

Well, Kipp," answered Obadiah jovially. "I've
climbed dark places before. Get your rig ready "

Kipp went off laughing for the lanterns and cloth-
'ng. The triumph was so complete. Kipp knew an
opportunity when he saw it! To compel "Silky"
the immaculate, "Lady Macbeth," the foxy schemer
to go down a slippery, coal-black ladder and walk
through dark tunnels with coal water soaking down
h.s back— was a joke, which Kipp was prepared to
retail for the rest of his life. Kipp knew an op-
portunity when he saw it, did Kipp! And just to
hnish off his victory he would not fetch waterproof

,6i THE NEW DAWN

clothes. Oh, Kipp knew an opportunity, he did;
and he emitted great guffaws as he ran for the

lanterns.

But Obadiah knew an opportunity when he saw
it, too. Kipp's back was not turned before Saunders
slipped into the telephone ofHce, rang up the fore-
man of the mines, and sent a soft-toned message
to the underground toilers that might have puzzled

Kipp-

"It is Mr. Saunders who is speaking— reporters

are spying round that dangerous shaft— have a
force of a hundred men at the top of Shaft lO—
listen distinctly now— at the top of Shaft lo— in
precisely half an hour— neither more nor less than
half an hour— await my orders there."

At each pause the secretary's soft voice sank to
gentle cadences of patience with the man at the
other end of the wire. Then, he slipped from the
telephone box and was back in the bunk house be-
fore Kipp returned.

"If he takes twenty minutes to change his clothes
— Lordy!— how long will he take to report on the
pool?" thought Kipp, waiting for the dapper secre-
tary to emerge frc i the bunk house.

Inside, Saunders stood with his watch in his hand.
As Kipp lighted the lanterns at the top of Shaft lo,
Saunders put his watch aside. From the blurred
windows of the bunk house he saw a force of men
come from a tunnel far below the cliff.

Oh, Kipp knew an opportunity when he saw it,

THE CREED WORKED OUT ,63

did KippI It was such a joke that he could hardly
Keep from laughing.

"Ready, sir?" Kipp dived into the darkness of
the shaft, scrambling down, face in. face out, any
way, clinging and swinging, he knew the ladder so
"■'i'jf '°"'^ ''''^'= '^°^" 'ike a boy on a pole.

All hope abandon her. !" he shouted up jocosely
from the swallowing blackness. And how he laughed

the white light of the shaft opening, clambering
down cautiously, backing slowly, rung by rung, face
to the wan, "for all the world, like a scared baboon,"
laughed Kipp, swinging down hand over fist, faster
than ever.

"Come on, sir! Come onl" shouted Kipp from
the depths Oh, Lordy-oh, Lordy, will I ever
get over this?" he laughed to himself. "I'll wait
for you at the pool!" he shouted up. "Just follow
along the tunnel !" ju" louow

His foot touched solid rock. He vas at the
bottom.

Oh, Lordy, was there ever so fine a joke? The

tAt\^u- ''"r^'' ^'' ^'''^ °^ ='«='i"^* f!^ beams,
and bark his ankles m good shape. Teach .him to
reduce wages. He'll know how it feels nine hours
a day underground.

Kipp doubled up with laughter. Never mind'
Mpp knew a thing or two. He wouldn't let "Silkv"
tumble IP f" fiio 1 L--- 1 . '

would wi

e pool, Kipp knew when to stop. He

It at the margin of the water — th

sped through the cold, dark, slippery tunnel

lis as he

at a

THE NEW DAWN

164

run The glossy rocks jutting through the gloom
n massy figures took form like gnomes m the l.ght
ofrintL, and retreated in the darkness as he
1. Then came a swish-as of water-K.pp slack-
ened pace to a saunter. He saw the glass of an
electric bulb, tried to switch the light on and found
that the shock had burnt out the wire.

•■Not much oil in my lamp," rummated K.pp,
"but 'Silky's' got the crack safety of the mme ! He s

'"hc looked back the tunnel way for sign of Saun-
ders All was darkness. Kipp set to exammmg
the wan where they had been drifting and cross-

""Ss takin' a hell of a time," remarked Kipp,
glandng toward the shaft again "but he can break
his dirty neck 'fore I go back for h.m.

The pool circled glassy, oily, treacherous round

, nn Bevond lay a jumbled mass where the

;: kTd cav!; i^ kipp became suddenly stern

n hi" little nature was one reverence, one only ,

•e Ince for thorough work; and the botched heap

across the pool had violated that reverence.

TJish he'd tumble down and break h.s cursed
n,ean, cringing neck!" piously l^^^^^fJZ ,Z
he takes till Judgment, I'm not go.n ba k tor h.m
ni n,ake them pay up for th>s b 'P-shod job-

He seated himself on a ledge of rock by tnc

!Z- and Kipp had bitter thoughts. Dead men,

Th e-faced Tn the dark and mangled of !in,h. have

fre^roachful way of stamping themselves on mem-

THE CREED WORKED OUT .6j

ory. You may bluff judge and jury, my clever gen-
tlemen, but the dead faces will haunt your gloom
for many a long day yet! It had been dangerous
work for Kipp to lead the rescue crtw along the
narrow ledge past the sink, but it was worse to dig
the bodies out, wrest them limb from limb, from
weights no hands could lift! Kipp shuddered as
he saw the picture mirrored again in the murky
pool.

"By God!" he swore, "I'll make them pay for
this!— I'll make them pay!— I'll make them pay-
till — they — squirm !"

And, perhaps— who can say?— the puny oath of
shallow lips that never mentioned Deity but to
swear— was registered and carried out in ways
the little, narrow brain could never guess!

Something crashed .... crashed .... rever-
berated .... boomed .... through the mine
.... fading in rocketing echoes that left the
vitals of the earth quiverinrr.

The pool splashed . . . splashed dully up ... .
and fell back trembling!

"Guess they're blasting in that tunnel," thought
Kipp,^ with a leap. "Here's a prettv howdydo!
Here's a nice, messy business ! Some of that loose
rock will be smashin' in on us!"

Snatching up his lantern he ran for the shaft.

Cut a second crash came, louder, continuous, with
a hollow roar, a sweep of choking dust and suffo-
cating air, with a crash! . . . crash! . . . crash!

1 66

THE NEW DAWN

. like a fuiillade of artillery 1 It came from
the shaft in the fury and ru»h of an avalanche I
Kipp'» heart stood .till 1 Cold sweat broke from
hi, forehead and palms 1 The roof of his mouth be-
came hotl He listened with a sensation of burst-
ing pain in his temples, in his chest, in h.s throat .
Another crash-rocketing— roaring-quakmg through
the earth— another— and another— boundmg from
rock to rock with a blast of dusty air that choked
and blinded Kippl

"Great God!" he shouted. "I here s been a m.s-
takel . They're filling up the shaft! 1 hey

don't know we're down! Saunders will be done
for- and they'll blame me— McGee saw me bring-
ing him here! I told McGee the joke I was gom
to play— " and he rushed through the chokmg dust,
shouting, "Mr. Saunders! Mr. Saunders !"_

But where was the light of the secretary s lan-
tern? Something crashed down overhead, knocked
Kipp's lantern from his hand and smashed the lamp
to atoms. The wick fi/.z-led out like a match m
water. Kipp bounded back with the scream of a
trapped beast, back in the pitchy dark beyond reach
of the falling rocks! There was not a sign of
Saunders. Kipp was alone.

Then Kipp knew. _

It came like the flash of lightnmg that only il-
lumines the greater darkness.

"Great God! This is murder! . . • this is mur-
der!" he sobbed, staggering backward, wringing
his hands. "This is murder! . . . this .s murder!

THE CREED WORKED OUT 167

Then the boom .... boom .... boom of
the rocks roused him! He would not stand there
helpless while that hlackguard filled in this living
gravel He would not live on, to die h\ mrhi-s in
the dark! He would fight his way up. tl'oufjh mt
at every step! ... He would clim^ f,.,t.r th.in
the rocks could fall! . . . He wdl.i rise rrotu
that grave with the marks of their ,' lody rrinic I
Better be killed than starved! . . . And h\ hurled
himself with all the agile strength (. ( a l^asfs last
leap for life!

But it was useless. There was not a i/li'iniK-r ot
daylight at the top of the shaft. The opening was
now filled. The base was solid.

Kipp stumbled off, weak, trembling, sobbing like
a child, with mad hopes from tales he had heard
of men carving their way through solid prison walls.
He felt his pockets; but in changing his clothes hi
had not brought even a knife. The rescue crew, a
dead miner, might have dropped a wrench, or bar.
He went groping slowly through the tunnel way,
feeling along the oozing damp for iron or pick, say-
ing .. . "Great God! . . . This is murder I . . .
This is murder!"

A swish of waters, of waters going slowly, oilily,
treacherously, round and round — arrested him ! It
was the pool! He kneeled forward, beating his
hands impotently against the rocks. Then he tr'cd
to control himself, pressing his hands to his l;e,id.
They were saturated with a gush of warm blood.
He had been cut by the falling rocks.

i!y

1 68 THE NEW DAWN

Surely, when his wife, when McGee, the labor
delegate, missed him, they would think of Shaft lo;
but no— he had told them if he did not return
from the city for six months not to be alarmed.
He would "make the G. C. pay up, if he had to
go to Peru." At that, Kipp fell to the wet rock,
weeping. For the only time in his shallow life he
prayed— prayed in wild ravings, the tragic cry of
the beaten, the crushed, the defeated in life's strug-
gle, the cry that has no meaning but its own hope-
less helplessness!

And who can say that the cry was not registered
somewhere in the great balance scales of cause and
effect, that weigh so finely, so relentlessly, so rc-
gardlessly of time and place and forgetfulness, that
a man often suffers at forty for the . t springing
from the unclean thought planted at twenty? tor,
after praying— expending his excitement— Kipp be-
came calm and did the bravest thing that he had
ever done in all the course of his little-minded, short,
shallow life. On the floor his hand had dangled
over the edge of the pool. He felt the current
sat up . . . threw his hat into the water.
Then, he reached out his hands and felt the water-
soaked thing come sailing round in the current, .t
floated past, came round again, below the surface,
more water-soaked. Though he reached down to
his armpits it did not float round again. It had
been carried away by a current. Where? He
pulled off his smock, ripped it to strands, tied th- i
together, weighted the end with a stone, and dredged

may God blast them
. . blast them to ten

THE CREED WORKED OUT 169

the pool. The string was sucked, drawn, dragged
gradually with irresistible force from his hand
.... and swept away! Kipp sprang up, jerking
off boots and socks.

"If I fail ... if I fail .
down as they've done me
thousand Hells!"

He drew back five paces.

"It's the only chance!"

With a full breath, hands raised and a forward
dash, he dived down ! There was a plunging splash.
Then the pool washed heavily back, with the swirl-
ing .. . swirling ... of the oily black ripples,
round and round, in an endless circle.

A litdc gurgling bubble suckled up and escaped
from the oily surface of the silent pool. And that
was the last of Kipp.

CHAPTER XII

THE CREED IN THE LITTLE MAN
WITH A CONSCIENCE

Midway in the descent, Saunders paused.
There is an old adage to the effect— when in
doubt, don't 1 Unfortunately, it's only applicable
when 'it's not needed; for all that a great deal of
deviltry requires is that the powers making for good-
ness should be quiescent. Perhaps, Saunders paused
because he repented of what he had intended to do;
but if he had not hesitated the thing could not
have happened. _

Far down in the black depths of the mine, a little,
steel-blue flame flickered, shifted, and receded like
a star ray on a misty night. A chill swept up that
seemed to numb his moral faculties to a torpor.
It was like eternal night . . . eternal silence down
there, with only the echo of the Creat Machme-
Force, toiling, driving, outside in the valley. I he
fellow was a fly on the cog . . • that was it . .
this engineer fellow was a gnat monkeying with the
bu7Z-saw of the Machine-Powers! Anyway, who
took note of the thousands, the millions, the ten. o
millions of fool creatures like the engineer fellow.
170

THE CREED IN THE LITTLE MAN ,7,
They were born, and ate, and slept, and, sometimes,

v!^f « r'''"'" """""^ '^' ^°"^ ^°r them!-and
died! What d.d a little sooner, or a little later,
really matter?

A faint far, muffled call, like the tinkle of a tiny
bell .n a dome, or a ghost voice, came up the shaft
with a taunting laugh— "Come on, sir!"

"The fool," muttered Saunders, chilled and
remb ing continuing to clamber painfully down the
steep ladder, "he may tumble into the pool "

But at the foot of the first ladder was a rock
landing vvhere the shaft went out to a ledge and
dropped sheer as a wall. He groped for the edge,
banging his ,antern unhandily. The rock was slimed
with wet. shaking and breathless, he peered over
the nm. The little star flame shone fainter

hnrt M L ''!. '^°"''''' ^"''''^y ^'" '"'^^ came
back blanketed, deadened.

He heard tU drop-drop- drop, cold, dull,
measured, of water trkkling through the rocks It

TM tf \""' .^'^"■*^"" ^'f ^'"s«ing. unfeeling,
as the Machine- / h,ng ouH.-J^. What was life, any-
ways bur a little streak of ligfit gir, round by the
bind darkness?

"K-Pp r he shouted. 'Kipp, you fool !' he hissed
over the ledge I hen to himself, "Ward can do his
own dirty work!" B.t, in the moment that he
hesitated came visions of the blank checks payable
to K.pp in Peru. The little flame below steadied
for an instant, then darted off in the darkness.
i>aunders hstened. There was the drip-drip-

172

THE NEW DAWN

drip, and something more. What was it? Like
a sigh of wind! Kipp had called. Saunders heard
only an ululating whisper, a soft, sibilant lavmg,
the wash as of waiters. It was the pool.

"Kipp! Kipp r shouted the secretary.

A pebble c^me bouncing from the top of the
shaft, a pebble so easiiy started, so impossible to
recall. Some of the gang at the top had stepped
too close. The stone bounded from side to side
with light skipping echoes till it ricochetted down
and strucli the prostrate form of the secretary. He
sprang up with terror, to scrabble up the ladder
with knocking knees. As he climbed the thought—
what if the gang had begun to fill the shaft? Day-
light fell on him like a flood of reality in a night-
mare. The strong bass voice of the foreman was

asking:

"Was it you, sir? You've had a narrow escape!
I knowed vou sent for us to heave her full. Mr.
Kipp bcin'awav, if you hadn't given pertic'ler or-
ders about waitin' I'd 'a' filled her up! I didn't
know no one was such a fool as— as to go down
that dang'rous hole, ii you'll excuse my sayin' so—

sir!" .

"Oh," observed the secretary, staggering to hrm

ground.

"Mr. Kipp hadn't ought to let you go alone, sir!
But Kipp's been bitter against the comp'y since the
accident." .

"Alone!" gasped Ohadiah. "No, 1 certainly
should not have goiic-alonc ! It's used me up.

'fMMnm^'^rMim m^ '-m'

THE CREED IN THE LIITLE MAN ,73

Air was vile. Do any of you happen to know just
^■here Mr. Kipp . . . i,?" asked the secretary, vis-
il)ly chattering and white to the lips.

"Gone to town, sir, about some quarrel with the
compyl Better go and take a drink, sir! It's a
groggy place with memory o' all them dead miners
as 1 seen 'em last. Wull I give the word to heave
her up?

Saunders looked blank. It was so much cj .ier
to set the stone rolling than to stop it half-way

"Heave her up!" ordt-rej the foreman, not wait-
mg for instructions.

.And Saunders smiled a smile with his yellow lips
that was not good to see. Ihen, he hurried to the
bunk house to change his clothes. The changing
was difficult. His hands shook so that he could
scarcely grasp the buttons. He drew a small flask
from his pocket and drained Ir to the dregs. Then,
he jerked the miner's suit oft somehow. When the
sound of falling rocks no longer reached the bunk
house, Saunders was saying— "Thank God, I didn't
doit! I didn't give the order! I could tell Ward
that he suicided; but then, there are the checks for
Peru! I hank God, I didn't do it!"

AW of which— as Saunders knew— was to silence
a voice within that spoke louder than that crashing
thud of rocks hurling down Shaft 10. Saunders had
always succeeded in deceiving others. That was
bad. Then, he began to succeed in hoodwinking

himself. That was tv

himself into beli

orse. Nc
eving that he might

deceived
evade conse-

174

THE NEW DAWN

quencet — or in Christian phraseology, hoodwink
God. That was worst. It was hopeless. It took
for granted that the Ruler of the universe was a
fool; or that you could depend on chance, which is
a contradiction.

When he was at las? dressed, a new and horrible
uncertainty possessed him. If he kept away, that
might create suspicio. , (Suspicion of what — he did
not ask. That is where self-cxcusing is accusing;
a sort of supposition that God winks.) And if he
went out, a fear gripped him by the throat of some-
thing gashed and bruised, climbing from the rocks,
clotted with blood. He had not calculated on that
form forever running before him in the dark; for-
ever hounding him like a shadow in the light. He
shut his eyes. It was still there, a dotted phantom
haunting eternity. Would it always be like that?
He felt as if something had blotted out heaven,
and earth, and sunshine, and life — like a great,
heavy cloud, the cloud of his own consciousness.
Then, the old lines came to memory: "If I make
my bed in Hell. Thou art there." Pshaw 1 The
secretary did not purpose going mad over one fool
the more or less; for the liquor was mounting to
h^ bloodless brain, his colorless lips. Then, like
c- tain types of degenerate criminals who can laugh
at a lynching and crack jokes over their blackest
deeds— he threw his head back and laughed hys-
terically. A devilish suggestion possessed him that
if the echo of that laughter reached Hell it would
frighten the Grim Fear there. You see, Obadiah

THE CREED IN THE LITTLE MAN 175

was still disturbed by a conscience, or a sense of
self-reproach— call it what you willl If he had
not been, he would no more have laughed at Kipp'i
end than he would have at the destruction of a per-
sistent gnat. It was the sense of self-reproach that
made him defiant and hysterical.

He cautiously drew aside the glazed blind of the
bunk house. The rocks were heaped above the
shaft. A miner was jamming at them with a crow-
bar. The heap sagged and sank. Saunders drew
a sigh of relief. More rocks went down. Again,
the man pried with the crow-bar. This time the
pile did not budge. It was solid. It— whatever
"it" meant to the secretary— could never come up,
now. He stopped trembling. He walked across
to the gang with the jaunty swagger of exaggerated
self-possession that always betrays what it hides.
That is— he was self-possessed for the fraction of
a second. Then, his eye fell on a man in blue
overalls, a fellow with shock hair, bushy brows, and
eyes capable of either fanaticism or crime. The
fellow looked at the secretary curiously, meditat-
ively, insolently. All the wild blood of the tiger
surged to the soft-spoken secretary's manner.

"Foreman, nlio is this fellow?"

"I'll answer, boss," cut in the man. "I'm Mc-
Gee, the I. W. W. man sent by the G. S. to the
Truesdale mines to get the men to join our union.
Mebbe, you've forgotten, sir? You were with
KippI"

"Ah— to be sure! Yes— yes!" agreed Obadiah.

m 4

176

THE NEW DAWN

It may be supposed that the trapped tiger does
not lose its cunning. As Saunders hurried to catch
his train he yet took time to call at Kipp's cottage.

"Is Mr. Kipp in?" he languidly asked a sallow
woman with her hair in curl papers.

"How d'y' do, ; ' .^ter Saunders," simpered the
curl papers, with mi : bow and the smirk of a ballet
dancer. "Kipp ■r s goin' t' the city to see you to-
day?" The curl papers smiled very confidentially.

Being nothing, if not confidential, Obadiah smiled
back. "If y' didn't see Kipp, I guess 'e' s' gone
to see you ... to see you, about Peru, you know?"
laughed the curl papers.

"Ah, about Peru, Mrs. Kipp, very good," lisped
Obadiah with a melting smile as he politely lifted
his hat and held it deferentially in his hand. "Did
. . . did ... he say he would object to my giving
you your share ... of the money ... of the sal-
ary that is to go to Peru?" inquired Obadiah softly.

"Why, no — 'e didn't, Mr. Saunders," smiled the
curl papers. Mentally, the curl papers had decided
" 'e was all right: and 'e'd call'd," she guessed, "to
bring the money himself!"

"Vt-ry good .... he has gone to the city to
see me about the mines in Peru, Mrs. Kipp" (You
must know, it was not what he said, but the way he
said it. Mrs. Kipp afterwards told a friend that
"She was tickled all over.") "I'll bring the money
out, myself. Misses Kipp . . . and .... it would
he iust as well not to create jealousy among the
engineers by talking about the little arrangement."

THE CREED IN THE LITTLE MAN ,77

I "?^^■ ■ ' *^"' ' "'"'' ""• '^''■- Saunders,"
laughed the curl papers, knowingly, volubly

"I hope I see you z-ery well, iM,s. Kipp! You

look remnrkcbly well, Mrs. Kipp! Dear me, I

thought K.pp, the lucky d-.g, was older! I shall see

you again, Mrs. Kipp. I hid you good-day.- His

voice lingered softly. So did his look.

Mrs. Kipp confided to a friend afterwards that

Kipp could say >vhat he liked! She didn't care!
Men were always jealous; but Mister Saunders uas
a deJiglitsome gentleman!"

"Say, McGee, he was sort o' sawed-off short
with you, remarked the foreman to the walking
de egate. I thought you were working at Trues
dales mines to get the fellows to join us?"

"So I am; but I came across to fish."

"Ain't it early for fishin'?"

"Not for suckers," said McGee.

"Say, when you're fishin' down there, keep your
eyes open for things, clothes, you know ! Might eit
em on your hook! We had an accident, you
know; less said the better; but there's a current out
to the river irom this shaft somewheres ! So long 1"

PART III
POWER MILITANT

CHAPTER XIII

THE CREED THAT THE GREATER POWER WINS

By the time Mr. Jack Truesdale had finished
dressing, daylight had dispelled all dreams. He
was quite as ready as Ward to ignore all obstacles
to fortune. Woman's influence on man's affairs-
he soliloquized— was like opium: an enchantment at
the beginning, followed by hallucinations and the
sleep of profound indifference that awakened to one
of two things— flatness, or frenzy. In a word, it
was easier to resist a woman's influence away from
her. It was like the opium : you did not realize the
spell till strength to resist was bewitched.

Thirty million wcs a large amount, even as for-
tunes were reckoned at the beginning of the new
century; and the prospect appealed to Truesdale as
strongly as to Ward. It would not all come to
him There were the other shareholders; but such
a dividend would enhance the company's stock so
that it could be Increased a hundred-fold without
the addition of another dollar. The sale of the
178

THE GREATER POWER WINS 179

increased stock would mean a great deal inure to
Mr. Jack 7'ruesdale, personally, than those thirty
millions. Ward had justified the increase of stock
on the ground of affording the buying public an
opportunity to share in the enormous profits. That
opportunity hinged on the promoters selling their
stock; an odd proceeding — as human nature is con-
stituted — considering that the stock was so very
valuable. Ward preferred coin to the beautifully
engrossed shares of his company's stock. The in-
crease in the cost of fuel and steamship rates was
to be so small that it would scarcely be felt by the
pub'ic; and, after all, business was business. It was
neither charity nor religion.

The public must pay high or go cold; and as
Truesdale's comrade of the orchard with the gM
mist had said — there was not much difference be-
tween that and putting a pistol to a man's head while
you picked his pockets. But, then, what was all
business, in its last analysis, but the getting of as
much as possible for as little as possible? Women,
like Madeline, were unfit to deal with complicated
questions. They viewed life too emotionally, too
personally. They would persist in obtruding ques-
tions of a personal nature into things as impersonal
as arithmetic. The new century had another foun-
dation of values than the old narrowness. It was
the survival of the fit — of the strong — the weeding
out of the unfit, the weak. Still, he must not be too
hard on Madeline. She could not shut her eyes to
facts, because she was up against them; because

MICROCOfY RESOlUriON IfST CHART

(ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

1.0 [ee IIIIIM

_ii_ 1"^ i^

^ ^^^ m

11-25 iu 1.6

_^ APPLIED IM/IGE Ine

^^^ 1653 East Main Street,

^■S «OCtlester. Nex York U609 USA

•■^— (?'6) 4ez - OJOO - Phone

^= (716) 288 - 5989 - Fa*

i8o

THE NEW DAWN

she was the underdog, the other dog had no right
to throttle her. Just how he would have felt, if he
had been the underdog, Truesdale did not consider.
He was determined that he — for one — never would
become the underdog. Vaguely, in the back of his
mind, was the belief that the fear of becoming the
underdog was an excellent stimulus to effort: it was
the whip lash of individual effort, ambition, suc-
cess — this pervasive fear of Want: it kept a man
from sinking to the nothingism of the oriental. The
men not stimulated by this fear deserved to be the
underdog, needed the lash of Want to keep them
from reverting to the animalism of the jungle.

Truesdale's offices were on the top story of the
Rookery Building, near the ocean front. A net-
work of electric wires curved within a hand length
of the window by his desk. Day and night, there
was the same humming and monotonous sound.
What was the burden of its endless monotone, the
chant of the wires, rising . . . falling, rising ....
falling, with the rhythmic ebb of a tide? It was
like the chorus of a World of Work to a God of
Traffic, with the roar of the city encompassing the
whole diapason of human effort. Why should One
Man .... one puny man, the feebler for being
alone .... oppose such a Force? . . . Pshaw!
What did women know of the Great World Forces
.... the Machine-Things with the human beings
on the wheels?

Truesdale threw back the roller top of his desk
with a bang, and wheeled his chair for work; yet

THE GREATER POWER WINS i8i

something restrained him sending the acceptance,
which President Ward was expecting. The scruples
of old methods he had cast aside. It was deeper
than scruples. It was the blood of generations; the
hard-headed belief that a great-dcal-of-snmethhig
taken from others for a great-dcal-of-nnthing is akin
to theft; the vague uneasiness of inherited rights
that, if he attacked the rights of others, that might
open the way to a revolutionary attack on his ozvn
vested rights. He explained to himself that the busi-
ness world was a give-and-take affair. Ward's
scheme was a little too much "take" without any
"give."

first, he examined the stock reports of his private
ticker. Truesdale's mines had advanced on the
prospect of consolidation. Slitting open the largest
envelope on his desk he drew out a long stamped
document.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "We are not to be
allowed to stand apart. The . . . fight is

. . . on!"

In response to the touch of the electric button,
a thin, gray-whiskered man of precise manners and
perfectly fitting clothes entered the office.

"Rawlins! What in thunder is the meaning of
this lawsuit? W^hat in thunder have we been tak-
ing coal from the Great Consolidated's tunnels for?"

The manager smiled dryly.

"The meaning — do you ask? They are going to
hit first! They've blundered into our veins; they
are going to protect themselves by suing first." The

l82

THE NEW DAWN

manager spoke in a little, attenuated, sandpapered
voice liice a gramophone — a man with the red-blood
ground out by business Machine. Rawlins glanced
significantly at the stock ticker. "I fancy the suit
will never go to court," he added. "I fancy it's for
a purpose, Mr. Truesdale."

'I see," said Truesdale. "All the stocks took
a jump from the rumor of amalgamation. Ours
are to be hammered. Then .... what?"

7"hc gray-whiskered manager sat down, crossed
his knees, stroked a crease from a trousers leg.

"What next will depend on what yuti decide, Mr.
Truesdale."

"Suppose I do — well? — nothing! Suppose I do
as my forefathers have done before me? Suppose
I stand aloof?"

"Can't do it! Can't play that game!" cut in the
manager, still occupied with the trousers crease.
"Can't stand aloof in this age! If you hang back
with a suit pending, your scattered stock is going to
drop right down to rock bottom with a bang ! The
small investor will go panicky. They'll call you
the wrecker, not Ward. Are you prepared to buy
all the stock that's offered — keep things from touch-
ing rock bottom? If you're not. Ward will do the
buying when things hit bed rock — then — where, do
you think, you are? You are in his grip — that's
where you are! You are the deciding voice in this
thing, now/ All the small investors have made you
their proxy. What are they going to say if your
decision brings an attack from Ward? They're

THE GREATER POWEK WINS 183

going to sell and scuttle out; that's what they're
going to do. And devil taice the hindermost — that's
you ! You can't stand neutral with Ward. It's like
the devil — you've got to fight, or go with him "

"But what would the proxies say to me if I sold
them out to Ward; and they found themselves bil-
lion dollar capitalists, with the dollars

mostly paper and water?"

"That's no concern of yours, Mr. Truesdale!
You make your pile and you crawl out before the
smash comes!"

His opinion of those sentiments Truesdale did
not express. He was aware that he must choose
either war with the likelihood of defeat, or peace at
the price of an old-fashioned and out of date con-
sideration called "honor."

"About this suit, Rawlins? You think it" iluff
to hammer the stocks down? How do you Know
they've been poaching on our ground?"

"A person knows a good deal that can't be proved,
Mr. True- 'ale. When that Kipp fellow, the engi-
neer whi. is dismissed from the Great Consoli-
dated, came to me for work, he offered to sell in-
formation about Ward's mines. The accident hap-
pened. Presto I Kipp is reengaged and — mark,"
the manager paused, glancing sharply at his chief —
"Shaft 10 was filled to the top last week, and Kipp
has disappeared; gone to Peru to examine mines
there."

"It's a damnably ugly piece of business," he mut-
tered, thoroughly convinced that a great-deal-of-

1 84

THE NEW DAWN

something for a great-deal-of-nothing was poor busi-
ness for one side, no matter what the wires said.

"There is one way out of it, True! When 1
couldn't thrash a boy at school, I made a point of
not quarreling with him."

Truesdale heard the wires again.

"We're to beat or be beaten, Rawlins!"

"That's it."

"We were never in a better condition to stand
attack, Rawlins! If we don't advance prices, we
get the trade "

"fVe?" interrupted the manager ironically.
"There will be no 'we' by the time Ward finishes
with you "

"But I tell you we are exceptionally strong.
There is no sense in the small holders selling "

"But I tell yoii they will sell if prices «ag,"
averred Rawlins. "If you break wiih t'le Great
Consolidated, it's a case of the fellow with the most
money winning out. There is no rule to forbid a
foul in this game! Kipp told me the I. W. W.
delegate, McGee, had won over most of your men
already. If Ward's miners strike, yours strike in
sympathy; so you can't play the game alone while
he is shut down ! I tell you neither labor nor capital
can stand apart now! It's get together on both
sides, and light to the death ! Why, for the past
week your salesmen have been followed by Ward's
everywhere, offering lower prices to cut us out, while
the old schedule rules where our men haven't gone!
The G. C. can only keep track of our men in one

THE GREATER POWER WINS 185

way. They are getting reports of shipments from
the railroads. War^ is getting rebates. He is
under-cutting you by what he saves from the rail-
roads. You can't fight that son of thing! It's
a blood-sucking business! While you're floundering
round honorably and in the open, ycur enemy is
sucking your blood by what he saves from the rail-
roads. And Ward has a hand in half the railroads
—how are you going to stop it, or prove it, or get
redress? On the surface, it's all perfectly legal,
understand—!/ is all perfectly legal. By just so
much as he ruins you, are his profits the greater!
And it's all legal, perfectly legal, understand— on
the surface, perfectly legal 1 If I may offer advice,
I'd kow-tow in time, True ! In business, you've got
to get there, no matter how I You don't stand on
ceremony, nor sanctimony either. I'd kow-tow in
time; knuckle under gracefully; secure your pile;
crawl out!"

"Thank you, Rawlins," replied Truesdale shortly,
and the manager left the office.

The blood of the generations, of the vested
rights, of the wealth held as a sacred trust not as a
tyranny, of the inheritance hard-won and hard-held
by three generations— did not course particularly
peacefully through Mr. Jack Truesdale's veins
for some little time after the manager left the of-
fice. "Kow-tow tn time— knuckle under gracefully
—secure your pile— and crawl oh/"— that was the
advice of a life-long servant. Rawlins had voiced
the sentiments of a money-getting age; but they

i86

THE NEW DAWN

were distinctly the sentiments of a servant, the senti-
ments of a cringing reptile morality.

"No — Iiy God I" he exclaimed suddenly, with a
resounding blow of his clenched fist on the roller-
top desk, "I'll— ^<?////"

All the sophistries of high finance were suddenly
eclipsed by the primordial instinct which resents witli
a certain savagery of fury, that possessions hard-
won and honestly held should be wrested away by
a trick. His creed was the creed of the Stroiipr.
That other man must show himself stronger. H':
believed that the great crime of life was to be weak.
He did not purpose being guilty ff that crime. To
his creed of Strength his sudden resolution had
added — Will ! The chance of fortune still allured
him; but across the brightness of its promise fell a
shadow, a shadow of doubt whether the creed of
victory to the Strong would prove satisfying if he
were the vanquished.

A gentle rap sounded from the door.

"Come inl"

The door opened apologetically, and softly closed.
A felted tread crossed the carpet. Ihere was a
lubricating of palms, like a feline licking of cream,
or fur.

"Good morning! Don't let me interrupt," im-
plored the blandishing voice of Obadiah Saunders.

Truesdale wheeled with all the ferocity < f the
primitive man facing stealth. Obadiah's manner
wore a new jauntiness of defiance which betrayed
something concealed. He wriggled and smiled

THE GREATER POWER WINS 187

faintly, and wriggled, and the smile died in a wreath
among perfumed whisicers. He patted a temple
lock into well-licked conformity with the other hairs
of his head. He drew his white hand down his
flossy beard. He fastened and unfastened the top
button of his coat. He pulled his cuff an eighth of
an inch farther down his sleeve, severely contem-
plated the effect, and shoved it back. Conversation
was not opening auspiciously. Evidently, this
young man would have to "be drawn." And the
drawing must be done "judiciously." Obadiah
never forgot the keynote of his morality.

Mr. Saunders expressed the mild hope that Mr.
Truesdale had not taken offence from the service
of the notice about the lawsuit, nodding at the open
envelope, and rubbing invisible dust from his coat.

Mr. Truesdale smiled. Not the slightest of-
fence; business was business — an expression which
emboldened Obadiah Saunders.

If Mr. Truesdale would come over to the office
of the Great Consolidated the little matter could
easily be arranged — this with a resigned folding of
the confidential secretary's hands.

But Mr. Truesdale struck a match to light a
cigar without vouching any reply.

"It was all the fault of that blockhead of an
attorney," complained the secretary in aggrieved
voice. "The president had forgotten to inform
the attorney of — of," Obadiah hemmed and drew
his hand through his beard, "of the little arrange-
ment among the three companies."

i88

THE NliVV DAWN

Trues Jale asked Obadiah if he would have a
cigar.

"If you will ol)ser\, the notice you will see that
the suit is dated before the agreement." The secre-
tary licked his lips.

Truesdale smiled to see that the date lied as un-
blushingly as the secretary.

Saunders leaned confidentially nearer.

"I have not been authorized to tell you I In
fact, it is hardly fair to President Ward for me to
tell you- but, in passing, I took the liberty of calling
to give you a friendly tip."

Truesdale removed his cigar.

"When you have finished running all round it,
Saunders, call again and tell me what you have to
say."

Mr. Saunders sat back with a jerk.

"Mr. Truesdale, the other companies had prac-
tically closed on the understanding you would come
in."

"That was a misunderstanding." Truesdale pre-
pared to go on opening his letters.

"It's a serious blow to find you have changed
your mind," bridled the secretary.

"I haven't! It would be a serious blow to the
public if I did!"

"Public? Come! Come! Are you not a part of
the public? Your shareholders are an iviportant
part of the public." Obadiah prided himself on
words that had— as he put it— "a sting in their
tail."

THE G-FATER POWER WINS 189

The young man's hands twitched. He rccoe-
m/.cd the threat against the stock of his company.
I he dulcet tones continued pleading

"Considered judiciously, wlien you forward your
««•« interests, you forward the interests of the pub-

It was a trifle; but the secretary observed that
the sleeve of Iruesdale's coat suddenly exposed an
increase of white ?uft.

"Do you suppose that we co ihi do all we do for
chanty, unless we looked after orr own interests

"Hm!" said 'I'rucsdale.

"Speaking frankly " continued the confiden-

tial man.

"Hm!" smiled Truesdale; "in the history of a
somewnat ancient world, charity has always been
somewhat cheaper than justice."

"Our companies would value a square statement
of your attitude."

"I'd value a frank statement on that mining suit,
myself," retorted the other. "You have prospered
without me m the past. You are amply able to
do so ,n the future— that is my answer."

Amply," softly assented S-unders with a smile,
but, can ynu prosper withoui us?"
Something feline glinted from the beady eves,
from the quiet, smiling treachery.

"Is that what you came to say?" demanded
' ruesdale.

"That is what I say, now r am here." Saunders

190

THE NEW DAWN

rose languorously. "By hoIdinR back, you are in-
terfering with our plans; pnd, even for interference,
it's customary to rentier a riuid pro quo." He paused
at the door, expectant of results.

Again, the white cuff of the young man's sleeve
shot down.

"Speaking judiciously, Mr. Truesdale "

"Oh, cut it short, Saunders; but, tell me — if it's
judicious — where — is — Kippf"

And Obadiah backed out yellow to the lips, mut-
tering of "Peru."

.And for the rest of the day Truesdale went about
light h<artcdly. Once, he took out a memorandum
book and wrote from memory some words of a
famous lecture that he had heard. The words were
these:

"He, for one, will fight, and ever fight, whatever the is-
sue. . . .

"He hears the loud yelp of the Fenis wolf coming ever
nearer. . . .

"Ht sees the powers of ancient darkness gathering stonily
imminent. . . .

"On the face of f^oki. the smile of triumph. . . .

"No hope hut the impending doom; yet undaunted he
goes forth, mi,;htier in his mood than the dements that seek
to engulf him."

CHAPTER XIV

THE CREKI) I\ A VVIFE

Family dinner was a ponderous affair at the
Wards'. Ward nt/er confided business to his wife,
;uul Inisiness was never absent from his mind. When
the f-n shyness of the big, forceful man 'ho was
her husband had worn off, a cynical set of the
humorous relieved Mrs. Ward from futile endeav-
ors to nuike talk; but there is a limit to a sense of
the humorous; and Mrs. Wa.d gave over the ex-
periment of seeing for how many meals in succession
her husband and herself could sit down without a
single remark. She was afraid to bring youth and
light and laughter to enliven their dull lives; for
they did not come into his scheme of cultivating
only what was of advantage. Once, at the end of
such an experiment, she had thrown down her armoi
of disdain with the somewhat unexpected question:
"Did it ever occur to you, Tom, that meals were
for something b.-sides eating?"

"What's that.?" returned Ward, setting down his
wine glass and pushing some salted almonds across
to his wife. He had been absently scanning a tele-
gram. "Meals for something besit

ating? No

igi

192

THE NEW DAWN

— it never did; and a deal of good time eating
wastes, too."

Mrs. Ward toyed with her rings, letting the red
light of the heavily shaded chandeliers fall at dif-
ferent angles on her engagement ring. It was a
pigeon-blood ruby of a bean-size, full of fiery rays
that eclipsed the plain wedding band below.

"I won'ler," she said quietly, with a flash of
amusement, "I woiider, I really do wonder why
men like you ever marry."

Ward crumpled the telegram in his hand and
looked across the table to see tears on the heavy
lashes of his wife's averted eyes.

"Pshaw — Louie! What is there to bother
about?"

'"That is just it, Tom ! There is nothing — abso-
lutely nothing! I have drawn a blank!"

If she had said "drawn a blank check," Ward
could have understood; for, in matters of money,
blank checks were what his wife enjoyed with the
option of filling in any amount. What more could
a woman want? He strummed impatiently on the
table, studying her face. White as marble in the
red light of the chandeliers, framed in the fluff of
soft, black hair, with the blue reticulation of veins
showiiijT plainly in temples and quivering lips and
neck held at the poise of unbreakable pride, and
white hands almost diaphanous in the reflection of
a near candle — Ward's wife was a picture, and
Ward was a good judge of pictures. He decided
that, even if she had what he mentally called "tan-

THE CREED IN A WIFE ,93

trums," she was worth them. What he said was
altogether different.

"I'm hanged if I know what ails you, Louie!
^ou are a spoiled child, and want fondling, and
actmg, and mat.nee heroics! You are the most beau-
tiful woman I have ever seen! You have every-
thmg money can buy; and there you sit-moping!
There are various ways of earning a living It
seems to me you earn a good one very easily I
know women who earn a harder living for less
money." ^

The tears on Mrs. Ward's face vanished in one
.lash from the lifting eyelids. She laughed softly.

f.Jr. ?"^^' 'hat his flattery had pleased.
That s right! Cheer up! It's nothing but dol-
druns I If you are lonely, have people in ! Do any-
thing ! But, good gracious, Louie, don't dump dow-n
m a heap! You don't see how it spoils your ap-
pearance I want you to be happy, but I haveiVt
time to play the part of a matinee hero to a tragedy
queen Heroics, and broken hearts, and man mak
mg a foot-stool of iiimself-not in my line, Louie!

happy!"'"" ""^'""'"^ ^"" '"'' '^" '"'" '""''' ''""

'Thank you," she laughed, rising with a strange
light in her dark eyes.

Ward opened the door for her to pass out, and
closed It ^vith a sigh of relief. The majestic sweep

h ""^''^'^■""^^■""^ ^coin w. s altogether missed
oy the big man.

Of all things," he

inated over his cigar,

194

THE NEW DAWN

woman's moods. No matter — it's only a piece of
acting. Some women would do the play-act busi-
ness at a funeral." And, forthwith, he reopened the
telegram.

With Mrs. Ward the effect was deeper. This
was not the part of which she had dreamed when
she became the great man's bride. If the truth
could be told in very homely comparison, I suspect
the part that she intended to play was somewhat
similar to the animal tamer of a Nubian lion, only
on a very much more sumptuous and dazzling scale.
The scale was sumptuous enough, but the lion would
not perform. The idea that she had any service
to perform, or owed any duty to life other than the
one for which she had been bought — never entered
her mind.

Mrs. Ward was always looking for effects, and
exaggerating them, and fingering their ramifications
to every fiber of her being. If she had had a con-
fidante, she would probably have dated a certain
hardening process from that quarrel over the dinner
table. She thought much to herself of "dead
hopes," which she called "ashes of roses." Never-
theless, ashes of roses are hard to distinguish from
the dry-rot of vegetable decay caused by a very
small worm. The first visible effects were that she
openly sought other companionship than her hus-
band's. Society looked askance. Society got in the
habit of watching. Then, society talked out loud;
but as lo, g as Mrs. Ward kept on the safe side of
the borderland, "kept people guessing" — as she de-

THE CREED IN A WIFE ,95

scribed it-she lost neither popularity nor notoriety
rou can always depend on a saint, and you can al-
ways depend on a knave, but there is a piquancy, an
element of provoking surprise in watching the in-
determinate mortal. You can't help wondering on
wh.ch s.de of the line the alternate veerings will
finally drop.

Mrs. Ward's latest fad was Madeline Connor
Who was she? Society did not know— one form
of agnosticism not fashionable unless gilt-edged
Where did she come from? From a nondescript
studio behind an art dealer's store. Society shook
Its head. She might be anybody-^h^^nccs against
her being somebody- chances were— a «obody!
ff hat dxd she do? Oh, she retouched pictures and
painted 'hingamabobs for the dealer to put in his
window, you know; and, of course, the dealer gave
her the studio rent free. All of which was very
meritonous, but, like religion, not a credential,
finally, someone ascertained that Madeline Con-
nor's father had been one of the men ruined by
Wards stock speculations. Then, society knew.
That was it. Mrs. Ward was making up for ruin
wrought by "high finance"; and Madeline Connor
was forgiven for being "taken up" by Mrs. Ward
But there is always a little venom generated by
much wagging of tongues, and some said "Mrs
Ward had a deeper game."

All unconscious, Madeline Connor sat at the din-
ner table of the new Ward mansion. Her intimacy
with Mrs. Ward had begun by a chance remark

196 THE NEW DAWN

of Hebden that he had seen what was his ideal of
a young girl in a studio behind the art store. Partly
to learn what his ideal might be, partly with an
amused suspicion that the remark was to pique jeal-
ousy, the languid Mrs. Ward, who never as much
as lifted a haughty hand to bring the herd to her
feet, one afternoon found herself in the studio at
the rear of the art store. She had been quite pre-
pared for the milliners' doll type of man-catcher:
doll hair, palpably bleached; doll blue eyes that
rolled up at you with the blank innocence of eyes
on hinges; doll mouth with the softness of the little,
clinging, kissable things that wind round men's
hearts before the hearts know cables from cob-
webs; and, above all, milliners' ddll manners, with a
lisp and sort of daintiness that is a cut between
the duchess airs of a lady's maid and the supple
niceness of a dancing master; or perhaps, the
haughty grand duchess disdain of a waitress in a
country hotel. That is what Mrs. Ward expected.
What she saw was the cameo-classic type, with
fire in the hair, and fire m the frank, straightfor-
ward eyes, and fire in the hectic color that flushed
and waned to each breath, and fire in the upright,
clean-cut aloofness of poise in head and limb. 1 he
milliners' doll manners, that were to be a cut be-
tween the lady's maid and the dancing master, were
of a kind that neither wheedled nor demanded rec-
ognition, but received it with absolute unconscious-
ness. Mrs. Ward's expectations went blank for
five full minutes after enterinp; the studio. She

THE CREED IN A WIFE 197

gave a little inarticulate gasp behind her lace hand-
kerchief, but explained that she had called to buy
two pictures of a little ragged boy with bare feet,
which brought such a Hash of pleasure to the gray
eyes of the artist that Mrs. Ward felt an uncom-
fortable sense of smailness.

"Oh, the pictures of Budd? He is my best
model."

Some faces radiate a smile without the change
of a single feature. Such a smile came over Made-
line's face now. Mentally, Mrs. Ward concluded
that the girl was careful not to wrinkle her won-
derful skin. The next moment Mrs. Ward had
that uncomfortable sense ut smailness for having
harbored the thought. In gliding from picture to
picture of the artist's work, she studied the artist.
"Mr. Hebden is a great admirer of your work?"
she ventured with a quick glance.
"I don't know him," said the girl.
Mrs. Ward turned the answer over, and felt that
sense of shrinkage come again.

"I wonder," she said doubtfully, "which of these
pictures it was that he liked?"

"I have never seen — what did you say his name
was? '

"Ah," said Mrs. Ward, looking straight into the
girl's eyes with no trace of hauteur. Something
had first disarmed, then softened, her disdain. "I
suppose," she added, very gently, with a curious
vibration of dead chords in her nature, "I suppose
you care more for your work than anything on

198

THE NEW DAWN

earth? There is so much sunligl.t, so much clear-
ness, such a sense of buoyant, undistrustful freedom
in your work?"

"Yes, I do. I think I care more for my work
than anything else — anything but my friends, of
course."

Mrs. Ward looked at the girl. In less than five
minutes she had learned that one did not need to
turn this girl's answers inside out for their mean-
ing. In less than five minutes her surprise had
given place to distrust, her distrust to a sense of
self-contempt, her self-contempt to that curious vi-
bration of dead chords. When she left the studio,
Mrs. Ward shook hands without exactly knowing
why.

"I wish so much," she said lingeringly, "that it
might be possible for you to hang these pictures in
my own sittinc; room. The light makes such ; lif-
ference?"

"Why, I can, if you wish."

But, when Mrs. Ward had gone, a feeling of
something disingenuou" crept over the girl ; and she
wrote a note of excuse for not going to hang the
pictures.

Mrs. W?.rd fingered the note under the light of a
Venetian candle in her own room. The paper ex-
haled the faint odor of fresh flowers — not sachet.
Mrs. Ward reread the note.

"That child — what is it about her? I wonder
really why she refused? The question is not who
is she, but what is she. I wonder did he say that

THE CREED IN A WIFE 199

to make me jealous? Jealous? What fools men
are! What would he do if I deliberately brought
them together?" and Mrs. Ward wandered off to
9 drama of real life, where a woman who had the
world at her knees was torn between the emotions
of an imaginary duty to a man she did not love,
and an imaginary sacrifice of the man who loved
her. The rustle of the rose-scented note recalled
her. She smiled. "I'm really snubbed — am I? I
don't take snubs gracefully. I'll — conquer!"

In setting herself to add one more worshiper to
her shrine, Mrs. Ward found herself baffled, then
interested, and finally, to the intense surprise of her
own languid emotions, attracted by one who was
the antithesis of herself. Some are as fond of pok-
ing fire when they are grown up as in childhood.
Fire would not be fire without burns. It was so
with Mrs. Ward. The novelty of openly taking
for her friend the girl brought to her notice by
an attempt to arouse jealousy added zest. It
afforded imaginary dreams of an endless variety,
in which Mrs. Ward raveied and unraveled, and
enraveled, motives with emotions till both motives
and emotions were mixed.

In fingering over her emotions, she could not have
told what induced her to ask Madeline to the dull
family dinner. Ward had invited Colonel Dillon,
whom she always honored by an indifference that
was contempt. She countered by inviting the young
artist, of whom her husband was doubtful. But,
there was another reason which her self-searchino-

soo

THE NEW DAWN

did not drtw out. She wished to display Madeline
at the reception. She was quite sure of the artist
acquitting herself in the studio, or the suburban
cottage where she lived. Simplicity and candor had
an ideal setting in those surroundings; but how
would they show off at an affair among Paris
gowns ?

Mrs. Ward had received three shocks to her ex-
pectations from Madel'ne Connor. She received
the first that afternoon in the studio. The second
came in the delicate rebuff of the note; but that had
been overcome; for Madeline not only hung the two
pictures in the boudoir, but supervised the hanging
of the entire art gallery. The third surprise came
when Mrs. Ward found herself f.scinated instead
of fascinating. The fourth shock was on the night
of the family dinner. She had asked herself
how the girl would come. How did not refer to the
carriage. Mrs. Ward had sent her own sleigh to
the cottage. It referred to dress. By that, Mrs.
Ward could gauge prospects for the reception. Mrs.
Ward came straight from her own boudoir as Made-
line entered the dressing room. The girl had
thrown off her cloak and was gowned in a plain white
silk of a clinging amplitude, that gave her an almost
Grecian appearance. It was without any ornamenta-
tion whatever, except a long black sash and some
very old lace at throat and hands; but what riveted
Mrs. Ward's attention was a necklace of rubies,
each larger than her own pigeon-blood; Burma

THE CREED IN A WIKK

201

rubies of a deep, wine tone, rich red, and fiery as
sunlight.

Mrs. Ward passed no remarks. Madeline was
not the sort to receive milliners' doll compliments.
Mrs. Ward took her by the hand and stood back to
survey her.

"What?" asked the other, with the hectic spots
at play. "Am I too early? If one starts on time
the cars are sure to jam you half an hour late. I
told your man to drive fast. The frost is so splen-
did on one's face. It was like a drink of pure . . .
water; and the night is full of Jtars."

"So are your eyes, dear," said Mrs. Ward, kiss-
ing her, and, nestling one hand in Madeline's, she
led the girl down the broad stairway, proudly justi-
fied.

"You must tell me how you like the dining room.
I planned the decorations myself," confided Mrs.
Ward.

Colonel Dillon received introductions to women
with a wheezy compliment and embarrassingly pro-
longed stare. His stare wandered over Madeline;
and, if I must tell what this ornate gentleman with
glare fobs and flash studs thought of the artist, his
verdict was that "her dress was too niglit-gowny."
He would have preferred more flare to the size,
more glare, bigger spots of lighter color, and puffs
and frills and ribbons and drapes. That is — his
verdict was "too night-gowny" until his eyes goggled
over her figure to the rubies. Then he folded his
hands across the rotundity of his white waistcoat — ■

203

THE NEW DAWN

jnd looked! Introductions to women were curt
matters for Ward, but his narrowed eyes glanced
at her rubies once and at Madeline Conner twice.
He was satisfied. His wife's condescension was
being expended where it was worth while, and he
at once plunged into a business discussion with the
colonel, while Mrs. Ward occupied the attention of
her guest.

"Well, tell me how you like my plans? You
know, I want really to have your honest opinion —
no compliments."

"Let me look!" The girl's glance flitted from
the rose-wood table with its glare of cut glass and
plate and candlesticks to the china cabinet and
racks of rare porcelain. The paneling was in hand-
carved woods — dryads and fauns and bacchantes.
Instead of the walls meeting the ceiling in a curved
fresco, enormous beams of carved oak bounded and
spanned the ceiling, cutting it in squares. The
squares were ceiled in red cedar. An old-fashioned
black gallery, taken from some European castle,
ran across one end of the room. Between the pil-
lars were tapestries of an oriental design — languid
queens being served with flagons, Cleopatras in
barges, goddesses in rose gardens. French windows
opened to a conservatory on one side.

"I like it! It isn't the awful junk-shop of bric-
a-brac one sees so often I 1 like it very much ! It's
so free from flimsy stucco. It is so strong. That
gallery must have come from some old drinking

THE CREKD I\ A WIFE ,03

apoplectic and purple, ht^U-a e^ '^^"l^^
oysters to crook a shaking Hn.er in W.rt

stltl ' d»';dy-prnt green from school, to
stand in the way?" he husked.

"I don't want this strike on, Dillon until th-
new stock's off the bat," returned Ward

fo „ "' /""'^"^ 8"t to clinch his concern-you've got
to put him out of the way I" ^

'That's all right," warned Ward, giving the belli-
cose colonel a significant Io<-'^. ^

The red face aboNc the rotundity of the white
waistcoat slowly revolved till its Li t r drancy
beamed on Mrs. Ward. The little white ey I
goggled apoplectically. ^

"We're laying campaign," he gurgled huskily
laymg campaign, Mrs. Ward-blow a m fup

vicio'rs."' ^^''■' • • • ^"'^ '" ^'"^ ■^dies.'thc

A gurgling cachination that was meant for a com-

p men accompanied this announcement. Z.

of the f "? """''^ °" ''" P'^'^' ''"' the warmth
of the colonel atoned for frost in his hostess

Love your enemies, you know, Mrs Wanit If
they slap one cheek-as I was telling wLd-givc

804

lllli NKVV DAWN

'em 'other! 1 say — give 'cm both cheeks, both
hands, both feet — and a boost on the run t"

With which charitable sentiment, accompanied by
an ogle and reddening of the wattles, th; colonel
slowly swivelcd his revolving person back in the
direction of his host.

There was a slight silence, broken by Mrs. Ward.

"Yes — you are rightl Saxon warriors planned
raids under that gallery. Times and manners
change, but the conqueror plans his conquests just
the same. You don't like the tapestries? I watched
your face as you looked at them. What is it?"

"It isn't that I don't admire them. They are
very beaufiful. They simply don't appeal to my
fancy. They give me a sens"; of smothered air,
of a garden where exotics become heavy from lack
of wind, 'i'hcy are too voluptuous for me, too much
like a Turkish harem — all sense, delight, and lan-
guor, and soft winds, and rose beds. I like action,
beauty of motion. I wish they would get up and
do things — those hea\y-cyed goddesses. They are
like a fondling caress — it palls I"

"Oh!" smiled the other. "Fancy those soft,
warm, lazy goddesses sunning in the blast of a north
wind?"

Madeline saw the pallor of her com;^anion's fore-
head become white and the eyelids droop. The
words came in a soft whisper, like an nsp from the
flowers of the tapestried wail. "Madeline — tell me,
you, who are so honest and scorn to shut your eyes
to things — tell me, jus', what — what is the difference

THE CRKED IN A WII !•;

20$

between those lawless warriors long ago and —
that?" She nodded in the ilircction of her hus-
band. "What is the difference hetw.-en those vo.
luptuous goddesses on the tapestry hought for a
price, and — my life? We're both utterly useless;

good for nothing, but sense pleasure

.... sunning ourselves in fair weather!"

Ward was sitting sideways to the table, forgetful
of his food, gazing out through the I'rench window
to the conservatory with eyes that saw no da-vers.
Colonel Dillon's white-lashed eyes were glued to
Ward's face, the short temples, the flat nose, the
pursed lips, the creased chin, silhouetted in porcine
profile.

"Traders on floor tell me fhey've picked up all
the loose holdings," Dillon was saying. "That
pretty nearly gives us the whip handle, as I make
it out. Now, bring on the strike 1 When his stock
drops — you've got him! By George, W»rd, I'd
pulverize him so he'd not make dust for a bone
yard! If you find out a man's goin' t' hit you,
knock him down first. Knock him down again.
Unless he's willing to crawl off to a hole, keep him
knocked down! That's what F say." The colonel
wheezed hard, coughed, became purple, coughed
again.

Perhaps, we see the baron raiders of long ago
picturesqi-ely because they are at a distance. Per-
haps, Saxon warriors boasting in their cups of their
harems and their killings might have aroused the
same repulsion as Madeline Connor felt listening to

206

THr NEW DAWN

the porcine financier planning a rival's overthrow.
Again, the whisper stole on Madeline like an asp
from the flowers of the tapestry.

"You see, dear, wives are only a pawn in their
game." Disdain was in the thin, curling lips, the
arch of the lifted brows, the poise of the head. "We
are only goods and chattels, too, bought for a price I
Think of the days of chivalry, when men fought for
honor and truth's sake without reward — then listen
to our modern chivalry. We would crucify Christ
if He stood in the way, and donate brokerage fees
to the church 1"

A stab of pain, followed by a wave of pity, came
to Madeline Connor. Our beds are none the softer
because we made them ourselves. Madeline ("onnor
did not think of the words. She thought only of the
great unhappiness — self-tortured, gnawing, worm-
like — that must underlie such words and must ulti-
mately undermine character. She was glad when
the dinner was over and Mrs. Ward led the way to
the fireplace of the art gallery, leaving the men over
their glasses. With no light but the hearth, Mrs.
Ward motioned Madeline to an armchair, tossed
pillows in a heap on the floor, and threw herself
before the fire with her face on her arm across the
girl's knee.

No word was said; but the silence was fraught
v;ith a meaning deeper than words. Her life was
very unhappy, then, this woman's, with all the hom-
age and luxury that money could buy. Her life was
loveless, cold, hard, colorless, flat, this woman, who

THE CREED IN A WIFE 207

was the wife of the great financier; and disdain could
cover a breaking heart; and coldness, hot revolt- and
hardness, gnawing self-torture; and defiance, a rash-
ness that might risk all. Whether that unhappiness
were merited or not, it was enough that its shadow
fell across this life like an ambushed danger; and
JVladclinc glanced from the fire to see Mrs. Ward's
face upturned questioningly.

''Madeline— tell me— tell me honestly— is there
such a thing as pure love; or is all love but a lusting
for self— disguised, of course, but just a greed of
something for self ?"

And Madeline Connor felt as if the danger had
sprung full-formcd, bodily and menacingly, from
the shadow of that unhappiness. The hearth logs
crashed down; and, when the flame leaped up again
Mrs. Ward still waited. ^ ^ '

"Why don't you answer?"

"Because I am sorry you could ever have had any
experience to make you ask that; I am sorry you
haven t the answer so surely in your own heart that
you could neve.- ask the question."

"Perhaps," mused Mrs. Ward, "perhaps I have
the answer in my own heart."

There was a long silence, boch women gazing in
the fire.

"Mrs. Ward," burst out Madeline, "a precipice
IS none the less a precipice because there are flowers
on the edge."

"Are you afraid of me going over?" laughed
Mrs. Ward.

208

THE NEW DAWN

"No; but if you were picking flowers near the
edge somebody might push you over. You like
playing on edges. You haven't enough real interests
in life to keep you from having fun on the edges of
things."

Mrs. Ward broke into a peal of almost girlish
laughter.

"You are delicious," she said. " Do you know
that half the women in the world envy me?"
'I don't," retorted the girl bluntly.

Mrs. Ward laughed again and bega' playing with
Madeline's hands. Again that curious instinct of
ambushed danger menacing from the shadowy back-
ground of unhappiness :tirred the girl vaguely. "I
wish you would promise me something." She be-
gan: "If ever you are in danger, or perplexity "

But Mrs. Ward broke in with a laugh.

"I am to come and dump all my woes round your
neck. Well, I promise."

"But it isn't that in the least. There's a note like
a discord — you frighten me the way you talk "

"Then we'll not talk of it any more. You will
come to the reception? I want Mr. Hebden to
see you "

"Is Mr. Hebden married?"

"Now, 1 know he's been making love to you. No
— it's his mother. Dorvai is not married; but it
isn't the fault of candidates for the position."

"You needn't think he sits for a portrait without
my knowing that. More women come the day that
he sits for a portrait than all the rest of the weekl"

THE CREED IN A WIFE 209

"Oh; is it his o«;« portrait? I didn't — I thought
it was the copy of a photograph."

"Why did you think that?"
^ "Why, he said— dear me!— what did he say?
I've forgotten all about it!"

Mrs. Ward broke off suddenly and toyed with
her rings.

"There is something you should know about Dor-
val, if — if ' . hasn't told you?"

There was a caress in the softness of the voice,
in the attitude at the girl's feet, in the long silence,
in the warmth of the dim gallery. Mrs. Ward was
in her element, weaving romantic possibilities, finger-
ing her emotions to the outermost end of each fiber.

"He has told me nothing but the usual stuff such
men say to women. You know what such men say
to every woman. You know he doesn't mean it."

"Did you tell him he didn't mean it?"

"I asked him why no man since Ada-n ha;;
thought of anything new."

"It must be a new sensation for Dorval Hebden,"
laughed Mrs. Ward. She toyed with her rings.
"Perhaps it isn't necessary to tell it," she added.
"You might only misjudge my motives."

Th girl bolted upright with an abruptness that
discounted grace.

"IVhy do you say a thing like that? fFhy do you
go wriggling in and out among motives? IFhy
should you think that I think that you think — You
make me dizzy! It's like a dancing dervish who
keeps whirling round himself till your eyes ache

a 10

THE NEW DAWN

looking! Forgive me 1 What was it I should know
about Mr. Hebden?"

And both laughed.

Again the long silence and the toying with the
rings and .he play of strange lights about the lips.

"Very well," said Mrs. Ward, wheeling to face
the girl. "As I introduced hini to you, I'll tell you.
He's the great-grandson of a German prince, Made-
line, with morganatic selfishness in his veins; and
his mother will never see him marry an American
girl — that is all!"

"Why do you want Mrs. Hebden to see me?"

The question took Mrs. Ward off guard. She
could not very well explain that she wanted to side-
step gooiip about herself by publicly showing Heb-
den and Madeline together at her own reception.

"Anyway," the girl went on, "I don't see ho-w that
information concerns my relations with Mr. Heb-
den."

A quick step crossed the gallery. A figure took
form in the shadows so unexpectedly that, for a
moment, Madeline Connor thought the menacing
danger of her vague intuitions had emerged from
the dark.

"Who is talking about me there?" demanded Mr.
Dorval Hebden himself. "Don't move! Don't let
me spoil it! ' He came to the fireplace smiling non-
chalantly. "You make a picture there, you two — a
picture in black and white, with the red glow about
like a master canvas ! Don't mov . ! May I j^in
you?"

THE CREED IK A WIFE m

And Mrs. Ward did not fail to note that his
glance rested on the white of the picture longer than
on the black.

"Ccme, now, what were you talking about?" re-
iterated Hebden. "I know that I heard my name?"
How much more did he hear?" thought Mrs
Ward; but she clinched both hands round her knees
and met the challenge.

"I had just asked Madeline whether love were
ever anything but a mask for self. What do yo„
thmk, Mr. Hebden?"

If NIr. Dorval Hebden had said what he thought
he would have answered that "a woman could dare
too much"; but that challenge in connection with his
own name put the caution of his manhood on guard-
and, standing back among the shadows, he made no
haste to answer.

"And what did Miss Connor say?" safely re-
plied M.-. Dorval Hebden.

"Oh, Madeline has such a low opinion of love,
she thr.iks it should be put under lock and key."
"Ah," said Mr. Dorval Hebden.
He knew that note of recklessness and took his
bearings like a craft in shifty currents.

"Mr. Ward has just told me that that boy of ours
-your m-.del, Miss C, .inor— Budd of the rags and
bare feet, is becoming a little crackerjack of a
worker in the Great Consolidated."

m arched brows lifted. The thin lips curled.

He sees you are not interested in love, Madeline ■

but you are in little ragged boys; so he takes you at

212

I'UK NLVV DAWN

your weakest point. That's a specialty of Dor-
val's."

"If she thinks that," thought Madeline, "why
does she keep him for her friend?" but the girl was
not old enough to answer that questio: .

CHAPTER XV

THE CREED WORKED OUT BY PLEASURE SEEKERS

the g,eat General Stake, which was to paralyze all
ndustry and compel capital to hand ove'r alHndu"
try to abor, was a man whose mind, like h,s creed
recogn.zed neither race, creed, nor color. Had S
amb,t,ons rece.ved a different bent earlier he migh
have become the same type as V/ard. There was

aw ofTheThf "^r:^"""' °' '""^y- *he hard set
aw of the fighter relymg on brute strength, on the
argument of overpowering force; but, where Ward'
eyes were cold calculating, unemotional, the labo
leaders were b.g of pupil, glowing with a fanati
.sm that m.ght lead to heroism or cLe. Both m „
had he same a.m-Power; but Ward acted in^he
behef that he served the race best by serving Self
first. McGee believed that he served Self bit by

oSaf :, ""T'- "^^'"^ '■''^" ''--'f' Ward
scoffed at class distinctions and considered that any

masses. McGee had a certain conviction that a poor
man ,, ,3 ,,, ^.e , member of the community

a nch man^ He did not say it in so many worj

but beneath the fireworks of all his fulminaLs was'

ai4

THE NEW DAWN

the deep-rooted, almost childish, belief that all rich
people were thieves, or the heirs of thieves, and all
poor people, poor through no fault of their own.

The odd thing was that both men aimed at
Power in the same way. Ward called it "consolida
tioii," "amalgamation," "domination." McGec
called it union — Union — and yet again. Union. If
all workers who worked with their hands — McGee
took no account of men and women who worked
with their heads — if all workers, simultaneously all
over the world, of every nation and every color, re-
fused to work, there would result the Great General
Strike, the Great Social Revolution, and Capital
must capitulate bloodlessly. Labor would, at one
stroke of the pen, own the accumulated resu j of
generations of toil and savings and thievery. Capi-
tal must take off its dinner coat and go to work in
shirt sleeves or — go hungry. McGee always
laughed when he came to this climax of his reason-
ing. Ward looked out on life and saw a jubilant
battleground for the Strong (the Weak were not
fit to survive, anyway; better perish and quit) with
countless hosts on both sides commanded by one
clear-cut, towering figure — the Victor! McGee
looked out on life and saw ragged armies, listless,
laggard, straggling, restless with pain of their own
misdeeds and their own inheritance, restless with
hunger and discontent — if to blame, so much the sad-
der; if numb, so much the n.ore tragic, like the de-
lirious fever patient, so much the needier for the
Christ ministrations of help — Demos, wild-eyed

THE CREED WORKED OUT 9,5

and riotous wandering, groping aimlessly to a solu-
lon not to be found, from a Hell age, old as vert

;".t"''"'''^p~'^'»'«-p'"«-Ha7p:^

So stood the two men before the judgment seat

a.ms for Self merged m the public good; and where

l-r bell ? It was the ethics of I lunger pitted affainst
the eth,cs of Power; and an Unseen H d-fa ."d

h^th r °^,^°J— °-J the little human figures
nither and thither. n^'y-'

Ward's singleness of purpose was un exclusion of
purpose that shut out all aims but one-Self Mc-
Gees wideness of aim included work and enquiries
of an amazing detail, including all men of all cIo
and a I creeds Within the short time this narratle
records he had been a section hand in the Truesd L
mines, a tunnel foreman under Kipp the engineer in
he Great Consolidated, and a man of no visible oc-
cupation in the saloons of the water front in Lower

doff?.' , :T '^' ^'''' t:onsolidated offices he
Joffed his fedora ,n response to a curt nod from
Saunders. Sam McGee bit off a piece of tobacco
meditatively. "Guess I give Lady Macbeth a ba"
?rd"ne.r- '"°"'" ^""' *"='" ''='- -"^ before
His next acquaintances were two of the variety
known as "hoboes," who had not a lazy inch in the r
body but were chronically tired, and now rested
themselves on a street corner where a crowd of peo-

3l6

THE NEW DAWN

pie usually transferred from car to car. Sam Mc-
Gee did not doff his hat to these acquaintances.
He did not speak. One of the hoboes slouched his
hat lower and coughed. McGee cleared his throat.
In the crowd he jostled between the men.

'Nickel Plate," remarked McGee.

The hobo coughed again and looked at his boots.

"Right away," ruminated Sam McGee, "and I've
got the stuff."

.\s the tramps shuffled off McGee's inquiring eyes
fell on the figure of a small boy in a blue suit with
brass buttons. The boy was trying how long he
could stand on one leg and whirl the other level
with his waist without losing balance.

"Hello, youngster! Hello, Budd McGee," sa-
luted the labor delegate.

"Hello, Uncle Sam !" The small boy lost balance
and changed legs. "When did you come back from
sturrin' things up in gen'ral?"

"What do you think you know about stirring
things up?"

"Lots," vowed the small boy, whirling again.

"How is your mother?"

"I duimo!" The small boy stood still. "Gone
for goo(* I guess 1"

"Gone — is she?" asked McGee with a wild look
in his eyes.

"She said when I got a sit in the G.C. and went
to chore at Miss Connor's I'd get on better without
herl I guess that's so, ain't it?"

"I guess so," declared Sam McGee. "That's the

THE

blamdest scnsihl

she do

"I dunnc

It sooner?"

CREED WORKED OUT

she ever did!

ai:

Why didn'l

said Budd in a sing-song.

"What's she ioing?
"I dunnol"
"Where did she go?"
"Down t' New York."
"Does she write to you?"
"Um-humI"

Sam McOee looked at the small urchin with the
harass buttons of the Great Consolidated on his blue

Rudd '■ '""'~'° ""'^ ^°^ her. Look here,

"I'm lookin'," which was only metaphoucally
true; for Bud was spinning. ^

"How do you like the Great Consolidated?"
Dullyl

"Do you ever hear of a fellow called Kipp'"
to Pe'ru!" "'" '""" '^"^ '^"'^ '° *" forwarded

"Do )jott post those letters, Budd'"
seli— " ' S'"'^ '^"^ *' Silky! He sends 'em his-

"Oh, he does, does he?" interrupted the labor
delegate. "Look here, Budd ! Do you want a sky-

IthrrL"?"''^ """"'' ''" ^^^^™°°" -^- ^-

Budd dropF J both feet in a simultaneous jump
to the perpendicular.

3t8

THE NEW DAWN

"D* y' mean it, Uncle Sam? Yei, siree, bet I
do!"

"Well, you go home to Miss Connor and get on
old clothes tor fishing and I'll take you out to the
river! Meet me in the Nickel Plate saloon; and
Budd — mind — I'll slit your tongue if it wags! Mum,
now!"

"Mum!" reiterated Budd, darting for a car,
"Mum-yum-yuni !"

And Sam McGec, walking delegate, continued his
leisurely course to Lower J'own. 'Ihe two hoboes
had watched him with the boy; then took a shorter
way to the same destination by sundry back Hi ■• ts
and blind alleys, entering the side door of a saloon
with gorgeous bevel mirrors in both windows and
colored prints of corset ladies showing a dazzling
array of white teeth at each end of the mirrors.

"Didn't know he had a kid?" remarked one hobo.

"Hasn't — it's his sister's!"

"He called the brat— McGee !"

"It's his sister's, all the same " but the

tramps' conjectures regarding Budd's antecedents
were silenced by the entrance of Sam McGee him-
self at the front door.

Though the Nickel Plate imitated modern grand-
eur with its bevel mirrors and dental ladies and floor
of coins and colored caraffes, it wisely conformed to
an older and more comfortable order of things. Be-
hind the billiard room was a low-ceilinged restau-
rant with small tables down the wall at which ardent

THE CREED WORKED OUT a,,

I ncrc s the sfuff t n • '"^•'''-
happy!" McJce aiJaSm""T'.""^ y""'" ^^
t" the hoboc. "When w • ^^' ^" *"^ » "°d
back room with me !" ^ '" '"PP'' "'"« *° the

"Same old crowdPM.r- /"'"'"" """l''^-
pockets as he pTsIed Join .'h' ''"*i'''^ *"' '^°"«"
cant table "Th ',' r . '^' ""*''= '«'"'"K a va-

- a % bHiHa^tTut^t:!::::,:?^;"? "'"'"'-

fending all rights but h SuT ^' '™'^' '^*-

to sleep with anxiety ove?L "''• "'"^ «°'"«

Hello, Go,dsmith-;ir:„a:t/?"' ^t:

lows still hatching nlot, t„ . " V '''' y"" '«'■

dedamafon with a big broad Z ^ '^""''y

whiskered, German smile ' ''' 8°°d-natured.
"How's the strike, Sam'"

"Anri ft, \<< I y '^'" the strike for u, "

"And then the union goes to caoital Ti, •
^^ys: 'We own this or shut yo^r "hi ' r rS' ""'°"
^•^>- 'Now cap., come over "oJs^- " ^''^ ""'°"
«P'taIandlaborarcso,idyou.,;:;.„;r:;j;-

220

THE NEW DAWN

the public. When you're hitched up to get a square
half of profit from capital "

"Bosh," snorted Goldsmith, the comatose bril-
liancy breaking looce, tumbling his pipe out, "bosh —
I say! Are you goin' to hitch up for half the losses,
too?"

The Goldsmith group emitted a laugh.

"Say, McGee, you look out o' that window? See
those men working on that drain ! Watch that fel-
low in the red shirt! He gets same wages as others,
according to the union! You watch him — see? He
stands on one foot till it's tired; then he stands on
the other. Then he stops digging when the fore-
man's back is turned. Do you think that lubber is
worth the same pay as the other men? That's your
union — that's your social millennium ! Oh, you'll
get over that, McGee ! You'll get enough of your
smug union! You'll come across to the Reds yet!"

The laugh that greeted this sally was joined by
McGee.

"Hold on. Goldsmith ! Look out of that win-
dow, you fire-eaters! See the fellow sitting on the
curb eating his dinner while the other fellows work?
That's your anarchy — Goldsmith: idle fellows spout
rights and eat the dinner some other fellows
earned."

And this laugh was 'topped by the hoboes follow-
ing a waiter with a tray of bottles.

"Any of you men seen Kipp lately?" inquired Mc
Gee lightly.

No one answering, the labor delegate sat down

THE CREEP WORKED OUT 221

to a table with the wo trarrnc n„» l

Military air with .rra^;^;^^

gangT-'"'" ''"'" ^'^''"' "''^^^ y°" -- ^'1 the
haJe'l" ^'""''"''"'y ''°''° ^^'id impressively: "We
"And?" demanded McGee
''Nothin'," nodded the red nose.
Look here?" McGee lowered his voice. "We
don t want you to cough UD I Keen ,V A u
doughnuts.; We don'tlanf It-tTa'" ^^^Th^;

appeared. Have you done every joint where a liahf
headed ;ack could get himsel/ LndblgJ d ' ^^
Kipp we want— not the money?"

-..-.y *., ,h„ k., vSr^d'"., ™ j'.£:

a gentleman might go."

"Has Kipp been_rfo„.? I don't ask names!

All I want to know <i h *■;** j j ,. """="'

part of the I WW " '^'PP '^"^'^ ^^ "''^e. It's
Jr. . f"^ ^- W. W. propaganda to know everv
thmg mside a man's hidp r l,, «-"ow every-

but I h,„» / !, "^^^ "ly °"'n theory;

disann ru^'""^- Understand, the afternoon he

"Gun," t' "r"'' '° ^"^''^^ '^" thousand!'-
hoK [ " thousand!" ejaculated the tiosv

hobo with watery eyes ^^

waitln'"'' ' ''°' '^'^ '°'' y°"' ^'^•" '""'"^"Pted the

122

THE NEW DAWN

"All right I I'll be out! You two keep on the
push! So long, fellows!"

Once outside McGee buttoned his overcoat to
the chin, turned up the collar, pulled down his hat,
and struck out in long, fast strides, the little boy run-
ning hard to keep pace. Turning to the ocean front,
the two boarded a small donkey engine coupled to
a single car that shunted between the city and the
mines. Budd clambered up on the coal tender.
The man sat in the car with his face hidden in the
high coat-collar. Outside the city he was aware
that the train bad been flagged and two people were
mounting the rear steps of the car.

"Don't let us go forward! Let us sit here at
the back I There is a man in front!"

The voice was a woman's, thrilled, suppressed.
Knowing that the car was only used by employees
of the Great Consolidated, and being of an inquir-
ing turn of mind, the labor delegate felt an inclina-
tion to glance round; but he suspected that a look
might hinder conversation, so he buried his face
deeper.

There was a long sigh of relief, followed by a
low laugh from the man.

"I am mad — I tell you it is perfect madness to
go off with you for an afternoon like this!"

Sam McGee pricked up his ears. A woman's
voice can have peculiarly musical notes when certain
emotions play the strings. If the labor delegate
could have stretched his ears he would, but the man's
answer was too low to be heard.

r' 1

THE CREED WORKED OUT 223

snarr-'L^tr,, """""" ^'"'^'"8 herself up in a
snarl, thought the practical MrP.,.^. "k ^ .l ,

_Do I „f,.^to tell you?"

"He's a slick one," thought McGee. "Fe carri«
an acadent policy, he does," cogitatecf M G !
Something m the low, cautious, even tones of th.'

.mint. "" 'P"* ■'« >P"»g>

S:: '^~ - 't'"^"-" "'V"":: ra-

224

THE NEW DAWN

himself that the man needed external stimulus to
make him as pure as the saints of Heaven.

"Gee! By this time they'll be lookin' in each
other's eyes, way a woman looks at a man, way a
man looks at a woman," soliloquized Mr. Sam Mc-
Gee. The device had flashed on him that, if he
dropped his railroad ticket to the floor, he might
glance back as he stooped for it; but, then, he was
as unxious not ;o be seen as he was to see.

"It has become unendurable," the woman was
saying. "Then, the sea always calms me; or else
Madeline 1 You have ordered the horses so we
can drive home along the shore? We must drive
fast! We must not be late for dinner!"

The mental comments of Sam McGee, labor
leader, were entirely irrelevant.

He was saying: "Gee! She'd better not jump
from the frying-pan into the fire ! Who the deuce
are they? They must be high mucky-mucks, or they
couldn't have flagged the train ! Madeline — who's
Madel'ne? And he's to drive fast is he? Um-
hum 1"

"Look at that little boy on the tender, Dorvall
I do believe it is!"

"By Jove!" The man laughed.

"Let us go out by the back of the car! If he
should tell Madeline?"

"Pshaw 1 He wouldn't know you through that
veil!"

"Oho," thought Mr. Sam McGee. The angry
memory had flashed to flame.

"■Jll^ '

'^HE CREED WORKED OUT 225

When the train pulled into the mining station Mc-
Gee hung back, looking from the windol at the trap
w.th livened coachman and glossy pair. A turn a
tnck, a smuous.ty, a shadow of motion to the slim
figure of the heavily veiled woman blew McGee^
ca. .on to the .Inds. He bolted for the front door
of he car and met the couple on a narrow plank
leadmg to the carriage. The woman wore a sable
coat to her feet; a heavy veil hid her features. Her
McGee let pass; but ti.e man he confronted squarely
a tall man ma steamer coat with a steamer cap
drawn over h,s eyes. There flashed to the labor
leaders face the fire of a concentrated hate, re-
venge-vmlent homicidal_a loathing that easts off
the restramts of civilization like wisps of straw bind
■ ng a pnm,t,ve giant; but the steamer coat was so

loriced""'"' ' ""^ ^'°^' ^"^^^ ^^^G" P--d
"Budd, boy-look ! Look af that man ! Look at
hun. Sonny!" McGee caught the child by the arm
«-.th a gnp of iron that bruised the child's flesh.
i-ook-Iook-look so you-11 know him again if
you see him in hell!" *'

and the trap went rattling down the ri^■c■r road to
the sea.

"And ifs for them-it-s for them-it's for the
1 ke o them that the workmen sweats and give their
b!ood-and-and their women's souls'" ^

[he grip on the boy's arm slackened.

Sonny, what's Miss C

onnor'b first name?"

226

THE NEW DAWN

"Madeline," gulped Budd, "and you needn't
think my arm's a pump handle!"

Sam McGee threw back his head and laughed —
and laughed.

"I don't see nothin' funny! I don't call this
much of a lark," mumbled the boy, fondling his sore
arm.

"Come on, Budd — we'll fish I Funnier fish get
into your net than you'd think for, youngster! It's
nothing, boy; nothing, 'cept that the chickens are
coming home to roost! God's running the old show
yet, Budd ! The chickens are coming home to roost !
God's doing business at the old stand !" With ^hcch
enigmatical speech Sam McGee, labor leader,
laughed again, as if Demos himself had opened his
mouth to roar and literally could not stop.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CREED AND THE LABOR LEADER

for his tr"i! ^'^ '°""'^" °^ ''' -'- - the run

"Oh fishin' suckers," answered McGee turnin.,
along the river path below the cliffs ^

Am t that a lie, Uncle Sam?" asked Budd
breakmg mto a trot to keep up '

"I guess we'll catch some suckers, all right- but
't " a lie, just the same! ' ^

Budd hitched his brace straps up.
What d'y' tell a lie for'"

'i\7'TZTV' l'''^^''^ the labor leader.

t>a>, f"dd broke from a trot to a run in order

to peer m his uncle's face "Mis, Cnn. ,

«•- necessary to tell lies'?" ''''' '* '""

;;it isn't for her-she don't need 'em, Budd!"

Lh." Say that again," demanded Budd an in

"Say, Uncle Sam," panted Budd, "it it's necessarv
Wh.ch k,te would you h.tch your tail to, if you wuz

337

128

THE NEW DAWN

But the answer to that question was deferred by
the labor leader coming to a sudden halt below the
tunnel mouths of the hillside.

"Shaft lo . . . . angle forty-five .... straight
dip ... . cast a hundred yards .... that's
about here," cogitated McGee, gazing first at the
hill, then at the river swirling black, oily, treacherous
round a shadowy cove that cut into the base of the
cliff. He left the path, scrambled down the bank,
shovpd an old punt out on the shore ice, bade Budd
take the oars and, with one push of the pole, was
out on the water.

"Let her swing loose, Budd! See what she'll
do!"

"Funny fishing tackle you've got. Uncle Sam,"
observed the boy, kicking a huge grappling iron
fastened to coils of rope in the bottom of the punt.

The old craft rocked uneasily as the boy bal-
anced his oars. It swirled to the oily circling of the
current, glided unsteadily closer and closer to the
hill, till, with a quick sucking of the keel, the prow
bounced forward antl shot out in mid-river.

"Row her back, Budd," ordered the man, leaning
over the stern on his knees.

"Gee!" gasped Budd. "How she bucks, Uncle
Sam! She won't — go!"

The boy strained with all his might on both
oars.

"Steer her for the middle of the cove! It's calm
there! I'll bet things sink and settle there!" And
McGec began working his pole astern till the old

CREED AND LABOR LEADER 229

"Mo,. swirling current.

:\ow— row— row slow!"
"Say^ "

n..« w„h ,„„, b„i„, t„„t,j „ , b';s,t'

sh/f^lh! ?u ' '*' y°" *° ^^^ bottom of the
shaft where the rats will eat you— if you tell I hI ?
How wil you like that ^ tL^v ' ^° "/ Heh?

Budd'. j»„ chattered and shook with fright. Hi,

»30

THE NEW DAWN

arms grew suddenly weak. The old punt circled
round and round the glossy calm of the cove, the
labor leader, stern and silent, paying out the rope
.... dragging .... dragging the heavy grap-
pling hook o\er the soft clay at bottom.

The sun went down cradled in cloud banks of
crimson over the far-heaving sea. The river rolled
past the dark of the sheltered cove, molten with
scales of light, a tremulous, quicksilvered flood; and
a night wind swept up the valley, mournful and
restless as the sleepless waves. Why was man, like
the restless wind, a disturber of the calm and se-
curity provid "d in God?

McGec, the labor leader, did not speak. Once he
turned and, seeing Budd shivering, tossed his own
overcoat across to the boy. Here and there lights
began twinkling from the miners' bunk houses
through the dark of the hillside in hairy beams that
sent long spars of trembling shafts across the muf-
fled river. The waters rose and fell with little laps
and lisps and splashes against the keel of the punt;
and the loneh- wind sounded a thin, querulous treble
of complaint. Frightened clouds stole stealthily
across a downy sky, hiding the cusp of a wan moon.
There was something pallid, something like death
in the lonely stillness of the night, with shadows
gathering round the wimpled hills and all the
painted glory of the western sea fading to the cold,
glossy, rippling darkness. The night was starless
with lights springing to life on the dim hillside in a
glow of warmth.

CREI-D AND LABOR LEADER 231

Perhaps other hoys like Budd were up there in
the miners' cottages eating hot suppers in shincy
kitchens, with busy mothers and big, gruff fathers.
What were the struggles of the two (.reat Blind
I- orces— Capital and Labor, each with shadowy
tools working in the dark— to Budd, the carefree
boy? Budd lacked the imagination of ambition.
At that moment he was whimpering and wishing
himself up in the humble shelter of the bunk houses.

Suddenly a blue glare cut the dark like a gigantic
sword of fork lightning. A shrill scream set the
hills echoing; and a coal barge whistled round an
elbow of the river with a monotonous lift and fall

• ■ • lift and fall of her whccl-rod. The search-
light of the prow fell on the labor leader, bare-
headed, eager, water-soaked, wilh sleexes rolled to
elbows, leaning over the side of the punt . . . wind-
ing in ... . winding in .... the line.

"It's like God them searchlights," he muttered,
kneeling at gaze as the barge huffed past. "You may
monkey along .... monkey along in the murk

• ... the dark hiding y' and all y' do! 'Cause it's
dark y' tink God don't see? But somebody turns
on the searchlight: ... it gits to be known: . . .
It gits to be known; . . . and ye might as well be
a worm squirmin' on the end of a stick above fire!
That light's God's sword; and . . . you're

in ... . fc-_hell!"

But the searchlight had fallen on more than the
fanatic with his mystic dreams. The boy at the
oars uttered a piercing shriek of sheer terror. Some-

S3*

THE NEW DAWN

thing had bumped the keel of the punt, turned over
heavily, and an upright arm struck stiflly against the
oarlocks. A cold hand, hard, swollen, clotted with
clay, touched the boy's face.

Budd tumbled back senseless. The labor leader
seized the dead hand and, when it slipped clammily
from his grip, he grasped the wrist.

CMAFIKR XVII

AFTERWARDS

If we could completely dissever the past from the
present, ami the present from the future, life would
be a much simpler affair; self-satisfaction, a s.ifer in-
vestment. A good deal can be done to separate
causes from their effects and acts from those results
conmionly known as retribution, by change of resi-
dence. The American forger prefers I'lurope to his
native land; but, unluckily, the bad juilgment that
made forgery possible, the deception that was con-
stantly playing a double part to the world, the sus-
picion on the look-out for detection— somehow knits
info'"^ f;Ker of the character. These go to Europe
' ■ ' resolutions and weave a new life after

Some such thoughts vaguely troubled Mr. Dorval
Hebden the night after the drive along the sea road.
He had let himself in with his latch-key, still dressed
in the steamer overcoat and jaunting cap. His valet
shuffled sleepily into the billiard-room and set a tray
with hot water and decanter before his master.

"Is my mother home yet?"

"No, sir."

Hebden stirred the hot water,
233

»34

THE NEW DAWN

"Anything more, sir?"

"No — you may go I"

He had been startled to see from a buffet mirror
that his usually ruddy face looked ashy.

"This is absurd — sheer school-boy nonsense 1"

He stirred ferociously at the glass. But, whether
absurd or not, it was plain — even to himself, who
did not wish to see — that Mr. Dorval Hebden was
shaken from his wonted calm. Two glasses failed
to restore the color to his face, which had become
drawn and hard. His light, lusterless brown eyes
gleamed redly.

"It's perfectly absurd!"

Hebden turned from the reflection of his face
to sink in a deep armchair. He slowly drew a
cigarette from its case and, with exaggerated de-
liberation, struck a match.

"It would be a dev'lish comic hobble, if she meant
it," he told himself, emitting a curling wreath of
smoke from h's smiling lips.

"Pure as the very saints in Heaven?" A curl of
smoke went wreathing high in mid-air. "I presume
it's a Paradise ... of the Persian brand?" An-
other curl of smoke. "Do women think that men
are fools?" Having thus apostrophized more smoke-
wreaths, the hard lines about the mouth elongated
into a smile. The smile widened to a laugh — soft,
cynical, taunting. "My word, she made me swear
enough oaths to found a new priesthood."

"Does she do that to draw me on? . . . Cool
offi . . . See what she will do? . . . She can't

AFTERWARDS

*35

draw back without humiliation? ... She ha,

avowed too much! Ye* hv t l

cares I R. / u - j "j ' ^ J°''^' '''^ '■^olh

AnA ^r ^^"'' '^'^ "''gh' l*"" their fingers "

intoxicating Lr4:r:urEi:htThrd"H:L:;:

rnounfng to drowsy dreams, or the drive by The
sea had furn.shed food of an ambrosial sort or
memones absorbed him in a concentrated conscious

r: rbvtf '^ '"' "° ^'" '° ---• "g^- ^e

ri!L?n ^1, ^"'.""^'•'"g vows that he had no
ngh to make ; tempting avowal that he had no righ"
to hear; and the memories troubled him. . . He
had sa.d so much more than he had meant to say
no more than he meant in the saying. . . He dfd
not remember how it had come aLut; but hfknew

duct, had thnlled and carried him off his feet quite
as much as ,t could possibly have affected hen '
They had driven for miles in silence- the

lZri7!°°''' °^ P^^^ ^°''' — the'rippl ng
ak o of ^°^^-"-'! °f ~t faded to^'wan'

of a rnlV 'T'^ ^'^P' °^ ^'o"-^^- The horn

of a cold moon shone m the shimmering expanse
of the sea ■ and a chill, as of death, swept up the val
icy on a lonely night wind. ^

•'Ashes of roses," she had said, with one wave
of her hand toward the fading sea. Her voice had

236

THE NEW DAWN

stolen on him soft and enveloping as light. Then
their eyes had met, one fleeting, swift glance, and,
somehow, the air-threads, the thistle-down, the gos-
samer of meaningless words had merged into a net,
that was about them both irresistibly. Hebden had
broken out with vows he had never meant to utter-
she with protests that acknowledged what they de-
nied.

Then the silence had been freighted with mean-
ing that surprised Hebden. He had had no idea
that any woman could carry him beyond the limits
of caution and prudence and safety in that way.
If her voice, her look, her personality had not in-
toxicated him he would not have expressed that
folly about life henceforth being a blank. Evidently,
the matches, not the combustibles, are at fault when
powder goes up in an explosion. "No, ... no,
. ..." she had protested when he uttered that non-
sense about life going out in blackness; .... and
what was it he had answered? .... Actually, he
had been so excited that he could not recall ; only,
he was quite sure that it was something that gave
her a sort of claim, that threw down all barriers on
his part, that removed all pretense of mere friend-
ship. He had been a fool. . . . That was the plain
truth. The sting of remorse was in the imprudence
of what he had said, not the dishonor, not the dan-
ger to her.

Then a strange thing had happened.
They had lingered for dinner out at the Sea Bright
Chalet. He had not observed the fact at the time,

AFTERWARDS

237

but now recalled with relief, there had luckily been
no other 8^,ests at the villa. Driving home in si"
lence they had heard the night wind fweep th s
wth mournful cadences. A solitary land bird wheeled
' s flight homeward. Once, where the road ran

stri;faSe^„rnr""^""-^^^^'°'^^
"Poor bird," she had said, with a i.Aver
He trembled to think what madness he might
have uttered. ... The witchery of her beau^ o
her trust, of her unhappiness, of her folly, of her
closeness was upon him. . . . I„ another momen
he would have put himself outside the pale of Mr"
Ward s acquamtance by proposing some school-boy
m lodrama ; but, just as the horses were crossing the
bndge beyond the mines, there arose on the night

he pa,r plunging. 1 hen a scream, a terrified scream
hke the vo.ce of a lost soul, cut the darkness. A tS
very memory Hebden's blood chilled to ice. It was
as If murder, crime, irremediable wrong, found
vo.ce m that piercing scream, haunting the night,
it" ■ ■ w,"'? T" '^■■"'"'^'' °^ ^"y'hing like

ecallV ^'1"^""^^"'™- •• -What did it

recal . . . t was hke a curse emerging from

he gloom of a dead past to pursue a man's soul with

nd"" • ;h V^ """ "^"•''^ '^--'^ "f ^he

W^' ■ ■ , "^' P'"""S' '^^""f'"g scream I

^. . Whowas.t? The horses bolted. .

Hebden came to himself with both reins wound
round and round his hands, himself pulled to a

138

THE NEW DAWN

standing posture braced back with all his strength,
his companion sitting stony with fear, the horses
at a gallop pounding through the sea-fog that came
drifting landward knife-thick.

And the horses kept that pace all the way to the

city.

It was absurd, of course; but, as the steel-shod
hoofs flashed through the fog, Hebden couU not
rid his mind from the impression of a woman down
there in the mire who had uttered that scream.
Sometimes the form resembled her of the long
ago, ; the closed incident, on which Hebden had
shut the door witli a hardened heart, when he went
to Europe, out of sight, out of memory. Then,
again, the figure of the flying mist was the woman
by his side; down .... down .... down with
streaming, upturned, pleading eyes, and the brand
of infamy on her face; . . . down .... in the
mire .... under the feet .... of villainy!

They had not spoken again; and, when he reined
the quivering horses in at her home, he was trem-
bling and spent as they

"How alarmed you are," she said, as she touched
his hand to spring out.
"Yes," he returned curtly.

"So was I," she confessed. "If there had been
an accident, it would have been horrible. Oh, we
were both mad— perfectly mad!"

"Good-night," he had answered shortly.
And now, sitting in the billiard-room, the same
hallucination hac come back; the scream from the

AFTERWARDS

239

dark; ... the wild stampede through the mist, for
all the world like his own rush to Europe away
from the consequences of his acts; .... the curious
impression of a woman's face down .... down in
the mire, with streaming, upturned eyes pleading
for the hope that was to go out in darkness; ....
Her, of the closed incident, long ago; . . . her, of
the present; ... yes, and there was to be an-
other, away .... far ahead ... in a hazy fu-
ture . . , One, . . . pure, innocent, trusting
.... worthy to be his wife! It was like past
.... present .... future: the closed incident;
... the present folly; ... the Forward Hope!
The mistake was in thinking that he could dissever
those three — past .... present .... future 1

So absorbed in thought was Hcbden that he did
not notice an elderly woman with a great mass of
white hair above her forehead in puffs holding a
gold lorgnette before her eyes and wearing an er-
mine opera cloak, quietly entering the billiard-room.
The poise of the chin was aggressive, the tight-set
lips hard with decision, the cast of the full eyes ar-
rogant. She was looking at him through the lorg-
nette. He had covered his face with one hand.
The cigarette was out. Her brows contracted to a
sharp intersection above the ridge of the nose.

She noticed that he was not in evening clothes.
He still wore the steamer coat. She drew her head

so far back that she seemed to be looking down a

trick of Mrs. Hebden's eyes that struck terror to
the timid.

I 1

., I

I' '

1^ i '

;'t

340

THE NEW DAWN

"Dorval?"

"Yes, my dear mother?"

He led her to a chair as if she had been a queen.

"You did not come to the theatre?"

"No, mother."

"You have not been out to dinner?"

"No — I had a snack out at the Sea Bright Chalet!
I had the pair out for a spin — such a fine winter day,
you know?"

The mother said nothing; that Is, she lowered her
lorgnette, which was saying a great deal.

"I've arranged two cruises, Dorval."

Silence.

"We go South next week! In spring the cruise
for the Mediterranean is arranged."

"Lady Helen will join us, Dorval. She is own first
cousin by your father's side."

"Oh," said Hebden irritably. He had been hear-
ing of own first cousins and ancestors all his life.

"You must not let any entanglements interfere
with your permanent arrangements, Dorval."

He leaned over the back of her chair, stroking
her hair affectionately.

"My fond, scheming, ambitious mother 1"

"These are your plans, Dorval?"

"Plans for me," he corrected gently.

Silence. She turned to him.

"You were not alone at the Sea Bright? Be
careful, son! It is not — it is not — anyone con-
nected with the past?"

"Mother," he interrupted harshly, with a sense

AITERWARDS 24,

that he was being sorely used by any reference to
tne past I thought we were to regard ihat inci-
dent as closed !"

Her cloak fell back. The well-formed shoulders
heaved a sigh of relief.

Bri'ht?"^'' "'"' "'*" ^*' '^'''* ^°" " ""' ^"

Hebden reflected; then realized that frankness is
sometimes the best deception.

''It was Mrs. Ward, mother! Now are you satis-
ned, you jealous mother?"

shouWelr''"' ''"''"^ ''' """"'' ^'''''' ''"'=

"Dear me 1 What a fright you gave me 1 Satis-

necl . . . ? Quite ! Married women are quite

safe; only — son "

"Rubbish," he interrupted, kissing her.

CHAPTER XVIII

ONE WAY TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE

It would have puzzled Hebden to explain what
induced him to sit for a portrait by Madeline Con-
nor. Perhaps the most of motives would be as
puzzling if subjected to the crucible of candor. He
told himself that it was to help a deservmg artist,
and took some credit for this kindness. That is,
he told himself, when certain vague emotions might
have clamored loud enough to sound like self-re-
proach; or might have come clearly enough to the
surface of his conscience to present ugly outlines;
like the sea-serpent oozing at bottom most of the
time, but coming up often enough to establish the
legend of its exister'-e.

It was the old question of the dual nature: one
self, credited with virtue, kept in front as the true
stature of the man; the other, hidden even from his
own thoughts, condoned, and, as it were, domesti-
cated. Hebden had begun, the way life begins with
all: with what he was and what he intended to be-
come- and he always judged himself by his inten-
tions.' When he looked back on his life he some-
times felt like a man coming suddenly on a mirror;
he was shocked at an ugly face. That Past was of
242

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 243

his making; but how came it to wear such ugly
features? Hebden would forget the ugly face in
his eagerness to create excuses. Other men would
have done the same. He had suffered sufficiently
for atonement. He had not meant that certain
consequences should flow from what he had done.
Mow was he to know that a girl would go to the
devil because — ; he always stopped there; but he
was not to blame. And then, like the ink of the
devil-fish clouding clearest waters, the venom of the
s:iake protecting itself with its own poison, came
clouds of witnesses — suspicion of other people's
honor, goodness, virtue. The whole world would
have done the same as he had in the same circum-
stances; therefore, a good part of the world had
done the same, only succeeded in concealment.
Therefore, he was as good as, if not better than,
other men. The process of reasoning by age-old
repetition. There is no limit in lust or folly.

If Hebden could have lifted himself up in a
series of frog-leaps, he might have attained his high
purposes. He could carry out occasional aspirations
by leaps. It was on the steady pull of the long
stretch that he failed. To him, life was to be an
experiment on the best ways of obtaining the most
happiness; but he did not reckon on it being as
impossible to mend the wrecked life as the smashed
crucible. To him, experience was to be the only
guide. He forgot that experience may be a rear-
end light, casting shadows on a path to ruin. He
did not give people credit for goodness, for self-

244

THE NEW DAWN

sacrifice, for honor; because — consistent hedonist
that he was — he held the firm belief that people who
chose goodness, self-sacrifice, honor, derived more
pleasure from that kind of life than from the oppo-
site. With him, virtue was what would be safest
in the long run; goodness, what would be pleasant-
est. It did not enter Hebden's mind that, per-
haps, the pleasantness in the long run might depend
on the goodness. He considered that his own mis-
steps had been mistakes, not vjrongs; bad experi-
ments, not bad character; weakness, not malice; the
stings of the jelly-fish, not the recrudescence of the
brute.

But, however jocose our self-excuse may be, na-
ture is a grimmer satirist. You may prove you were
not to blame, because you did not know there was a
precipice; but, all the same, if you go over the edge
there is a smash. You may prove you were not to
blame; but, while you prattle, nature is writing her
laws in blood flowing from your own blunders.
You may have suffered. That does not prove you
will not suffer more and eat the fruits of your own
deeds, and find the eating bitter.

Hebden 'lad not lived for forty years without
facing naked truth occasionally. There had been
moments of scaldi.^- self-contempt. Sometimes he
felt like a man stripped and weaponless, confront-
ing a giant the giant of reality .... his

Past! Again, it was as if a mar: had been hurled
out a dust speck on a raging chaos of storm winds :
what did his clatter of creeds and excuses matter

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 245

in a war of worlds, of principalitiw and poweri,
of spirit and flesh? That feeling had first come
when she of the closed incident threw herself on
the floor at hi, feet with streaming eyes and white
lips, tellmg him that her mother had killed herself
For a second Hebden had felt as if a world of dark-
ness had crushed down on him; as if pleasantness
might get entangled with crime; as if the unreckoned
consequences of acts might become the furies cours-
ng at one's heels through an eternity. He remem-
bered how his mother had come in, finding him
bowed and blanched; how she had whisked him off
to Europe; how the Incident was properly relegated
to that large class commonly known as Closed

He had first seen Madeline entering the art
studio. The unusual combination of a hectic flush
tokening death, and motions full of fiery verve, drew
his id'.e glance back. Hebden was not used to look-
ing twice at women without the object of his glances
becoming conscious of the fact. The girl was gaz-
ing past h.m without seeing him; and he knew it
Also, he became aware of color, and form, and
motion that pleased his sense of the artistic.

H.'. had gone to the studio to select a picture and
became cognizant of the additional fact that a
voice with little breaks and tremors, like ripples of
pure gold, can add charm to the artistic. The girl
was umistakably well-born. fVho was she; and
nhy was she earning her living?

It was at this point that the upper nature, which
appreciated color and form impersonally, blended

146

THE NEW DAWN

vaguely wiili a lower. That wain't the way Hebden
thought about it: he was aware, in a sort of subcon-
scious way, that it was not siifc to become personally
interested in people who earned their living, espe-
cially when the earner was encased in a Psyche mold,
with an upper lip of the Diana cast. It recurred
to him whimsically, with an almost supercilious
scorn of himself, that the brief talk in the studio
had called uppermost — like the resurrection of a
dead possibility — the memory of a better manhood,
what he had intended .... and somehow missed.

In one of their interchanges of confidence he had
asked Mrs. Ward why some women had it in their
pov.-er to make a fellow feel that he might be a
better sort. The long lashes had lifted, the lus-
trous eyes flashed an imperious question. Hebden
had not meant to be understood in that way. He
did not happen to be offering incense at the altar
of vanity when he asked that question; so he blurted
out a great deal more than he meant: s;iying that
he had seen a girl who embodied his ideal of woman-
hood. Again the languid lift of the arched brows.
It was quite apparent that Mrs. Ward could scarcely
believe that he had not referred to herself.

Hebden smiled with curious self-gratulation to see
the delicate flush of piqued surprise steal under the
pallid skin. At that moment man's confidence and
woman's vanity challenged. Mrs. Ward met the
challenge by inviting Madeline Connor to the house
and introducing Hebden. Hebden no longer felt
so certain that Mrs. Ward had been piqued. He

TO RECOVER A CONSCIEN'CE 247

countered by titting for a portrait by the young
artist.

The sittings had not Hcen a particular success.
His ideals, as clothed in ,s own imagination and
as clotheii in flesh on a camp stool studying his fea-
tures as impersonally as if he had been a man of
wood— proved antagonistic. Hebden's attitude to
women was never impersonal. It was distinctly the
attitude of a man to a woman; and he had begun
with Madeline as he did with all women — by an
attempt to break down the impersonal.

"It is rather droll," he said, "to be sitting here
for a picture by you, when I am looking at a finer
picture than could be painted."

Madeline had gone on painting — "not turned a
hair," as Hebden expressed it to himself with super-
cilious amusement.

"It's a question with me which picture I'm here
for?"

There was no response save the oozing of burnt
umber squeezed from a paint tube.

"The girl distinctly jacks femininity! She is not
lovable," thought Hebden. "Ten years from now
she will be one of the stale proprieties I Peach with
its bloom taken off by work!"

At the same time he noticed that her fingers
tapered delicately at the tips. While she did not
smile to exhibit a play of teeth, the teeth were pearl
and small when a glint of white appeared between
the parted lips. "In a word," thought Hebden, "she

248

THE NEW DAWN

lacks soul, sex, womanliness, graclousness, the seduc-
tive charm of appeal!"

"It may not be good art," he drawled, "but I
always prefer outdoors to pictures of outdoors;
and," he added, absently, "if a woman is worth
looking at in a picture, to me she is worth a good
deal more outside the picture."

The artist laid down her brush and turned.

"Oho," thought Hebden, "touched!"

He expected at least a flash of appreciation from
her eyes.

"Do you know," said the girl, "you'll have to
forgive me! I've missed what you've been saying!
I can't catch the expression of your forehead! The
play of shadows, . . ." she studied him as she
paused.

The expression of Mr. Dorval Hebden's fore-
head at that moment was elusive. Its complexion
was red. He left the studio with the impression
that "the girl was disagreeable, work-tainted, bread-
and-buttery, common, epicene ! It was a dickens
of a hobble that he had begun the sittings; but he
would have to go through with it." He was dis-
posed to score a laugh against himself.

At the second sitting Hebden had engaged in a
species of fire rockets, sending up all his airiest
badinage by way of dazzling this very common-
place, irresponsive soul, that had somehow been
born in a Psyche mold. And he won the coveted
flash of appreciation — an entirely personal flash of
undisguised merriment that opened Hebden's eyes

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 249

to the fact that "the minx might be laughing in her
sleeve He distinctly disliked this girl, and at once
took his revenge by a delicately narrated account
of a sensational scandal. A banker had absconded
with the funds of the bank and the wife of a bank
director. It was adroitly told. Hebden was an
adept.

The artist laid her brush down and turned to the
man with eyes that asked as plainly as eyes could
speak-"/rAy.?" Mr. Dorval Hebden could tack to
a veering wind.

"Don't you thin; that is a desperately sad case?"
he asked "Seems to me that kind of woman is the
modern Circe— turns men to . . . ." he paused
searching her face, "to fools," he added. "The
fellow would never have embezzled if it had not
been for her?"

"I wasn't thinking of the man," retorted the girl
quickly, I was thinking of the woman!

• • • . There must have been something horrible

• . . . terrible in her love for him! It's horrible
when a woman . . . or a man either, casts away the
one thing of existence! .... their love! . . The
result is al-.vays the same— bread to dogs, pearls to

swine, a jewel in a swine's snout " Madeline

began talking of something else.

******
"What do yon think of that young artist of
yours?" he had asked of Mrs. Ward that night
Knowing that Mr. Dorval Hebden had been ex-
periencing new sensations, knowing, too, that it

250

THE NEW DAWN

would raise her in his estimation to praise another
woman, Mrs. Ward lauded Madeline Connor to
the skies.

"What do you think of her?" she countered.

Hebden ran his fingers over the keyboard of the
piano, evoking a melody of luscious notes.

"Pure as frost sting in it," he mur-
mured. "A soul asleep! .... form divine

lacking the fire divine I . . . dreams of sky

palaces, whose earthly youth will pass unrealized!
... a queen without a crown, .... because ....
because she will not dare!"

And he broke into passionate, powerful, full-
toned singing of the / ib love-song:

"From the desert I come to thee,

On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,

With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old.
And the leaves of the Judgment

Book unfold!"

The notes quivered into an ecstasy; and when
he turned to Mrs. Ward her lips were as pallid as
her forehead.

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 251

Meanwhile, Budd McGee, the ragged boy, who
was Madeline Connor's model, found himself in
gaol for theft. Madeline appealed to Mrs. Ward.
Mrs. Ward appealed to Hebden; and Hebden—
in his own words — "bailed the brat out!" There-
after the sittings for the portrait passed more pleas-
antly. Madeline expressed her gratitude and Heb-
den called Budd his "mascot." Hebden no longer
looked for what did not exist; and Madeline no
longer parried guard.

"Do you know, you are unlike any other woman
in all the world; but you give work altogether too
high a place in life, Miss Connor?" he idly re-
marked one day.
"I pLce it first."

"It isn't first!" He wanted her to ask vihat was
first; but, as she didn't, he added, "Don't you think
love should be given first rank?"

Madeline Connor thoughtfully balanced a paint-
brush on her forefinger.

"I've thought of thatl Of course, love is first;
.... as an inspiration; .... as a dream! But, how
are you to give lovj form, to prove it, to make your
ideal real, your dream a fact .... unless you put
It into plain, everyday living . . . into your work?
No use heaving a volcano of sighs, Mr. Hebden,"
she laughed. "Anyone can do that! The most
sentimental people I have ever known have been
the most selfish, the cruelest to the persons loved!
■ . . . What's the use of words? .... Word love
IS . . . cheap! Did you ever think how the way

Iir

252

THE NFAV DAWN

to almost every wrong is paved either by words
of love or religion? Lovers' words were all used
up by forgers long ago. Anybody can roll up the
whites of their eyes at the inoonl It takes work —
something done — to prove love I . . . Passive love
always reminds me of a stagnant pool. ... It grows
swcmpy unless it does something — carves a way
through rocks to the sea, for instance," she fin-
ished flushing.

"Ho-ho," thought I Icbden, "so that is the way
the wind lies ! The form divine with the fire all
ready for — the conflagration I" At the same time,
it amused him to find it possible to be talking of
love so impersonally with a woman.

"Do you not set any store in the avowal of love
by words?" he asked. He had a firm and proved
conviction that all women that he had known could
never hear an avowal of love too often.

The artist took refuge behind the easel.

"If I were prevented," he went on, "prevented
telling one whom I loved the great truth of her life
and mine, I should feel terribly wronged!"

"That need not prevent you living the fact!"

"But it might prevent me from knowing whether
she loved me "

"But no," laughed Madeline, "you couldn't either
of you possibly conceal it from the othv.r!"

Going out that day he had shaken his head dis-
approvingly, saying "Work! Work!" As he turned
down the stairs of the studio he raised his hat laugh-
ing: "The rose should be regal, above toil! Con-

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 253

sider the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do
they spin I

^^^jConsider the ant, thou sluggard," she laughed

"Confound her! She's sweet in spite of herself,"
he mused.

"Is there something to that man after all? Have
I been fair to him?" Madeline asked herself.

To argue sincerity is to accuse it. Sincerity held
in doubt .s like chemicals in solution— of diluted
quality, incalculable quantity; only to be determined
by the test.

As Hebden thought over the girl he became
piqued. What right had she to be so indifferent'
She played the part of a comrade quite as if she
had a right to it. But that morning after his drive
along the sea he recollected with a pleasurable an-
ticpation that this was the day of his sitting for the
portrait. It was with regret that he remembered
this was the last sitting. The scene of last night
could never have been enacted— he thought— with
one like Madeline Connor. Why was it some wom-
en turned men into blockheads; others gave a
sense of uplift? How had that girl called up all
one might have been and transmuted it into what
one might some day become! It occurred to Heb-
den that, if his mother had not such absurdly grand
schemes of a match for him, a woman like Made-
line— in a higher station of life, of course— might
make a good thing out of a man's life; not to men-

ai4

THE NEW DAWN

tion considerations that made possession of her a
very good thing for the man.

He was very silent at that last sitting. He was
a little frightened at the pass to which things had
drifted the night before. Frightened at himself;
for he was honest enough to know that he could
not always depend on stopping where he wanted.
In that respect Mr. Dorval Hcbden was wise in
his generation; for it meant that he knew the weak-
ness within likelier to defeat than the influence
without. Madeline Connor, too, was silent, painting
in swift, deft strokes; a touch here of more world-
wear for the brow; a shading about the mouth for
something that was neither mirth nor thought —
Madeline did not know what it was, her experience
did not afford her data for tabulating and translat-
ing that look. She only knew she must put it in, a
weakness and something more; a smile that was
scarcely familiarity, yet like it — and she put it in
to have the portrait like the man. It was the same
with the weak, slightly heavy, receding, hard-set

chin.

"There," she said, "it's all but finished 1 I'll do
the rest from memory!"

She rose, dusting off her hands and putting the
brushes to soak. Hebden scarcely looked at the
picture.

"Do you know," he said bluntly, "you have had
a curiously contradictory effect on me? I came here
feeling a hang-dog of a fellow 1 Though you

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 255
h^aven't said one word, you've made me feel bet-

He had so far grown in knowledge of Madeline
Connor that he no longer studied the effects of his
words on her face. He could be quite sure that the
effects would come out in speech.

"You've always given me the feeling," he went
on, of a north wind— pure as frost— rather twisty,
tw.rly the way you hit a fellow, disagreeable as
frost, sometimes, too, but like a breath of pure cold
air I We've been silent to-day; but it has drawn
us nearer than much talk. Did you ever realize,
Madeline, that a .veak woman can do a fellow more
harm than a wicked one? A pliant woman is just
about as reliable as a rope of sand when a fellow
wants a life love. Do you know what I mean?"

"I'm not sure but I do," answered Madeline,
ihe had a curious sensation that, while he seemed
to be voicing her own thoughts, each argument was
a false closing in on her inner guard, fencing for
a weakness; yet the suspicion was so unjustifiable.
He began a furious search under camp stools,
easels and art magazines for his gloves.

"They say it is a sign of friendship when people
can be together without talking," said Madeline.

"Then I hope this may be the beginning of a
long friendship with us," promptly responded Heb-
den, looking into her eyes without the slightest ex-
pectation of the meaning glances that he so often
read.

"She could make a new man of me," he thought,

256

THE NKW DAWN

with a sudden rush of light to the lusterlcss brown
eyes. Going down the stairs he paused to look
back. She was standing in the sunlight critically
studying his own portrait, the strands of her hair
shot with sun tints, the hectic color flushing and
waning, the eyes pure, steady, true, gazing into the
face of the painting as if they would draw out its
inmost thoughts.

Hebden smiled softly to himself and went step-
ping down the stairs, debonair, nonchalant, satisfied;
forgetful of the Fast; amused at the Present;
pleased, well pleased, with the promise of the Fu-
ture.

******

Madeline sat thinking . . . thinking! The light
sifted through the crimson lamp shade of the little
cottage sitting-room in a warm glow. The faces of
the old family portraits stood out from the shadows
of the wall watchfully; and still Madeline sat in the
red light at the little rosewood table, thinking! .\
small medallion set with jewels lay in the palm of
her hand; and open letters littererl the table. Let-
ters about work: notes from women who paid a
thousand dollars for a gown and offered fifty dol-
lars for a portrait with the proviso "that, if it did
not suit, it wouH be returned"; requests from char-
ity for a loan of old prints and miniatures, with as-
surances that the exhibition would be an advertise-
ment that would repay any artist. These letters
Madeline ignored. They came periodically and in
quantities. Then, there was Mrs. Hebden's letter—

TO RECOVER A CONSCIENCE 257

stiff, formal, guardedly polite, written in the third
person, beggmg Miss Connor to accept a check as
a token of appreciation for the portrait of Mr. Heb-
den The price of the picture had already been

rose n rebellion aga.nst the tone of this other worn-

! J,^".' ' '""'='■ ""'^^ -"""-^y: »o she an-
swer^d^sfffly, forn,ally, guardedly polite, accepting

But none of these letters kept her pondering. She
held another m her right hand, while the medallion

Z '" ;■■ ['■'■ u^^'"' ^'^ ""^"^^ ''^Sht of her face"
red and wh.te by turns in the pier glass, and back
came the words_"A rose regal above toil!" Why
d,d th.sman seem to throw her thoughts in on her-
self? Were there some men who would do that to
such an extent they would destroy a woman's per-
spective, turn her into the vampire egotist? She
looked at the jeweled miniature. It was a Cupid
w,th bandaged eyes, bent bow, and flesh pink as a
shell. Ihe sunhght about him was quivering with
• h'/m ^v " ■"? T ''""'y '"^ 'y'' fhat caress;
dallion ' ''"^""^ °''" '^' ■*'"■''''* '"*•

"I wonder," she asked falteringly, "have-I been

— unjust?

And if the little Cupid winked under the bandage
across his eyes, Madeline did not know. The alter
cRo that speaks loudest afterward did not lift ud
■ts voice and tell her she was becoming more than in
terested, where she did not trust. Perhaps it was

«s«

THE NEW DAWN

because she was more than interested that she did
not trust. Something stirred the slumber of her
life. Was it the man's appeal, his need to be
helped? Madeline cuuld not tell. She shrank from
drawing aside the drapery of her reserve. It was
a curious letter, not downright, not outright.

"I hardly dare acknowIedRC how much I build on what
you said about it being impossible for either to conceal from
the other what each feels. You place so little store by
words, and so much by work, won't you accept this as a
token of the inexpressible?

"They say it is not bad as a piece of work, supRcsts so
much; but of that you are a better judge than I. 1 picked
it up in Rome, and send it to suggest — well — much.

"D. H."

She read and reread the words and felt like one
trying to follow the threads of a maze. "How much
1 build," "what each feels," "a token of the inex-
pressible." These phrases might mean so much:
and yet they expressed nothing. If she refused to
accept the gift, would not that imply too much? If
she accepted, what would be inferred? And so
Madeline sat thinking, in a tangle not of her own
making, in an ambush that might conceal pain or
delight.

"When in doubt, don't," she mused. "I'll not
answer at all. I'll thank him when I see him at
Mrs. Ward's reception."

CHAPTKR XIX

TO STRENGTH AND WILL-ADD PURPOSE

the tram Of the Great Consolidated', widening ven-

Seated lor' T" "T ' "' '""^ ^"""P-y '^'"1 ^ccn
luTto f^"'" '^^' ""^"''^'^ '» »hc billion,.

Ju,t to coun up to the figure that was to be the
enlarged cap.tal of the Great Consolidated for the
capture of the world's trade would have taken an
accountant the better part of a week

"as^r half ;*"°"" ""'• °^ ^°""'=' »"-- -°«

gas than ba last more water than cargo; but not
bemg a ph,losoph,.ing animal the public did not

VVhat the publ.c cared for was the widely noised
and no.,,ly proclaimed fact that, just before the in

Zr T^^^r ^""-"^^'^'^•» "Pital. the com-
pany had declared an enormou, dividend. That the
dmdend was enormous owing to an increase in the
pn e of coal and ocean freight rate, did not come
to the notice of the public.

rional^"! f "f ''"K "^^y^Papers printed some sensa-

onai f,,t, ,bout the increase of poverty being in

"riking proparfon to the increase of wealth; but,

Mr. Saunders paid a visit to the editors of these

»S9

i6o

THE NF.W DAWN

sheets. He may have paid more than a visit, for
the struggling newspapers became forthwith pros-
perous, went on their way rejoicing, and, being them-
selves happy, ceased to take a pest-'iiistic view of
Ward's finance. They extolled his methoils as likely
to levy tribute on the gold of foreign nations for
the benefit of the .-Xmerican workingman by captur-
ing the carrying trade of the ocean. That was it.
It was a good argument, and pleased everybody.

Yet, the secretary's health was in inverse ratio to
the prosperity r>f the company. If a door banged,
Saunders jumped, whitened to the lips, lost his
breath. When a footfall sounded, Saunders glanced
furtively round with the look of a weasel. He had
developed the most absurd fear of being alone. A
blackness, thick, impenetrable, hard, tight as an
iron cap, seemed to grip his head. The thoughts
raced .... raced .... raced through the black-
ness; always in the form of a shadow, a vague-
shadow coursing at his heels, shapeless, gashed,
blood-boltered, a fury invisible, fleet as wind,
winged with torture.

Sometimes, he would sec himself a double per-
sonality; the white-faced, black-bearded, stooping
man, running like a deer before hounds from the
shadow behind; a laughing demon of mockery sitting
apart, hooting, jeering, taunting that other fool
down there, fleeing from his own shadow.

At other times the darkness rolled up, a huge,
black, irresistible, tidal wave, washing out memory,
present interests, future hope, leaving in place only

Anil Ihcii in a ll:ish ramu llu- ,„|,|

i'"s.ili.iM lh,,t she

■NIL' «;ilrl„,l

ADD PURPOSE 26,

Pierced' th^ tT7J""[^ ■ '" '^' '^^'••'""'' ^here
P-erced the back of his brain a stab like the teeth

Id t'oTr^ '"u^"^'^ ^''"^ ^° ^-k life ou . He

-be...ethan;h;^HeK,f,;te^---'^
cynicallv .^ t""«, Saunders laughed hilariously and

nfLi:-t^;,-ard.^lhf;a;>"

only ,..,„, the effects dr ^'FTan^ho ' T
the drink and the drugs he felt fit f v) J''

positive certainty that ^ter nfa^ ad ^hf s'ar':
old secrets about his life al he, Saund s had but'
he found that he must double doses each week to
obtain the same results, and the heavier thldoses

of beinfnl ^' t""^ ^'■''^"''''^ '"^'^ - ^b-^J fear
of being alone, he was in agony among people Thev

huTb tlT '""T"' "°' ''"-'y t^idldlhe
tnumb made remarks, and looked at him Wh.n

d: zzv^'r '': '^^''"^ ^^ ^^^ do"s migh

church T"^ '°, ^°''8« h™«elf among people-

church workers, club friends, his family ; but his
manner was something too urbane, for a hou de
Jppmg clerical had accosted him with a n .v .'
shattering thump on the shoulder-

Mr. Saunders! Mr. Saunders! You are be-

262

THE NEW DAWN

coming so jocose we hardly know youl What is the
matter?"

Matter? What right had that blockhead of a
parson to think anything was the matter?

And down in the Board of Trade he had over-
heard a young broker saying: "You look out for
Saunders! He's a bit too urbane these days I Some-
thing wrong!"

But, it remained for his wife to deal the worst
home stab. She had put her arms round his neck
and asked outright: "What — is — wrong?"

Wrong? What right had the simpleton to think
anything was wrong? What was the matter with
people, anyway? He hated her with a sudden
cruelty for her innocence, for her questioning, for
her tenderness, for her nearness. That night, when
he had made up with his wife over the dinner table,
he had been filled with such tender pity for him-
self — such tender, overwhelming self-pity — that he
had withdrawn to his own room to weep like a
woman, pretending all the while he was ill. The
next morning, when he thought of the excuses that
he had given his wife, he went down the street with
a smile wreathed in his beard, and a flower in his
button hole.

He had reached the office early, for his sl<;cp had
been bad, even with drugs. A gnawing had worked
at the base of his brain till daylight, and when he
rose every separate nerve in the palms of hit hands
was jumping; every object — window, mirror, rocker,
the garden outside — jumping too, rimmed with red.

"^ '^i/t ' '»w^ ' r*

ADD PURPOSE

263

invested m a reddish mist. A cold plunge in the
sw.n,m,ng tank dispelled these night fumes, and
Obadiah went down to his offices smiling scornfully
at the pat assumption of the world in general that
thmgs were right. Budd, the office boy, had already
swept the room, and was humming with happiness.
Uon t grate your duster over the felt of that
screen gntted the secretary to the boy.

H«t nrVu','"°"'"S P'P" °" Mr. Saunders-
desk. Obad,ah lubricated his palms with a great
show of glee, nghted his button-hole flower and
licked his lips.

"And how do you find yourself this fine morning,
my boy.- said he. *

''I dunnu ■' mumbled Budd sulkily, tipping the
conten, of the waste-paper basket into a bag ^"He
a.nt r..l,n' that paper no more'n 1 am •' ' solilo-
qui.ed the Kv 'That paper's upside down '"

It did not matt.r whether the paper were upside
down o, „ght s,<k .p, for Saunders had come to
the stage where he a»M read . line twice without
Knowing a word. He told himself it was the drug.
Budd continued dusting sulkily, with sickening mem-

he labor deegate. Th. secretary heaved a sigh

lide u7.' ""'"'■•' '"'^ ''''""^ '^' P'P'' "Kht

Suddenly, a low gasp broke from the secretary',

desk, and Budd glanced through the half-closed Soor

see the man sink forward over the paper with
rcd-nmmed, staring eyes, and bloodless, muttering

264

THE NEW DAWN

lips from which no word escaped. The boy seized
one of the papers in the outer office and scanned
the headings. There was the war .... That was
not it! . . There was news of the impending

strike . . \or was that it! . . Ah . . . here!
Body of Cnltnown Man Found by Labor Leader
McGee — Inquest P(jstponed for a Week !

Barely had Build thrown the paper down when
the secretary glided from his desk to the safetv
vault, opened the combination noiselessly with
trembling fingers, pulled out a file of type-written
reports and tore one sheet to atoins

"Here, boy— l...-k alive! Hold on, here! Put
these other scraps in your bag! Have them burnt
by the furnace man, to-da> — you know— right now!
Go — and don't make a noise!"

"Yes, siree," mumbled Budd, scuddling through
the hall to the basement stairs. "Yum — yum —
yum !"

Sitting in the half dark of the furnace room on
a coal scuttle was — not the fireman — but Sam Mc-
Gee, labor delegate, picking his teeth with his jack-
kni f e.

"It's — all — tored— up!" regretted Budd. "It
ain't plain like you wanted, but I guess you can
patch them little bits," and he turned the bagful out
on the floor.

Sam McGee, labor delegate, carefully sorted the
waste paper, picking out certain scraps. "This is
the one we want, sonny! It's signed 'Kipp,' ton!
I guess we've got all we want, now! The inquest

^fie "Vim .V -i r i¥

ADD PURPOSE 26s

can go on and so can the strike! Don't forget to
waken the hreman from his booze in time for wtk

Here chuck the rest m the fire! Now, run back
and keep your eyes open an,l your mouth .hut!" '

ders irriMhl ''"'■" '^^ '"'P''" '^^'"^"^'-'J ^aun-
ders ir tably, as Budd reentered the office

d.dn t burn 'em, but 1 put 'em in the Hn ,' re-
phed the boy, w,th his eyes very wide, Indeed

Don t stand there .... loitering-you Uttle

ev, your- ordered the secn.ary. ■■Lp^rawl ,

X'ufet across the carpet! (io to your work!"

«udd s jaws opened wide as well as his eyes. He

d.d not understa„d that laudable precept-when you

are m the wrong, hit first! ^

"Budd — come here!"

As Budd went trotting into the secretary's room
the am.able Mr. Saunders .heeled in his chair Jth
eyes snapping.

"On, report is missing from the vault! Don't

''.' r '~"." V°"'' ^^" ""' y°" ^'d-'t take it"''
ijee whiz !

Budd opened and shut his mouth twice. He had
promised M.ss Connor not to use certain "^rds
He missed them, now.

Oba?,! ' '""'^ '' T '"I "'•'" ^°"^ °f ^"'" '" ^"^^I'^J
'JDadiah, snappinir h s finwers "v« 1 ,

that renort I V 1 ^ " ^""''' ^o" t""''

Don' tell ^"rj°'' -"'^'^id it by mistake !

iJon t tell me you didn t!

'" slow, deliberate, petrified fashion.

266

THE NEW DAWN

"Mister Saunders ! You great big !— downright I
— sneakin' 1— (ib — story-telling— liar— that you are!
You took thai report, yourself, and tore it up I You
know you did! I saw you! And it was about—
th — th — ih — " he stammered, "that Mister Kipp!"
The words came shaking out of him like marbles
from a bag; for yith one tigerish pounce the secre-
tary sprang across the floor, clutched his long, thin,
crooked, yellow fingers round the boy's throat as if
to choke the name back, and shook till the child
sputtered.

"Take y'r greasy nails out o' my neck, or I'll —
P— P — pick y'r eyes out!" shrilled the urchin.

"O — o — oh!" gritted the conlidential man in a
voice that resembled the hiss uf steam from a kettle,
"o— o — oh ! — you littls; .... you little .... I've
a min' to . . . shake every tooth down your throat!"
But Budd had learned a gutter trick or two th.-.
prevented the conlidential gentleman from carryi, -r
out those amiable intentions. With one squirm the
boy drew his right leg back and planted a kick with
firm impact and great precision squarely on the sec-
retary's stomach. With another squirm he butted
head foremost into the soft vesture of the same
collapsed organ. The man doubled forward like
a folding camp stool, with both arms round his
waist, both eyes red-rimmed and snapping. Budd
fell back, prancing like a fighting chicken.

"Think you'll do me the way you murdered Mr.
Kipp!" he screamed, forgetful that while his eyes
were to be open his mouth was to be shut. "Think

ADD PURPOSE 2^7

you'll pitch me down a hole alive th.

throwed Mister KioDl" R.L i . I ^"^ >'°"
^iti i\ippi Hantam-like he orann-A
round ,„j ^^^ ^^^ revolving 'person

Ta 1 he h H ' 'V''' '''y °^ =■" f''^ fighting cat"

tor the basement stairs.

"Pshaw, Budd! . . . He's snr^.l ' ....

Hes scared o' you! That's what he is! Goon
back to your work, kiddie! Keep him scared
^^^eli g,ve „m hydroph'y, kiddie-thafs what, my

* * *

nerv! •^'^r^T"^ '^"'^ '" ^'■' ^hair, numb. Every
TL: :£—/^'''^ hands began stinging tl

eered lit- ■ "■""'" '''='"'• '^^'""J. stag-

gered hke a man.ac through a reddish mist The
mornmg ,,ght, .-hich but a moment before had
oded the room in a sunburst, grew dark ''
dark red . . . giowmg like angry fire. The iron

368

THE NEW DAWN

cap tightened .... tightened till he thought his
brain would burn with anguish. Clammy sweat
oozed from his forehead. He sat clasping and un-
clasping the long, thin, crook't, yellow fingers.

"I'll see . . . I'll go ... . and see ... . Mrs.
Kipp .... a:- jt that fool engineer's pay!"

It is to bf observed that never at any moment,
never for ti' fraction of nny moment, did Mr.
Obadiah Saunders blame self. He was the victim
of circumstances. That was it. Saunders' morality
of the judicious ambidexterity credited self with all
the good that he did; God and circumstances with
all the evil. His remorse was fear, not regret.
Drawing out a little white tube resembling c.unphor
flakes from an inner pocket, he put it to his lips,
bit off a flake, and begin chewing voraciously.
Thereafter, Mr. Saunders felt better. Budd slunk
about the office like a puppy dog spoiling for a fight.

There was nothing of the felted, feline tread
to the heavy footstep of Sam McGee, labor leader.
The step of the big, dominant, dogged delegate rang
out loud and sharp, true and sure, as the hammer
of Thor. It was a footstep marching straight to the
goal, not wriggling round. It might crush with the
sheer cruelty of power. It would never crush wit;
the cruelty of cunning, like the snaKe that winds a
victim helpless. And, to-day, the ponderous foot-
step lifted with the elastic buoyancy of an assured
hope.

Sam McGee at last hail firm hold of the ham-

ADD PURPOSE

269

mer of power that was to smash, scrunch, pulveri/e
beat .nto dust all the plans of capital aguL labor'
Capital was no longer to be ayai,n, labor. Hi,
hammer was to weld these two forces-capital and
labor— m one homogeneous, relentless, resistless,
onward-movmg I'owerl Sam McGee was going to
compel capital to amalgamate with labor on equal
shares, equal .. -ofits, equal privileges.

Like a lion awakening, Demos— the mob— was to
arise . . . to arise from the long night of the
centuries darkness, the centuries' slaxery and serf-

Z?.' ■ ■/ V"^ '"'^ ^^^'^ ^""'^ fhe Skeleton
Spectre ct a Poverty, cruel and grim as death!

•• • • • . . . From Cave-Men, fear-haunted, run-

ning through the jung-es, the pc<,plc, the ignorant,

half-brute people, had slowly risen from slavery to

serfdom, rom serfdom to freedom, from freedom

to pditical power! . . . . And, now, McGee dreamed

01 Uemos marching majestically on . . equ-^i

shares; equal profits; equal privileges!

.No more Skeleton Spectre of Want looking out from

the shadows, envious-eyed, on the Feast! No

more anxious fright tossing restlessly on sleepless

pillows! ... No more fear of want . . . drair-

ging men down to the brute greed of dishonesty

• • • . women to the lewdness of sin ! . In the

earth was food . food enough, and more than

enough, for all children of men! Why, then, did

men and women barter souls for gold> What an

swer the labor delegate, with his fanatical eyes, gave

to this wild questioning we know.

170

THE NEW DAWN

Once, when an anxmic and somewhat emotional
little man, who thought himself a reformer, when
he was only a bubble on the tide, asked the president
of the Great Consolidated that question, the big
man bounced round his revolving chair in a fashion
that set the little man's heart thumping.

"Want to know?" demanded Ward, rolling his
cigar along his teeth, "want to know tvhy there
are so many failures and slugs oo7,ing on the under-
side of the board? Well, I'll tell you! ... .
Lazy lubbers won't get a move on and won't lift a
leg to climb out of the ditch I That's why; and I've
been there! .... I know what I am talking
about!" and Ward glanced at the intruder, who
meekly muttered out something about Ward having
such strength that he was hardly a fair criterion for
the Weak. "Strong? . . . Weak?" snorted Ward.
"fVhy are they Weak? Tell me that! ... Be-
cause they don't try to be strong! What do you
think makes strength? .... It is struggling
.... fighting; gaining an inch; fighting for two;

gaining two; fighting for four Good-day

to you; and the like of you .... I have no time to
waste! Porter, show this fellow out! If he comes
again, throw him out!"

McGee slapped the document which he had
patched together down in the Nickel Plate saloon,
and told himself that he had a hammer he was
going to use for "all it was worth!"

The elevator cage of the Rookery Building where
Truesdale had his offices, was at the top floor when

ADD PURPOSE 171

McGee entered the hall. The labor leader would
not wait. He went bounding up the stairs, flight
atter flignt, four steps at a time, till he burst in
breathlessly on a clerk sitting inside the railing of
the outer ofSce.

"Boss in, sonny?"

"What's your business?" demanded the clerk, who
guarded the wicket, presenting a writing pad for
McGee's name.

"Ah— you midget I" gruftly laughed the big labor
leader. "Guess you'll know my business soon
enough 1" Stepping over the railing at one stride
he marched unannounced into Truesdale's office,
where he shut the door with a resounding bang.

"I'm McGee, the I. W. \V. delegate," he blurted
out; but, when Truesdale turned quickly and pushed
forward a chair for his visitor, McGee found jim-
self taking off his hat.

"I'm glad to know youl From what I've heard
out at our mines I think I ought to know you with-
out an introduction," remarked Truesdale pleas-
antly. Somehow, the manner of his saying it dis-
armed McGee. "I'm mighty glad to have a good
talk with you. You are the most disinterested labor
organizer I have ever met. You are free of graft,
and that's more than most of us can say. You rec-
ognize all unions, all colors, all creeds— and that
is at least a Christ ideal."

"Why don't you come over and join us?" burst
out McGee, sitting down and spreading out his feet,
and lighting a cigar.

MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TBI CHART

(ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2|

1.0 [tE i^

Hi m III 2.2

^ APPLIED IIVA^GE Inc

t65J tost Mom 51'eet
Rochester. Ne« York 141

(716) *82 - 0300 - Phone
(716] ;88- 5969 - Fo.

272

THE NEW DAWN

Truesdale shook his head. "Tell me," he said,
"are you really I Won't Works; or are you the In-
dustrial Union of the World— the federation of all
labor?"

"We're both," promptly answered McGee. "We
are I Won't Works unless you fellows with the
plunk hand us over all industry. We don't blow
you up with dynamite. That is foolish. It gives
you the law against us. We just fold our hands and
do nothing, as you rich people do; and, when we
induce all the workers of the world to fold their
hands as you rich people do, who is going to do the
job for you fellows? That's the Great General
Strike we are working for — the great world revo-
lution! You bet we are I Won't Works! .Also,
we are the Industrial Workers of the World."

And that is why you insist on union — why you
have induced all my men to join the union — because
our men, wh.o would work apart from you, might be
the Judas Iscariot selling the salvation of labor for
a purse of silver?"

"Yes, sir," answered McGee.
"I have no objection to that!" said Truesdale.
"But the point, sir, is — we're about to declare a
strike in the G. C. mines over that cut in wages!"
"I'm sure I have no objection to that, either!
There was no reduction in our wages!"

McGee laughed. "Oh, that's all right— long as
there's no trouble in your mines and there is in
Ward's, you've got the whip! But, the point is, sir
—before we order on the strike with Ward's miners

ADD PURPOSE 273

we want you " McGee rapped sharply wit', his
knuckles on fruesdale's desk, -wc want you-in
cons,derat.on of the fact there is to be >,o strike
■n your mmes-we want you-to r..„^,„~, our
umonl We have to have as great a solidarity of
abor as there ,s capital. We pay our men who go
o gaol the same as you do. They are servants tf
the common good. We must have your men ir. our
union!

There it was again, like the ringing of a tocsin,
a cry to arms, the old battle rally, the Armageddon
Of l,te—« ,„„„ ,,,i,ij ,„,, ^^^^^^j ^^^^^^^^_, Q^ ^^^

great, blmd forces marshaling darkly for death
grapple, a man must choose sides-choose sides
or be crushed between !

"I do recognize your union," answered Truesdal.
vaguely. I have no objection to every man in the
mmes jommg it!"

w.'i'n ''"r f"'' '^' P°'"'' ''■"- "^ y^" know very
Hell! Before ordenng on the strike in the Great
Consol.dated we want a ffa.ranU; from ,on that
you won t h,re any but union men! That' you are
one of us! And, by God, I know from your face
you are! What's the use o' pretending 'to favo
our umon .f you can fire all our men and hire scabs'
I hat makes you independent of us?"
The necessity to choose sides, choose at once

olid . 7' °" IT'^'^'- ^ ^^^' '^''"^'^ 'he Con:
Ion. th".^ bad enough. A strike in his mines

along with the fight-meant ruin; and, for what'

i ne sake of a pnnciple.

274

THE NEW DAWN

He scrawled his pen absently across the blotting
sheet on his desk .... A tricky man might have
tricked his way out by false promises to both sides.
He heard the ceaseless rush of the wires, unseeing,
unswerving, impersonal . . . Force! A live dog
was better than a dead man . . . if he went down
under the general smash what good would lluit do
the principle? What was the principle, anyway,
he asked himself, half cynically? How nakedly
free of all side issues life could shake a principle!
. . . Well ... let us seel .. . He had refused
to be coerced into joining the Great Consoli-
dated because a-yreat-dcat-of-somethwg-for-a-great-
deal-of-nothing was bad business; was, in fact, an in-
terference with the Sacred Right to Property; in a
word, was theft! That was principle, the first!
Then, he had held aloof from this union business
because any man's Right to Work was as sacred as
the Right to Life! That was principle, the second!
The labor leader's eyes grew larger, darker, as
he watched Truesdale. He had not expected oppo-
sition in this quarter. Never mind, in that docu-
ment under his coat he had the hammer that would
smash, scrunch, pulve/ize opposition! Like Ward,
McGee stood immutably for Force!

The wires at the window went humming with
their multitudinous voices of power — the power
of blind, impersonal Force! The ships of the
ocean front rocked with the cargoes of ten thousand
ports! The muffled roar of the street came up like
a chant from the World of Work to the God of

ADD PURPOSE J

oZT. : ■ • i,^;;; --^ p-^'T'^ - this J,l

right, without ir„; "''™^'- • \- • ^'■^'^-^

out soul . a ";1' ' ,' ', "'°"' ^"•'""^' ^'th-

,)»,« ; • • • a B've-and-take gamester

demon of struggle in which the wTak went' " ^ '
the iron hoof of the Sfr„ "=/*'^='k vvent under
Beast! . ^7°"^, of the Great Blond

man... 'standn;,;^ ^'^""''^''^••••"ne
-novements o7"LX:rZ t;T^^.'^--P'"^
the hard-headed old^ncesfors thol '"'"""' °^

ers of three generations tho ! '^'■°P'">' ""'"■

marrow of Lir ""„:' ^.'^'^.-'^.'''-^ to the

not down . thnt 1' ' ' ' , '""'""' «'°"ld

the sacred right'tow'k ""\' '^^^' '" P^°P"'^
of existence. ' ''"' ^''^ foundation pillars

"Well ?" demanded McGep I
want you to guarantee VoVZl ^'""''^- "^^
"You shall never JetL. "°"'""'°" '"^"'"

quietly answered True'sdae''frT; '^""^ ""='"
liberty to labor and capita, " '"'^ ^°' '"'^'^''^"^^

^^The two men might have heard their watches

-I:^o;;:''-i^:i;-P'^-'^Truesdalemore

Beyond thi. ; :r:t7e r:.L:T'vr

trickery, and gr d But the™ '""' ^"'^ '^«^'
=> scale of wages o me uhV "'' ^^^ P'"«'="t

blockhead anllumbT^s^^o: ertZtmT " "^^ ^
^. ood man, who doesn't needtaVhinjr/t;-

276

THE NEW DAWN

pens to be doing the same work — that moment, I
say, you are interfering with my rights to my own
property! That is tyranny! .... :\nd, the min-
ute you tell me I must deny any man work who
wants to work, because he is not a member of your
union, I say you are interfering with that man's
freedom and life !"

There was a heavy, embarrassed silence. Again,
Truesdale heard the wires droning their ceaseless
chant. McGee smiled. He was so sure that he
held what would change the tune of the argument.
Like Ward, McGee's belief was the argument of
Force.

"I ain't going to argue with you, Mr. Truesdale,"
he said. "It's too late in the day to argue against
unions! They're here to stay; but, Mr. Trues-
dale — " he leaned forward, lowering his voice and
drawing a large envelope fiom his breast pocket —
"supposin' I tell you I have in that there envelope
a statement signed by Kipp, the engineer, saying
the Consolidated had tunneled a hundred yards into
your mines — what do you say to swapping horses,
sir? I give you the envelope: you recognize our
union! Know what will happen? That suit against
you will be quashed; Tom Ward hit hard between
the eyes; your stock, which has been sinking to the
heels of y'r boots, is goin' to jump up quick! Your
mines go on while Ward's lock up — you get the
trade — see?"

McGee smiled broadly, and extended the en-
velope.

ADD PURPOSE 277

"Do . ou mcnn mc to take it?" asked Truesdale
unmoved and iinnioving.

"Say the word--.n' it's yours!" declared Mc-
Oee lighting a cigar with a hand that trembled

Then McGee-I say th- word! If you think
abo and capual can lock arms to exploit the pub-
hc.-h,gher wages, higher prices-you are mistaken !
rou take the American public for a bigger fool
than It ,s ,f you think it will dance to two tunes and
pay the piper for both I AkGee, I say the word-
1 will „o/ promise „„, to employ non-union men!

eltherd--"'"^''""'^^"^'"''^'-^"^'^^)'
McGee jerked back rigid, as if he had been hit by
a bullet He rose, buttoning the envelope in his
coat a figure of towering wrath. Three sharp raps
of the clenched knuckles struck 'IVuesdale's desk,
is on!" "' ""'^"■"^"'^' ^i'— take notice-the strike

*
So the strike was on; and the fight was on; and
the suit was on, put at the foot of n list of two
thousand other pending suits in order to depress the
stock market; and the stock was down; and cus-
omers captured by rivals selling lower than the
cost of production in one town where Truesdale's
salesmen went, twice as high as the cost of produc-
t.on ,n another town where Truesdale's salesmen
did not go-a tnck made possible by the railroads
granting special rates for Ward's mines and rebates
to Ward for all coal hauled from the Truesdale

J78

THE NEW DAWN

mines. /Iiid it was all perfectly legal; that is, it was
dime so that it could not be proved illegal.

Truesdale did little work for the rest of the after-
noon. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets,
paced the floor, then sent for his manager and his
lawyer. The manager with the gray whiskers and
the gray suit and sand-papered voice wore an '1-
told-you-so' air. To him Truesdale gave orders to
go down to New York by the midnight train and
protect the company's stock on the Stock Exchange
next day, at any cost, by buying all that was of-
fered.

"Can — can we afford — is that feasible?" asked
the manager cautiously.

A man who owns only a fourth of his company's
stock must plainly have a bank at his back to buy
up the other three-quarters.

"It Is feasible for one day — Rawlins I An ava-
lanche is not going to hit the floor to-morrow I
Steady her up for one day! Then, call n emer-
gency meeting of the directors for to-morrow after-
noon herel This thing Is going beyond us!"

"I thought so," muttered Rawlins.

To the lawyer Truesdale issued instructions that
a countersuit be filed against Ward for tunneling
off his limits, and a suit be prepared against the
railroads for granting rebates. Anyoie conversant
with the law will readily understand that each of
these suits was good for two years' delay and,
for several fortunes to those harpies fattening off
the law's delay. When the lawyer went away to

ADD PURPOSE

279

look up how McGec's evidence could best be forced
rom h.m, by summons or injunction, Truesdal-

over the telephone.

What was that? Yes .... they had heard

of the break wth the G. C. ! What did it mean?
■ . . . And Nv^at the deuce was the matter in New

in? " Wh ""''' ..r° "•=■' '^^'"^ 'he sell.

■ng.' What gang d,d those floor traders rep.

resent, anyway? .... Wasn't it a case of pure
jollymg .... brokers playing a smart game
ouymg and selling .. . . twisting sales back and
forward to each other when the stock was not in

. : ■ ;.■, ? "'""^' " ^=" contrary to rules-
and^why d.dn't Truesdale put up a trick to catch
tnemr • • . . . Why not give orders for other
traders to buy up all that was offered? That

^Jld cmch the trick! .... They would have to
find the stock they had sold short, or howll . .
Well . . .let -em howl! . . . Yes, of course, they
approved of what Truesdale had decided: that was
the company's policy-to be conservative: a man

lo JheloorthTngf ^"^' '' '" ''' "--"'^ ^°'-"^ -
That was the gist of the telephone talks. Trues-
dale, pacing the length of his office, wondered
whether they would call it "a fool thing" for him
to be monkeying with what Ward had designated
as conscience"; what he himself called "princi-

flT Ml ••; • ■}''-"'°"°^ 'he directors' meet-
ing would clarify things.

28o

THE NEW DAWN

He heard the clerks banking their ledgers shut,
closing desk top<, locking the vault with a swing of
the ponderous door; and the last footsteps died
faintly in the hall. A thousand harbor lights twink-
led through the gray mist of the ocean front. The
wires kept up their ceaseless chant . . . the rush
. . . rush .... rush .... of Force, invisible, im-
personal, unseeing, unswerving; but, then, as I rues-
dale recollected, listening, it was a liiiiiiiiii hand at
the end of the wires that set the invisible Force
^-)ing, that checked it, that hirnessed the unseen,
unseeing Power. A human brain — a thing above
and beyond that controlled Brute-Force — the God
in Man! Me took out his watch. It was time for
the home walk that had grown to be the brightest
part of the day for him. She would be leaving her
studio now, for the cottage up the hill in the sub-
urbs. Ten minutes later Truesdale was crossing
the snowy area of a city square on the lookout for
a very erect figure that walked with a spring, brisk
and light.

"Ah . . . here we are! You were ahead of me,
to-night," he said, swinging in time with her quick,
buoyant step.

"We seem to meet here," said Madeline.

"Yes — it is much better for you to walk than
ride in those stuffy trams! I wish you would let
me fetch the trap round for you! We could spin
out aloni; the sea before dinner. A whiff of sea
air would do you good. I always take a run about

ADD PURPOSE

281

before rounding up for dinner. Suppose we take
a canter out by the pa ^ io-night?"

"Canter?" Madeline laughed, but suddenly so-
berc^ as she locked in his face for an answer.

I I ^; rL~''''"'''''' Vour f.ncc is white. You
look ,11 here are the strangest lines— there is the
oddest look . . ."

"Cornel" he said. "I'm tuckered out with busi-
ncss— that is all!"

They walked for half a mile without speaking,
when fruesdale turned to her abruptly

Take my arm," he said. "I want to talk'"

. • ti'"i'r'^'''' '^°'^" " '*"= ""y- Ihc lights
twmkle like fire mist!"

"Yes, you always give me the fee' ■ that life is
a th.ng too beautiful to be real, Madeline; but, do
you know, it is a mighty dark proposition, some-
times, too! It isn't all art, and .(oodness, and

beauty-not by a long .... long ,,,„,,

rhere doesn t seem much a fellow can do at tim.s
but hang on to what he knows is right with his
teeth, and keep butting through the dark! And I
.ieclare, when I find myself acknowledging this is
hard, I could kick myself! You know, I like the
struggle as part of the game ! Xo isles of bliss with
Idleness forme.

IauX°d. """"'""^ ^'"'"'" '" '^'' ^""^■' '^'
"No," he added savagely, "I want life to be a

nght ... a fight . . . ."
"And a victory," she said.

282

THIi NEW UAWN

"For right," he added. "And that's just it I
I'm hanged if I like to sec the right knuckled under,"
and he laughed, but in the virile note was a tremble,
and her clasp unconsciously tightened on his arm.

"You know," he went on, "you arc my standard
bearer?"

"I?" repeated Madeline.

"You make the fight both easier and harder!
You make a fellow buckle up without his knowing,
so that the light's a bit of fun in the day's work!
Somehow, he doesn't care a cuss for anything but
the right when he's with you! You are sort of a
lifting kick to a man going out in the arena of a
football fight! It's easy when he's with you, but
when he sets out to Jo the business, to put right
into terms of the dollar bill, you know, it's a harder
proposition."

"But why?"

"Because, by doing it he might lose you I"

"No— never I"

The words were out before she knew.

Truesdale stood still, looking down at the city
lights.

"Do — you — mean — that?" he asked, sharply.

She took her hand from his arm. A sense half
shame, half fright at her own plunge, gripped
Madeline's throat. She felt a lo*: of pulses there
that she had never known to exisi, and power of
speech seemed floundering in the depths of a new
confusion. Then, it came to her that her own con-
sciousness might impart deeper intent to the words

ADD PUKFOSE

281

I mean, she ciulcavornl to cxiJain "I ,„

^at „„ .an wo.,., ever ,o,c „.y ,;:::i3::;p L^^:

he dij what was rinht!"

"Oh?" answered ■rruc-scla,c, „)ughtfui,v "Thnf
-asnt exact,y what I „ua„t-what I had hoped-
-I-no „,atter! I',, te„ you .son,e jay S 1

^aw r '' ^"" ""' '^"^ '"^•- »"''•" ''^- ='dJ'--d '

r I .'" P'""" *"•■" "" ''= '"^"J-^JI lake my
arm! I haven't finished talking!" ^

And with a consistency that was not obvious

ot rapture ,s pa<n, how much . ecstasy so Cose
akm to anguish that a hair's b.eadth may L d

vexed at her -nvn impetuosity, a chill came .yer
h r that numbed life. When he had sZ h
/r endsh,p • was „o, wh.t he meant, life Pushed

replaced her hand on his arm, she was so happy that
Imppmess seemed to eclip.e life itself. She «a,ked
m a dream. Her feet did not touch earth HeJ
heart was beat ng so that she could not speak She
aw neither the long, treCined avenue nor the
wink ing mist alight with frosty gleam. She saw
only a brightness, the brightness of an undreamed

Z) \. '^ '°'"' '° unexpectedly, the great

ertr:ad •: t" ^°"'' "-^-^^-'^ "- '--

fore, not an hour ago. they had been comrades-

284

THK NKVV DAWN

his voice, his hand, his approacii, his cumpanion-
ship, like others.

Not a week ago had another man stood in her
presence telling her that she had influenced him;
and, had she not hung over his ambiguous letter,
moved at once with deep interest, deep distrust?
Had not a something within her pleaded for that
other ma: ? But now — there was no other man;
there was no pleading. There was neither trust nor
distrust, it was there, imperious, existent, all-ex-
istent, enveloping h;r life — giving her new life, new
being, new hope, new heart-beats ! She wanted to
be home, to be alone, to be in the sacred stillness
of her own room .... to think .... to pray in
a prayer that could have no words ! What had
caused the difference? .... Was it the man's self-
revealings that had touched her? Other men had
revealed self and had not interested her. Did he
know? . . . Did he realize? . . . Had he touched
anyone else like this? . . . Could it be possible that
she had been to him what he had become to her?
.... She remembered how, not a month ago, she
had told him that destiny — the drawing of river to
sea, and sea to sun — had frightened her; and he had
answered that it was only the resistance of her in-
dependence. She must hide . . . hide this new
thing till she was sure .... till she was sure 1 But
he was talking.

"I used to think, you know, when we passed
crosses and statues in Brittany that Christ's day was

ADD PURPOSE

29s

done :_ they were only the sign posts of a traveled

"And now?"

"Christ's day is not begun! Speaking of Him
as a teacher of men, Madeline. I thought we had
developed so that the race was ready for a new
system— broader, bigger."

"And now?"

He laughed harshly. "We're back to the Nebu-
chadnezzar stage again; beasts of the field, holding
h,s ow„ by brute strength .... the Great Blond
Beast code of existence. We haven't begun
.ve haven t begun the fighting of right for its own
sake w,thout reward! Fancy fellows crusading to"
comer "'' '"""''" °" '^' booty to

Madeline was mystified. Was he bitter over im-
pendmg loss ? She, who had first spurred him, couTd
not answer t was like the old escapade of the

lone"?- t '^' '"" ""'"^ '"^° ''■' ^"^' ^^ 'tood up
alone to the consequences. She vaguely felt the
man s faculties in dark conflict with dim forces o
wh.ch her woman's life gave her no clew. How
tnflmg how paltry her art seemed beside this liv-
.ng, palp,tat,ng life-and-death struggle of men every

whlh T ''™"^'y '^'y ^^""'^ fhe conflict of

which women knew nothing! Scarred, perhaps, and
no without blame, they emerged fron, the battle

she Tu T''"^ °^ "'""■■'"«' ^f="^^''"^ f-^'t that

286

THE NEW DAWN

Then, his hand had gripped across hers on his
arm, and the words were coming from him, tense,
smothered, blunt, in naked truth.

"Madeline, if you should fail me . . . if you
should fail me, and turn out a woman who played
with love like Mrs. Ward, it would smash me 1 I
should feel as if my life had been built an inverted
pyramid — founded on the wrong end! I should
topple back bang to the broad foundations of pri-
mordial, brute instincts — Self! When I am with

you it seems as if everything everything

.... business, nationality, prosperity . . . must be
founded on right, won't build up solidly unless it is
founded on right; and on the apex of my pyramid
I place all such women as you stand for . . . truth,
honor, purity, love! But, good God, if you should
fail me .... as I see women fail men every day,
and play with love the way the beast-cat plays with
a tortured rat .... if you should make of love a
light ihing . . . ."

He did not finish. He walked on faster. Made-
line was trembling. That word, which she had not
dared to utter, he had named, repeated, taken for
granted, consecrated as an unspoken covenant on
which hung his eternal destiny. She had not dreamed
of love coming to her in this guise, splendid, terri-
ble, jealous of its own faultlessness, of its own stain-
lessness, of its own worth — jealous of perfection as
. god — a thing that might lead a man's soul up to
Heaven, or fling it down to Hell 1 She had not
dreamed of it having consequences that were like a

ADD PURPOSE

287

propulsion to all the best in womanhood, or all the
worst. She had not thought of it as the doorway
through which human beings pass to a Better or a
Worse, to the Beast Code or the Spirit Code ir-
revocably and forever! '

"Forgive me," he was saying. "I know you can
never fail mcl If I fail it will be my own fault!
If my pyramid turns upside down it will be because
of myself!"

They did not speak again till they were almost
at the cottage. He had said: "I'll see you at Mrs
Ward's reception?"

"Yes," she had answered, half angered, half
awed.

"I wonder if you know what you women do for
us men?" He held open the gate.

"We might know— that is, we might know— if—
if you told us," she answered. Why was her voice
pleading? What was it pleading for? What did
she long to hear him say that set all the chords of
her being vibrating with a music that was not of
earth?

"Suppose, by doing what is right, a fellow gets
himself ruined, smashed— loses the love that in-
spired his life?" he questioned.

The floods of fear, of almost terror, of rapture,
of delirious ecstasy were again sweeping over her'
She did not pause to think. She did not know the
words she was saying. She hardly recognized her
own voice whispering with husky breaks: "I can
only judge for myself. True; but, if I were a woman

288

THE NEW DAWN

in such a case, I should care ... oh, I should
love .... yes, love . . . the man who dared to do
right, who dared to risk losing all .... I should
. . . ." her voice choked, "I should love him to
the very brink of Hell, and down into Hell, though
the whole world fell on top of him ! . . . . He
would have my love .... my devotion .... al-
ways .... always!"

True did not look at the slim figure visibly trem-
bling on the other side of the gate. He stood with
his hat in his hand, watching the lights twinkling
through the mist, but she saw that his hand shook,
and lier eyes fell as before a fear. His answer
came from smotnered depths.

"Then I'll be Strong; for you have given me
Purpose!"

The last word rang out like iron on steel.

When she looked up he had gone.

Upstairs, in the sacred stillness of her own room,
with the white light from the snow checkering the
floor in panes of silver, Madeline sank on her knees
at the couch with her face in the pillow, to think
.... to think; and her thoughts were a wordk j
prayer, a hymn, a rapture ! She could not think.
She could only . . . feel!

She raised her face to the sky of the deep night
distances streaming in silver tb'^ough the window.

"Oh, God — this is the best — the best — the very

best — of all," she said in a sob.

* * *

Downstairs, Budd McGee sat in the kitchen at a

ADD PURPOSE 285

side table "doin' lessons " H»
copybook wi.h red T^d a" elpen""^ '" '

across e^S SI trhTaf.rrd';'"''"^''
topful of hafp an^ • I- . ' ""'^^ ^^»s so

in large capitals xvlfh f grunting, wrote

exclanfatio?ma ks ' nVl '"'' '"'^ '"'"'^™"' ^"^^
novel: "°"^'' '° P""«"ate a modern

M,ster-Sau„ders~is-„o,J^ il

CHAPTER XX

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION

You may condemn a man's methods with bell,
book and candle, but if the methods materialize in
a steam yacht, and a private car, and an art gallery,
with one house in his home city, a second at New-
port, a third in the South, a fourth on the Mediter-
ranean, a fifth in Paris and a sixth in London —
all equipped in a style to excite the envy of princes —
there is a likelihood of the world taking your con-
demnation for envy.

Your cautious gentleman might sh.itce his head at
Tom Ward's "high finance," and utter dark hints
about "sky-rockets fizzling out," and "stock that
was most'y water and gas," and wealth that ran into
the billions ueing "the Paper Age sort" ; but when
the high finance, and sky-rockets, and aqua-gaseous
papier-mache wealth materialized in Mrs. Tom
Ward's reception, your cautious gentleman kept
quiet and accepted the invitation.

The reception was what the society papers railed
"the affair of that year"; and it was certainly an
affair to them, for the entire staff of reporters spent
a week beforehand .vriting descriptions of the gowns
that were to be worn, and the entire staff of editors
390

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 291

tetnhot"""" •"■"r^'°" ^''"^ 'he number of
telephone messages from guests ordering their
names to be kept out of the papers, and lessef gue
a kmg the.r names not to be omitted. Next fo th
keeper of the gates of Paradise those society re
porters could record varieties of human nature

By half-past ten o'clock the whole length of the
dr,veway through the park to the Ward mans on
was such a press of carriages that, in order to "1
admittance to the places reserved for them, the re"
porters were obliged to leave their hansoms and
foot .t m patent leather across the snow.

Of course, grand dames of the ascendant declared
up to the very n,ght of the reception that //.., woS
0/ go, but when the night came round so dfd they;
f not humbly, at least gracefully sandwiched be-
ween the newly-rich and the not-so-newly-rich, quite
onfident m the.r own minds that their pr sence

iar:;:'''^'""^=^"'''^'""''--^"4-ted

To Ward the affair was undisguisedly a nuisance-
"■ cessary, but a nuisance. Having once entered
.nto U wth his wife he determined it should e
Jone on the proper scale. Musicians of world-fame
^ ere brought on a special train from New York
A previous train the same day carried the rarest
owers that could be bought in three cities, for th"
decorat,o„ of the house and the supper tables A
ram, s hghtly later than the n>usician'' bore o'eigt
guests from Washington, among whom was a pr^c^

a9>

THE NEW DAWN

come to America to woo the nation into a European
alliance.

That prince was afterwards heard to say that he
saw e\idcnce at Ward's reception of greater wealth
than the annual incomes of half a dozen European
kingdoms. lie had not believed that democracy —
equal opportunities for every man — could produce
such private magnificence. It was a greater power
— he had not said "menace" — than the standing
armies of Europe. He could not believe that indi-
vidual liberty would bring about such national opu-
lence. The question he asked was: would the opu-
lence destroy its creator — the liberty?

Mrs. Ward received her guests below the arch
that led from the drawing rooms to the art gallery.
Unbending and strong as a pillar stood Ward by
her side. American beauty roses, interspersed with
a species of rare, early-blooming, gorgeous gloxinia,
banked both sides of the arch. Gowned in a cos-
tume that had been a field-day to the society re-
porters — a gold-shot, pinkish-black, gauze-spangled
thing, hand-painted in the flaring draperies of the
skirt, and specially woven in French silk mills — her
face marble white, with the dark eyes lustrous as
stars, the languor animated by a wonderful bril-
liancy, Mrs. Ward herself looked like some splen-
did exotic bought and brought at wealth's com-
mand to stand between the native roses and tiic
tropical, velvety, deep-lipped gloxinia; a tribute to
the towering power in the person of her husband.

Her jewels were the sensation of the prince's

THE CREED 0.\ EXHllilTJON

293

York Jd W 7- °"^ ''''"S t''='t 'N'ew

compleTr Se for t e' "'"•^' ''''''"' """^''^ ^'^^
'° hi» wife. J wel that h """■' "'^'''"^ ^'^^
tury for their „!^- ''" '"^"'"'^ half a cen-

purcha ' ^ T"^ '""^ ^'^^ ' "^'"'"°" (-^ their

purchase were not hkcly to have duplicates in New

194

THE NEW DAWN

York and Washington. Mrs. Ward wore the rope
of black pearls.

"You could visit the courts of Russia or Persia
without seein({ anything equal to them," one of the
prince's attendants was heard remarking.

Tom Ward had yet another surprise for what
he called "those foreign fellows." It is — I think —
prtity generally known to the goldsmith craftsmen
that there are only three perfect and complete sets
of gold dining plate in the world. Two are pos-
sessed by the rulers of the two strongest empires
in the world. The third was seen by the prince
when he sat down to the midnight supper of the
Ward reception. Nor did he fail to observe that
the wines were of the same date as he had tasted
at a royal dinner in England. Ward had bidden
highest for them when the royal cellars were auc-
tioned to the public. The prince paid no empty
compliment to his hostess, lie realized this was
not an American of the umbrella-hat type. His eyes
rested on the conservatory. There were exotics
from Africa, from South America, from Persia. He
glanced over the dining room. There were tapes-
tries from France, and Italy, and China — old tapes-
tries of priceless workmanship and lost dyes.
He scanned the art gallery. There were paintings
by the best artists of Russia, and France, and Italy,
and Spain, and England, and Holland. Then, the
prince's eye came back to Mrs. Ward, chiseled in
feature as a princess, highly keyed, over-cultivated,
pampered, artificial, imperious as a queen, with the

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 195

easy spontaneous gayety of her American woman-
hood Of all Wnni's possessions she was the costii-
est, the rarest. What the prince said pleased Ward
more than the highest-flown compliment.

"And this"— his eye wandering from conserva-
tciry to art gallcry-"and this"-with a long pause,
this— ,s America— the youngest of the nations!
lour conquests levy tribute on every one of us
across the sea ! Your bloodless victories have done
It I It IS a new phenomenon! We must invent a
new diplomacy— we must send our sons to carry

off your daughters! That is the only re-

dress! '

Ward, fireproof to flattery, could not resist that
insidious homage. It was good to be alive. Life
was a merry game when one succeeded: the wine of
battle, a fiery tincture to the blood when one con-
quered. And, Ward had conquered that very day
1 he papers were full of it, though the most of the
guests had not had time to read the details, and the
details themselves were still obscure. The rooms
of the reception were full of it, too. Wherever
men grouped questions went and came at random
Among the aigrettes, and diamond tiaras, and jew-
e.cd hair-ornaments, nodding like the clover-tops of
a wind-blown field, shiny heads— oare as a billiard
ball men's voices, lilce bass to the tinlcling treble
ot the women's laughter, uttered such enigmatical
statements as these:

''Who began it, anyway? I'd have done the same
m Ward's place. My brokers were on the floor

196

THE NEW DAWN

when it happened, ami it was as quick as — ihal/"
with a snap of the fingers.

Then from a whcez.y, dissipated gentleman with
a protuberant, white waistcoat:

"I tell you — other parties started it I Sort o'
thought they'd jolly Ward up, that sort o' thing!"
A wheezing cough. "Ward gave 'em all the jolly-
ing they'll want for some time — I can tell youl"
with a reddening of nose, and ears, and chin.

Then from the veteran broker who had con-
gratulated Truesdale so heartily:

"Look here, Dillon I What are you talking about
so innocently? You are in this game with Ward,
yourself; so is Truesdale! What the devil are you
up to with your ra/.zlc-dazzles?"

Then from a clean-shaved youth with a mon-
ocle, who would have mortgaged soul and salary for
an invitation to one of Mrs. Ward's receptions:

"Don't be too sure it was a smash! You can
never tell which side the smash is on till the checks
are cashed!"

Nevertheless, the opinion in this group was that
the smash had not been on Ward's side, though
one anicmic gentleman with an eye for dramatic
effects — be was a tenor — suggested that it "wouli^
be like Mr. Ward to show that iron nerve, even if
he had been smashed."

Among so many guests were the omnipresent
types: the grand dames, who \vill confer a favor on
Heaven if they condescend to go there; the cork-
screwing, socially ambitious women, gimleting a way

THE CREED ON EXhlBIlION

to favor to lulp hushuiids wl
lawyers, or iloctors; the b

297

i« were l)r,,kt

„,„„■! 1 . "' ■■■" ■""'■W'ttcJ youilis, wild

con dered recept.ons salvation; a.d the fa.-l, ain d

gent e,„en who detested function, and only ca to

ee t e pnncc; wo.nen v.l.o dressed on the'prin p e

about, be ter to ,„<,ue than to he. ignored; girls who
nunibered more irtations and conquests tun year "
and gangrenous-hearted folk whose pleasure vvar^'

And among the guests was Madeline Connor sit-

f.n^aga.,stabankofvWmeliliesintl,eartgal'erv
unconscious of the fact that the white of tife i'£
set off the red of her cheeks, and that the spark in '
of the electnc chandelier above was not so b^ as

Linden''"-, '''-■ "-"^ '''">^ -te,-tai,u.d 1 :
grand ocl gentleman of the good old school, with
a taste for f,ne wines and fine manners, a type f
fhe gay bachelors-ageless as century ■^nt.-who
pa.d court royally to your mother, and pla ,.J tE^

^y^I^:.'''' ''T' "^' '" ---ion and
w 1 vet act the same gallant role to your grandchil-

f.nc'dul ,T °''^ 'l'"''"^' '''"P-*-'-^''^ '" =' thou-
and dull silences! Consolation to the timid wall-

HowersI Pnnces of diners-outl Courtie-s o ex
austless homage to the gray-haired beauties of t e'

P t, and beaux to five gencrations-what could the

hostess do without you?

He had captured Madeline the mor-.ent she ha.l
rnerged from the cloak room to salute her ho^tc

VVnen she suggested that they ensconce themselves

298

THE NEW DAWN

under the chandelier he gave her a questioning look.

"Not too bright?" he asked, biting the stubby
ends of his close-cropped, gray mustache.

"Why so?" answered Madeline. "The light is
behind us, and the lilies will screen us from the
crush I"

The old gentleman caressed his thin, gray hair.

"Beautiful women ought not to be screened," he
protested. "But you have no reason to fear the
light" ; and, at the same time, he observed that she
had two slight wrinkles on her neck which spelled
out ten years of age each. Then she was more
than twenty and not yet twenty-five. That was the
age he liked best, so he placed the rattan chair for
her and stood doing homage.

"We artists know those tricks," warned Made-
line, with a mocking gesture over her neck.

"Heh, if that's true, we old fellows must wear
high chokers."

Then the music blared out from the hall land-
ing.

"Wonderfully beautiful woman, Mrs. Ward,"
nodding his head to the arch. "I hear you are
great friends, you two?"

"Yes, and we are so different. Yet, I believe we
like each other the better for that. I have often
wondered what brought her to me in the studio?
That is where it began, you know?"

The old gentleman smiled queerly. He liked n
pair of gray eyes to look up at him in that way
and wondered whom the eyes were seeking beyond

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 299

his^shoulder, but being of the old school did not

smash ? There ,s no doubt about it being a smash I

SfrWhTr- '''" ^^'^ °^ ^V"'^ on'theTotg
siael Why, the gang went nearly crazy when th^v
found they were caught; and that /oo. laLnr^d^r •'^
"i, IIa '^"' '^' "''^ gentleman returned

o womltrih'"" '° f"' "^^ "^ '''^ °-'"'l 5
or woman, hot-house plant, over-atmosphered taken

generations of culture to bring her out nroud -H

gorgeous and splendid, and all^that. ;ou k'nowf wt

are proud to know her ; but I can't heln f.. u

untro. d after a snow as before! But Mrs
Ward," he drawled on the word "well T ,

tlr^il^ '''" -"'-'-'' -ifiLl'l^^^pHeT:
doesn t wilt a woman in the long run "

A famous player was shaking out all sorts nf
notes from the art gallery piano, note ike the
ear g^^h of a mountain stream, followed by a m^I
languorous, mellow, dreamy melodv th.

".J gentleman stood at attention.

There," he said as the sonnH a;, a * m

and the hand clapping cease^rd'thr u ". beg^n^

thatswhatlmean! Mrs. Ward is like "haS

300

THE NEW DAWN

bar or two of music. You are a chillier latitude.
The attraction between you is odd."

It was a woman's voice behind the flowers, a voice

with a lisping purr; " when he is so clever

. . . .' a soft deprecating laugh "not to

see what is going on . . . men are blind," another
soft, sneering, cynical, good-natured laugh.

The answer in a high boyish falsetto :

"You mean Mrs. W ? Now, I know you do.
She is going a pace ! There will be another kind
of smash soon .... Eh? ... Oh, Pshaw!
That's saying too much! . . There's not a word
of truth in thai! She asks the girl here for her own
sake. They're friends .... Eh? ... . Pshaw!
It's just a lot of feminine jealousy!"

Then, the music, rising, falling, swelling, filling
the room with a throbbing rhythm; and the old
gallant's voice, soft, modulated, droning:

"You and Mrs. Ward are like the Duchess of

D arid Princess V., last time I was abroad!

Big garden party, festival, you know, for one of
the queen's pet charities, radium hospital, you know;
big thing; half a dozen royalties behind it; tickets
two guineas apiece, seats extra! Well, the duchess
took a course at the baths to reduce her avoirdupois,
another course to rub out these things" — indicating
crows' feet under his own eyes — "another course
for — I'm hanged what! But she arrived — whew!"
He raised his hands deprecatingly, raised his brows,
raised his shoulders. "That was a costume — I
give you my word; a regular creation; cobwebs and

THE CKEED ON EXHIBITION 301

t-auze you know, and a rainbow shower of dia

Duchel of D ! '"P^" ;^"^ "-"g about the

uuchess of D ! Says Mrs. Ambassador:

eveni^gi^ •-"°"'" '^° '"" '^''"'' "^^ '^' ^^^^^' '=•"

" 'Princess of V ' " said I.

" 'So do I,' she said, 'and I'll wager this cud of
teatha. you can't tell me what she wore." " "^

ZtTf^- ?°"'°^^' The princess wore

r". "Tf.'^f^s thmg with a big red rose- and

m hanged .f she wore a single ot'her thing b 'a

kno„ the newspapers had cried the duchess ud
but the princess had the honors V A„.jZ 1! u^',
;oftly, leaving Madeline to i^Ver wh c S tn
the story had w,th Mrs. Ward and herself

M.^y ' ^T^^\^'' >-""ning his eye lightly over
Madelme sshm, white figure with no orn-ment .ave
the rub,es, "she hasn't heard a word! She is bok
mg for someone! I'll have to get him .'"
do?"' b°u"t ;h "''•' "^'"^. ^^°""°^• ^'■" '^ ^he lucky

that ;;.::ir^'^ '''-' ''-'''- ^■■- -^-^

Where Madeline's thoughts were, one may guess

suppose very worldly-wise young women will'sm ,e

air w, 7. v'r .'"'*' ' commonplace as a love af-

alf'th U u^" " S"" ^'"'P'^*°" f°r Playing
half through the star-lit night that her life Jgh^

be nobler for the great love that had come to it

To her the soul was like the glass prism that she

3oa

THE NEW DAWN

! J ' ■

used down in her studio to break the light into its
seven colors: if clear, -o much the brighter the re-
flected light; if dim, so much duller came the sun-
light through the glass.

I suppose very worldly-wise young women would
have had Madeline spend half the night before a
mirror, attitudinizing, testing which pose of the lips
displayed her teeth best and brought out the pret-
tiest dimples, trying whether the brightness of her
eyes shone best with the head forward and the eyes
looking up — just a rim, a tiny rim of white below
the iris — or with the head back and the eyes darting
shafts sideways. I suppose no worldly-wise young
woman ever did these things. I suppose, according
to the lady paragraphists who write whole sheets
of newspapers and magazines, pouring out floods,
billows, oceans enough of advice to drown the en-
tire sense of the feminine world that Madeline
should have devised pretty flirtatious tricks to lash
Truesdale into a more explicit declaration, to pique,
to tease him just ever so little with jealousy, to see
how he would "take it."

I suppose no worldly-wise young women invited
to a grand reception ever spent two hours at a mani-
cure's having their nails polished, and two more
hours having lines massaged out and color kneaded
in, and two more hours having a wonderful struc-
ture of hair built between the nape of the neck and
the crown of the head, and whole weeks of hours at
the dressmaker's having themselves tucked and
padded and squeezed from liature's lines of grace

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 303

into the figures designed for fashion plates. And
I suppose, because Madeline did none of these

ha^a'dozenT"^ 1' j'' ""P''°" '" ' ^-^ --"
half a dozen times before-the white, with no orna-
ment save the rubies' red against the ivory o^her
own wh,te sk,n-that she ought to have had a very
woeful time, indeed. '

To be sure the paragraphists missed her, but the
o d ga an, .j a record of five generations to hi
red claimed her from the first, and Hebden with
a St, 1 active record next sought her to the open d s
comfort of the tongues clattering too loudly about
himself and Mrs. Ward; and, an officer of "he
pnnce s retinue led her to the supper tables-wh ch

arranged to the amazement of people who regarded
her as altogether selfish. <;t,araea

Of course, she believed that no one— no one in
a 1 the world-had .... known such love aHow
filled h.r life And, of course, we smile: we hav^
heard J.,, before. But, there were times when he
enth,.s,asm-the rapture, the nearness, the over
vhelmmg consciousness of his presence-gave place

he hir- r T = ' ''"^"'"g resentment'th
Je had given herself to such an abandon of love

spite o tn^'Z y '^-"^^ '" 'P'"' °^ Work, in
h re- m/h r '.-T "P"' °^ Argument-it was
there! Madeline did not call this feeling jealousy
any more than Truesdale had called his f ar jeal'
ousy. .Jer independence would not acknowlidge

304

THE NEW DAWN

why her eyes wandered so restlessly over the gaily
dressed throngs; itV/v her slippered foot tapped the
waxed floor so impatiently. A judge and jury could
not have convinced her that she was looking for
•".ny particular person. She would h '.ve said she was
restless.

As the guests drifted through the rooms she did
not notice a single detail of dress, who wore the
primrose pearls, and who the yahger diamonds.
All she saw was a melody of color, form, motion —
seeing as an artist sees — figures flitting about with
the grace of garden things; faces of every variety
in garden flowers, velvet as pansies, bright as car-
nations, pure as lilies; gauzy, diaphanous forms, ap-
pearing, disappearing, hovering tike bubbles in the
sunlight; color — color — color like star rays in the
purple of a summer night. Seeing as an artist sees,
life was a garden, gaudily tinted and wind-tossed;
but, behind the bank of flowers, new voices were
buzzing with the endless story of the old gentle-
man droning of a voyage across the Atlantic.

"Has anyone seen the Hebdens?"

"The Hebdens? — no! They are always late —
conspicuously late — part of their repertoire !"

"Yes — they arc here ! I saw them a moment
ago. Who is that with the emeralds?"

"I should think Mrs. Ward's husband " then

the strumming of violins.

"Mrs. Ward's husband? Yes — that's all so-
cially!" This is a deprecating whisper.

"See — that is the soprano from Paris. Her fig-

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 305

Zllr^" "" "^ '^' '"''' "f "■='" -^' -- i" the
"Hu-sh-sh! She's going to sing I"

objlct^"'''"''' ' '''''"''' "''"'' ^''■- ^^'"^'^ ^■""''^

the'H^^ir-- ''' " '"'"' '° ^'"«' '^''"^ --■=
"And, you know," the old gentleman was say-
■ng, the vessel began to toss-to toss in the most
beasl'y-the most distu'bing-the most inconside'-
wate way."

But the voices behind the bank of lilies- "You
say her name is Connor? Show her to me ' Thev
say Mr. Hebden is re.lly caught this time."

Then, the endless Atlantic story: "Twas more
than^ flesh could stand! Colonel says to me-
Capn s got to stop this infernal boat!' 'Pon my
word, he did— right in mid-ocean !"

Then, from the screen of lilies: "You don't tell
me! And ,ha, is how Mrs. Ward came to take
her up? I call it rather smart .... "

To Madeline it was as if a chill had blown over
the garden.

Then, the falsetto, boyish-man tones: "Pshaw-
all fudge! The girl is pretty! If Mrs. Ward
chooses to hke her what's the sense of dragging
Hebden m and setting goss.p by the ears? Hebden
takes his fun where he finds it!"

Then the drone of the pompous story teller:
Lolonel roars, 'Stop this steamer and let me out!' "

3o6

THE NEW DAWN

If the married women

"I do blame Mrs. Ward
dangle after him "

"I call it a shame! The girl will lose her repu-
tation — that's all !"

But, the old gentleman had pricked up his ears:
"What the deuce are those women chatterinf^ about?
Souls are damned for lack of a little silence ! Bless
my soul — what's society coming to when a lot of
gossips hatch their cocatrice eggs under a hostess'

roof?"

"Let us walk round the gallery," suggested Made-
line.

It was as if a poisonous breath had blurred the
fairness of the garden. She heard the sing-song of
her companion's voice. Then, they were he'd by
the crush.

"Look, there is the girl! And see the rubies!"

Then, another voice, low, modulated, full with
arrogance: "Who— is that young person?" with
a slur on the indeterminate designation; and Made-
line found herself face to face with a woman of
rolling, gray hair and puffy eyes, gazing through a
gold lorgnette. Then the music; then the scram-
ble for chairs; and someone smote the old gentle-
man on the shoulder.

"Ha! I've found you at last! Here is the pro-
gram that Mrs. Ward sent for you. Miss Con-
nor. Come, I have reserved a place for you— the
cosiest nook, not too near the music!" and Mr.
Dorval Hebdcn stepped from a cluster of palms.
"Bless my soul! What's this? Have I been

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 307

playing proxy for you, Hob, you scoundrel?" and
the old cavalier toddled off laughing.

"Wonder how Mrs. Ward likes thatf" the wasp-
ish voice behind the lilies was asking, as Madeline
sank to a seat under the palms.

She barely had time to say "Thanks so very much
for the medallion" before the soprano in the next
room began.

"Ah!" said Hebden, searching her face. "It is /
who must thank you for accepting in the spirit I
wished. You have understood? I hardly dared to
hope for that."

Which was not what Madelln- Connor meant at
all, but, as the soprano was very famous for a very
famous temper, a deep hush fell. With the waspish
words still stinging, Madeline shut her eyes to listen.
It was a pensive air, a piece of music, for once,
set more to the burden of the song than the display
of the singer, breathing the hopeless tragedy of
broken love. Madeline held her breath. Her heart
was pulsing in throbs to the trills and runs of the
pure, clear, wonderfully passionate voice. A mist
seemed suddenly to invest life — the mist of the
orchard long ago. The enthusiasm — the rapture,
the nearness, the overwhelming conscience of his
presence, of his love — swept over her like the hands
of a master-player touching tremulous chords. From
her forehead, from the fiushing and waning of the

color in her cheeks, from the tremor of her lip=

shone a light. Hebden saw her glovea hands lock

3o8

THE NEW DAWN

in a shudder, and Mr. Dorval Flebden was not the
man to miss those signs.

The singing died to a breath of silence. There
was quietness, then hand dapping, and bows, and
more hand clapping; and the soprano sang a skit-
tish little encore that put the room in a hum. The
light-heartcdness was infectious. Madeline glanced
carelessly up to meet a pair of proud, frowning
eyes, staring through a gold lorgnette. Mrs. Heb-
den's displeasure was so ill-conccalcd that observ-
ers were smiling. The mischievous spirit of the
music stimulated the girl. She would punish the
insolence; and, she spoke to Hebdcn in a voice that
set him uttering all sorts of inanities meaning any-
thing, nothing; words in snatches; less than words;
ac-entuated with a glance — nothings which he
would never have dared if the music had not been
sounding those staccato notes. The hum became a
buzz. Clubmen jostled past with an air.used look at
Hebden. "He's caught in earnest this time"; and,
"girl is doing perfectly right"; and, "servs proud
old lady right 1" Then the orchestra began strum-
ming. It was then that Mrs. Ward came for Made-
line with the officer from the prince's retinue.

"I knew she could not bear seeing them together

much longer," said the waspish voice.

'■*****

It was after the supper. Madeline was sitting in
the archway with the officer. Some one leaned over
her shoulder. The baritone had just uttered the
first notes, and the buzz subsided to whispers.

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 309

"Madeline?"

It was Hcbdcn in full view of art gallery and
drawing-room; and the foreigner rose to yield his
place. She gave a visible start. It was the name.
She had not meant to go so far. She did not know
that Hebden ha 1 read the love on her face for him-
self and caught at the sign as a drowning man a
straw to save him from the swift course of folly
with Another. A disgust of herself came over
Madeline. She despised the part that she had acted
under his mother's arrogant gaze. For the first
time in her life she had played the actress. She had
thought of the gay life as a natural, not a stage,
garden with paper flowers and tinsel gold and
dummy souls acting artificial parts. But Hebden's
experience with other women misled him.

"Madeline," he said, "I'm going away! I want
to say something to you before I go! My mother
has decided quite arbitrarily to go South."

Back came the rankling whispers .... the
vague innuendos that said so little and might mean
so much, ... and such a sudden anger rushed over
her that her gloves, which she had carried loosely
since the supper, fell from supine hands. Again Heb-
den misunderstood.

"What is it?" he asked. "You are trembling."
"I think I'll go," she said, rising.
"It's that cursed work," he answered, offering
his arm.

To himself he was saying: "Is it possible? I
should not have told her so abruptly. I did not

310

THE NEW DAWN

dream she could care ,o mu h. Why doe» .he ore-
vent metdhng her? Has Mr,. Ward . . . .' b^at
he foot of the ,ta,r they two „,et Mr,. Ward,

iriumpr' ''" "■""'■ "''"''" ""'h''^ '^i'h
"Going • . . so . . . . soon?" asked Mrs. Ward;
but son,eth,ng caught her quick eye ; and, linking he
arm through Madehne's, she led the girl to the
cloak-room.

"Madeline, a'A«/— has— happened ?"
sick'^"'''"""^'" '"''''"^'''^ Madeline, vaguely heart-
I es — tell me — you owe it to me "
"I-ouie," interrupted the girl, with' an uncontrol-
ablc desire to laugh cynically, "please don't fuss!
1 m unstrung. ^ our Mr. Hebden siifl,- m '. I war.)
to throw open the door and rush into a fresh wind
whenever he ,s near. I feel as King Arthur did
when dy,ng-for God's sake, a little more air! Do
go back to those people; and explain to him I am
.11. I don t want to offend him, after all he has done
tor Budd.

For just a moment the two friends gazed in each
other s eyes. Then Mrs. Ward kissed the girl

I wonder," she said, as she opened the cloak-
room door, I wonder u;hy Mr. Truesdale did not
come r

"So do I," answered Madeline coldly; but her
face had turned to the maid with the cloaks

As she drove away she could nnt help feeling the
memory of Hebden a shadow. The gossip rankled

"So shi' piiintfd"

THE CREED ON EXHIBITION 311

It came to her tha* uts's hard way must always
be trodden alone; har the via dolorosa is never
illumined; that, whe, v c facf 01 r Calvary, the best-
beloved, the alder-licfest, 01 ct Tnal destiny are hid-
den by the enshrouding darkness. It was not till
long afterward that she wondered whether that dark
intuition of impending disaster were the emptiness
of her yearnings then or the echo of a cry fromthe
field of defeat.

Plainly, the world of work was the world for
her. And the next morning the Hebdens went South.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CRliKD IX ACTION

If you can imagine the vrath of Jove, when a
thunderbolt miscarried; or of the Norse god Thor,
when the hammer hit his thumb, you will have some
idea of the emotions convulsing the soul of Sam
McGee,^ labor delegate, when he left Truesdale's
office. The heroism or crime that always slumbered
in his eyes suddenly blazed through dilated pupils.
His dream of Demos, the ,,eoplc, the oudawed, the
dispossessed, the disinherited proletariat, the time-
less serfs of that eternally bifurcated democracy-
rich and poor — marching majestically in ordered
ranks to bloodless victory to the peace that was to be
a triumph — suffered sudden check. Demos was no
longer in ordered rank, but a scattered horde, plun-
dering, predatory, mad with the gnawings of hunger,
wild-eyed with the revenge that is a raw kind of
j'lstice.

Like Ward, McGee had immutable reliance on
— Force; but it was Force without ballast, without
law— Force gone mad. The big labor leader flung
himself into the office of the Great Consolidated
with such a whirl of slammed doors and explosive
intent that every individual clerk on the high desk
31a

THJ; CREED IN ACTIOX 313

stools jumped as if on springs. There was to be
no nonsense tlih time. McGee had the hammer:
he was going to strike.

******
President Ward sat in the re\olving chair of his
mner room, with his back to the felted door lead-
mg to the general offices. He was not thinking of
his wife's grand reception to be held the next night;
nor did he hear the click— click— click of the little
ticker in the corner reeling off the tape record of the
New York stocks, of the world's far-sped commerce.
His cigar was rolling from corner to corner of his
mouth, tattered and mangled from over-much chew-
ing; and the ash-end was cold.

Ward's eyes were fastened to a big m-p of the
world hanging under the clock. Little red lines ran
across the map from New York to Chicago, from
Chicago to St. Paul, from St. Paul to Seattle, from
Baltimore to St. Louis, from St. Louis to San Fran-
cisco. Ward's mind was busy stretching out more
red lines across the Seven Seas of the world— like
the arteries that carry life-blood— from Paris across
Russia, from Pekin across Manchuria, from New
Orleans down Panama way through Brazil. He
was just stretching the lines through Africa to the
great interior, where "some lecturing, globe-trotting
chap had said human beings were thicker to the
mile than sand on the seashore," when there was a
soft click.

A push, the felt door opened softly, closed softly,

THE NEW DAWN

and a tread as noiseless as a cat's came stepping
softly across the carpet.

When a man has conquered a continent with two
parallel iron rails called a railroad, and forged the
links of that iron zone with new cities whose ex-
istence his railroad has created; when he has crossed
the swamps that all engineers said could not be
crossed, link by link, loop by loop, thirteen trestles
to the mile, mile after mile, like a twisted chain —
forward here, bai.k there, to get footing for a bridge,
round to that moraine of rocks for the other foot
of the bridge, forward, back again, but always —
o)i; when he has spanned the mountains which all
men said could not be spanned, going clean through
the rock-bed of what stood in the way, twenty tun-
nels to the mile, climbing what he could not tunnel,
five feet climb for every hundred feet grade, loop-
ing what he could not climb, ten snow-sheds to the
mile, with the avalanches thundering overhead and
the mountain gorges roaring below; when he has
dropped into the quiet waters of the Pacific the peb-
ble that he picked up back on the shores of the At-
lantic; when he has done all these things in the flesh
and is mentally doing more — conquering new worlds
— he does not like small obje:ts to obtrude on his
big projects.

"Mister — Ward?" It was a soft whisp,/, half
lisp, half hiss. Mr. Saunders, as we know, was not
well; and from very good reasons now leaned for-
ward with both hands on the president's desk, his

THE CRLJD [\ ACTION 315

head sunk on his chest, his chest sunk from concavity
of manhood.

"iMcCJee, the labor delegate, is outside. He has
ordered a strike in the Truesdale mines. He is de-
termined to see you."

"Well, didn't you pay him for what he did in the
Truesdale mines?" Ward's cigar rolled ail the way
across his mouth.

"I paid him beforehand; but the fellow is de-
termined — determined. Says that cut of ten per cent,
in wages has to be reconsidered within forty-eight
hours or he'll order a stiike in onr mines "

"Pooh," interrupted Ward, not turning his head
and rolling the cigar back to the other side of his
mouth.

Obadiah caught his breath; a clammy sweat oozed
over his white forehead.

"But," he whispered, "McGee says he has evi-
dence of crookedness about tunneling into Trues-
dale's mines — in fact, hints at blacRmall! He says
we've got to meet the union within forty-eight hours
or he orders on a strike and throws the evidence
into court!"

Ward came face-round with a bounce.

"Tell him to order on the strike," he said, -'and—
the courts — be — dam"-^d!"

Obadiah ran like a hare.

The felttd door opened again and Budd McGee,
gorgeous in gold braid and buttons, marched in,
clicked his heels, stood erect, and doffed his cap.

"Mr. Saunders says to tell you Mister Rawlins

3i6

THE NEW DAWN

left for New York on the express flyer," and Budd
clicked his heels, turned round, put on his cap, and
marched out.

Ward flung his cigar in the grate. His eyes half
closed. He rose, walked over to the stock-ticker
and ran the thin tape through his fingers. Then
he rang up the telephone, not the one on his desk,
but thp one in a private box at a corner of his
office, asking for connection with the New York
branch of the Great Consolidated. When he went
into the telephone box he shut the door. When he
came out his hand was full of little slips of yellow
paper on which he had jotted certain figure-; Hs
stood before the grate studying these slips, one bv
one, carefully, slowly, mentally masticating every
figure. Then he lighted a match and slowly, one by
one, holding the slips in his hand till the flame almost
singed his fingers, burned each piece of paper. Ward
touched the electric button on his desk. Again the
felted door opened and again the felted tread
crossed the floor.

"Look here, Saunders, I've been figuring a flyer
at the Truesdale mines."

Mr. Saunders looked decidedly relieved. The
bent chest straightened perceptibly.

"And that inside stock hasn't all come out," added
Ward; which, being interpreted, meant • it Ward's
juggling with the stock of a rival company had not
frightened so many of the Truesdale stockholders
into selling as Ward had planned.

"And we've got to force it out," declared Ward

THE CREED IN ACTION 3,7

emphatically. "We've got the price hammered to
forty-e.ght! We've goi to have this thing settled
before the stri'.e is on! One fight at a time I
VV e ve got to have the Triiesdale mines off the bat'
!wo days' warning— did McGee say? Well—
we'll be ready for him! As things are no-v we
may have more stock than Iruesdale; we may have
enough to vote him out and force them to come in;
but he may ha\e more stock than we have! I don't
like the look of Rawlins going off in such a hurry
I he only thing to do is to force some of those fel-
Unys who are holding back to come out! Now,
we'll let the gang go on: don't want it known who
IS behmd that gang: so we'll keep on with the room
traders; and they'll whack the bottom out of Trues-
dale's mines to-morrow! In half an hour I'll have
a special train for you! You're to go on the floor
yourself to-morrow ! You'll find your orders there !
Aow, remember, no matter whether >ou find your-
self up against our gang or not— you're to follow
those orders; and, Saunders?"
Saunders turned at the door.
"Don't rupture your conscience pretending to be

pious! It's business! Those orders are...

to — the — letter."

******
Who does not know a gray day in New York?
Fog-drift, woolly and blurred, blankets the narrow
gorge of the high-lined streets. Here and there,
tier on tier, like steps from roof to roof, to mid-
hea^en, huge massed masonry— broken, jagged.

318

THE NEW DAWN

towering, shapeless — butts through the mist-like
mountain ramparts. East and west, in a rush that
fills the quivering streets with the whirling sigh of
a wind, bellow the hurrying locomotives. From the
far, muffled distance comes the roar of traffic,
mingled with the faint shriekings of the fog whis-
tles, where the ferries plow cautiously through the
haze.

Rawlins left his hotel on upper Fifth Avenue,
crossed a block west to Broadway and boarded a
subway car. Presently, as Trinity clock pointed the
hour of eleven, Rawlins left the car and turned
down that narrow caiion, that hemmed-in river of
activity known as Wall Street. The swing, the
movement, the tremendous current of onward rush-
ing life, caught him like a maelstrom as he hurried
down the narrow way.

In his own mind he was morally certain that he
understood the relation of the Truesdale mines to
the Great Consolidated. Truesdale owned in a
solid block one-fourth of his company's stock. Ward,
through some manipulation of the market, had
gained possession of another fourth. As long as
the general shareholders endorsed Truesdale — gave
him their proxies for the election of officers — he was
strong enough to oppose the Great Consolidated ;
but among a body of scattered shareholders — wom-
en, professional men, brokers and bankers who
juggled with marketable stocks for the margins,
whether the price went up or down— were always
some who could be frightened into selling at low

THE CREED IN ACTION 319

prices, or tempted into selling by high ones. That
was the danger to Truesdale: the small holders
might scuttle on a panicky market and Ward's gang
of floor traders could snap up the offers.

Rawlins was fairly sure, too, of exactly what
Ward had been doing. The announcement of thi-
lawsuit, the threat of r; labor strike, the refusal
to join the Great Consolidated, had caused the
first decline in Truesdale's mines. Backed by Ward
a Kang of floor traders— free lances, the better to
conceal Ward's hand — had made a set on the Trues-
dale mines, daily selling small blocks at lower and
lower prices. Whether they owned the stock so
sold did not affect the pressure to push down the
Truesdale mines stock. They might either be "sell-
ing short" — contracting to deliver what they would
later buy at a lower price; or "matching orders" —
B making sales to C for which there was a private
understanding there should be no delivery, a pro-
ceeding contrary to rules, but impossible to detect.

In the words of the perspicuous press: "the bears
had piled on to help Ward sell" ; meaning that Ward
had subtly conveyed the impression that he con-
sidered Truesdale Mines such a poor investment he
was marketing his lines through independent brok-
ers: this was "to get rid of the stuff before the slump
lu-rame known." That was the way knowing fel-
lows, so full of market tips they let a few out at
every person whom they met, explained "the bears'
activity in the Truesdale Mines." It was such very

310

TUF \F\V n\\v\

"poor stuff" Ward wanted "to focil his out to the
market before the market caught on."

So much for street talk, curdsto-ie tips, the news
reports. But Rawlins knew if a jrenuine buyer, in-
dependent of "the gang" appeared on the market
the bears must stampede before the bulls, or show
their hand. In the language of the Hi)or : "the shorts
must run for cover," actually deliver the stock they
had sold by either buying it on the open market—
which would force up the sagging price, or by bor-
rowing it froin actual hohlers at a cost of twenty or
thirty dollars a day for each hundred shares bor-
rowed.

Plainly »he ..ly thing to stop the drop in Trues-
dale Mines was for "the bull to get the bear on
his horns." That was Rawlins' view. He had spent
the night talking it over with the Xew York broker
who usually represented Truesdale on the Hoor;
and now, taking advantage of Truesdale's posses-
sion of a seat on the Exchange, Rawlins himself ap-
peared. It will be noticed that Rawlins' aim was
"to support the market," force the price up by buy-
ing all the stock offered; while Ward's aim was to
compel the independent shareholders to sell, to com-
pel them by the manipulation of which secret orders
were to be given Saunders.

Just outside the Exchange, fronting Broad Street.
Rawlins paused. Massive stone structures, ten, fif-
teen, twenty stories high, towered to the gray sky on
all sides. On one building the tiny form of a work-
man on scaffolding eighteen tiers above the street

THE crei;d in action 3 J,

swung against the wall to every gust of wind
Against the gray cloud the man was a mi<lgct; a
floating speck, tossed by the whirl of blind forces
that reared their terrible monuments here in the

'T.u' ■.;■■■ *°'^'" "^ ^""^'^ ''"■■f>'!"K tl"; »'"wers
"t the Heavens, a confusion of tongues, a roaring
of mulftudmous voices, a trampling of multitudin-
ous teet, ... a thundering as of a mighty tide,
■ • . a human tide, . . . through the dark, hollow
caverns of an Eternal Sea. An<l here, in the midst
of the roaring tide, the multitudinous voices, the
thundering diapason of the World of Work, stood
he ca m-taccd temple with the Grecian pillars and
fretted carMng.s-the Te,„ple of Traffic, the New
lork Stock I-xchangc.

Inside it was one of the gray days too, the still-
ness before storm, when men's nerves turn the raw
edge up and faces look ashen. Nothing was doing-
nnd nothing is a very expensive business for brok-
ers, who have hea^ y dues. Traders lounged round
the posts of the floor, where stocks were marked
^>"cl little tickers reeled off endless miles, endless
sing-song of tape: but the traders did no trading
Numbers Hashed in vain against the indicator board
Healers were present; but they were not dealing.
I hey strolled listlessly from post to post, or sat
on the circular benches round the posts chattering
comparing opinions, reading papers, perhaps "figur-
ing a deal. ' Even the presiding chairman leaned
orward against the rostrum railing above the floor,
face on hand, brooding, half asleep.

322

THE NEW DAWN

There were the stridulating; calls, the harsl;
counter-calls of many tongues; the monotonous rush
. . . rush .... rush . . . with a boom of the wires;
the sharp buz ... 7- ... z of the telephones; the
rumble and crash and roar, like the impact of a
wave from the tidal traffic beating the walls out-
side; the lightfooted running of swift, gray-coated
messengers flitting from telephone booths to posts,
from posts to booths with a skating slide over the
tiled floor as they fetched up to avoid collision with
someone else; the unceasing snowfall of scrappy
paper fluttering to the floor; the beat . . . beat,
tramp .... tramp of countless feet . . . here, there
. . . everywhere . . . criss-crossing in an endless
maze; but — there was no trading!

As yet it was as if the air were surcharged with
electricity that would presently cxploile a mine. The
traders were nervous, restless, fidgety. They felt
the market just as you may feel electricity without
seeing it. There was suppressed expectation witl-
expressed alertness. Something was going to hap-
pen. What was it? No one could tell.

"Money is tight," said one.

"Something going to — snap 1"

"Heard about the war?"

"Yes: that was playing the deuce over in Paris!"

"Balkan War? . . . Nonsense; Not that at all!
Too much 'faith cure' business in the money pool
to try and 'boost' public confidence into buying!
Pah! That way of 'boosting' up the market al-

THE cri:i:d in action

3»3

ways ended in a bust! . . . That was right ....
sure .... seen it hits of times!"

This from a little clean-shaven, jumping broker
with a (German accent and coal-black hair and a
hooked nose and black, dancing eyes, like points of
glowing light, who kept bouncing from thi.- groups
round one post to the groups round another post,
shouting out "Trucsdale Mines .... forty-seven,
seven-eighths .... eights . . .ei^jhts . . . eights!"
the words drowning in a chaos of raving voices, the

little trader clawing clawing .... clawing

the air with up-Hung arms till coat sleeve slipped
back to shirt elbow; .... jumping .... jumping
jumping . . . clear oft the floor at each word-
but no one at the Trucsdale Mine post took his
offer. Neither Truesdalc Mines nor anything else
was moving; and the little, jumping broker had to
content himself with slipping up behind another
trader of enormous girth and lifting the fat man
feet with one rush and a hug.
' Meester Rawlins," this as Truesdale's
mi. .) I . . .led on the blackboard and Truesdale's
manager came on the floor. "Hullo, Meester Raw-
lins! Glad to see you ! Whad's up?"

"Great Consolidated is only thing up that I see,"
returned the gray-whiskered nian;;ger dryly, pass-
ing across the floor to a group of older men, the
European e-xchange brokers, who stood by them-
selves.

The lift e broker suspended his jumping to study
the receding back of Truesdale's manager. Then,

324

THE NEW ny !N

bouncing back to his post, he began humming,
"Oh — om — look — at — the — gall — er — ee?"

"How do you feel, Shortie?" called another
trader.

"Bearish," chaffed the little foreigner, beginning
to bounce again and claw the air, shouting, in a
chaos of raving yells that absorbed half his words,
Truesdale Min "

"Price ought to bear some remote relation to
value," one of the older men was saying as Rawlins
appeared.

"Yes .... that's what I mean to say .... smash!
It's bound to come .... and this fake manipulation
find itself . . . ."

"Gouging," interrupted another.

"... will find himself up against American com-
mon sense," sarcastically nodded another.

"That's Ward, every time I Markets his

own stock first .... breaks the pool to show his
faith in it; but, if I know the American public, . . . ."

"Whas's up with Truesdale Mines, Rawlins?"
some one asked.

"Down," sententiously responded the manager,
with eyes looking from an ambush of brows as ex-
pressive of thoughts as two gray pebbles.

"Eh? . . wh'd . . he . . . say?" bounced out the
ubiquitous little jumper.

"Search . . . me," returned another of the young
traders. "Something is going to happen!"

Suddenly, like the bursting of a water dam, a roar
went up from the floor, and a thousand yelling

THE CREED IN ACTION

3^5

traders stampeded in a blind rush for the entrance.
A cotton operator, who had bought a seat on the
exchange and for the first time came on the floor,
had just crossed the threshold. Instantaneously
pent nerves found vent like exploding steam. A
huge bale of cotton, done up hay fashion, dumped
itself in the middle of the floor; and; in less time
than it had taken the operator to cross the entrance,
he was bundled through the bale to his neck, fes-
tooned with cotton combings like the wig of a
Santa Claus, and hustled over the floor — round —
round — round a central post in a futile chase after
his hat, which was being furiously foot-balled by ten
opposing details of "bulls" and "bears." The
"bulls" put "the bears" to rout. The hat went down
in the melee of scattered cotton; and the solemn,
synchronous, metallic, striking of Trinity chimes
sent the cotton operator off the floor with his tie
under one ear, his coat the worse for cotton, and
his mood as uproarious as the noisiest.

****♦♦

It was after luncheon that the surcharged expec-
tations seemed to concentrate in gathering groups
of traders round the Truesdale Mines post. Gray-
coated messenger boys dashed hither and thither,
round groups, through groups, into groups, and back
again to the telephr le booths. Excited brokers

shouted "boy" "boy," and sent other

messengers scudding with cipher orders on slips of
paper. Imperceptibly, the visitors' gallery had
filled, and men were leaning eagerly over the balcony

326

THE NEW DAWN

fascinated by the confused, perpetually-moving med-
ley of raving men tearing at each other on the floor.
The railroad brokers ceased calling "C. P., . ."
.... "N. P.," . . . "B. & O.," with sharp, mo-
mentary reference to their slips of paper. Other
brokers, as well as the foreign exchange traders, had
gathered expectantly round the Truesdale Mine post.
The gray-haired chairman, from his eery look-out on
the wall, had wakened up and also leaned forward
intent on the gathering faces below.

The Exchange was no longer a temple where a
nation paid its worship to the God of Traffic. The
floor had become a battleground, confused, shifting,
driven, with the hum swelling to a roar; the roar
rolling, reechoing, reverberating from tiled floor to
high roof, from wall to wall, out from the calm,
columned front to the choked gorges, and canons,
and jammed river-ways of commerce, where the
hurrying Street paused .... paused to listen I It was
as if two enormous tidal waves of Power met in
shock, in recoil, in quivering fury of renewed assault,
and assault yet again, many-throated, pitiless, wolfish
with a sort of desperate greed I A thousand men
leaped upon the circling group round Truesdale
Mines post, whooping .... shouting .... gesticulat-
ing, with the roar of an inarticulate fury, upflinging
a sea of arms! In the center of the group, jumping
.... jumping .... jumping, clear from his feet
to bring him level with the shoulders of the other
traders, one hand thrown up, palm out, throwing
. . . throwing . . . throwing, as if to hurl the offered

THE CREED IN ACTION 327

stock in the faces of the bidders, shouting ....
shouting .... shouting in a raving chaos, was the
httle trader with the black eyes and the German ac-
cent.

"He's a bear! He's jumping on the Truesdale
stock! Watch him whack 'im down!" one of the gal-
lery said; and if the "gang" hostile to Truesdale
were playing a game, "matching orders," "faking
sales," "jollying prices down," they vere playing it
enthusiastically. Half the floor was deceived and
joined the raid. Nothing could withstand the ava-
lanche. Truesdale Mines went down down

.... down! It was a safe game: the traders
could buy up at a lower price what they were now
selling at a low price. When the little German of-
fered Truesdale Mines a thousand throats yelled
themselves hoarse offering and bidding lower
lower! And, when he out-offered them lower ....
lower .... the buyers pounced on him with such
a rush that he was carried off his feet clear across
the floor to an adjoining post. A nod .... a word
.... a crook of the finger, and Truesdale Mines
had changed hands at a lowering figure; and the

little foreigner was at it again; .... jump

J^^P head back .... eyes snapping . . . .

right arm flinging defiance at the buyers' heads with
stentorian yells.

TK„ "!,„„.,.. ^^g|.g having it all their own

Alert

way.

a tiger ready to leap, the gray eyes be

neath the gray ambush of brows
as pebbles, Rawlins waited till the

expression!
grating

yell

328

THE NEW DAWN

bounced over the heads of the vociferating, pushing,

clamoring bedlam, " forty-five, and an eighth

. . . eighth . . . eighth," with a jump to each word!
In one tigerish bound the gray-haired manager was
in the center of the fray, scattering the wolves!
His arms shot out straight as a bullet to the mark;
and, like a rifle crack, rang out the word ....
"Sold!" The next moment Rawlins himself was the
center of the group, arm upthrown. *ingers clutched,
one finger for each eighth, palm turned in, signify-
ing that he was buying, and the whole room flinging
.... rushing .... hurling upon him with the fanged
ferocity of snapping wolves ! He would buy, would
he? .... He would "boost" the market up? . . .
Would he? ... He would protect Truesdale Mines
by taking all that was offered? . . . The "gang" ut-
tered a whoop .... a yell .... a stentorian,
ringing hulloo . . . and were on him, open-moutlied.
Hats went off in the bedlam. Coats were almost
torn from men's shoulders, little men thrown from
their feet, the surging group slithering .... slid-
ing, with a rush back nnd a lunge forward, a roar,
a crash, a rumbling, resonant detonation that rever-
berated from floor to roof, and shook the street;
while traders all but hurled each other out of the
crush .... tramping .... stamping .... breath-
less, to pounce with their offers on the gray-haired
manager in the center!

The newspapers afterwards said that Truesdale
Mines jumped from forty-five to a hundred in half
an hour. The truth is — the jump was to one hun-

THE CREED IN ACTION 329

dred and fifty. Men who had bought at lifty trebled
money in a breath; lost their presence of mind; lost
the sense of earth under their feet; bought again,
sending the price with a rush to two hundred; sold
again; and bought again till, in the language of the
floor, "the biggest fool made the biggest money be-
cause he plunged worst." It was plain that battle
royal was on between two factions. Rumors flew
in a whirlwind. Now it was Ward fighting Trues-
dale; now it was Truesdale fighting some foreign
manipulator who was opposed to Ward; now it was
Truesdale and Ward united against some big bank-
ing interest. As the reader knows, the battle was
Truesdale against Ward; but what convulsed the
floor was the plain fact that, whoever held stock in
the Truesdale Mines could make a fortune by bid-
ding the two factions against each other. Men saw
the chance to possess a fortune by accident, and
tumbled, trampled, stampeded one another to seize
that chance in the person of Rawlins buying all that
was offered.

Then two things happened that always happen
m such battles.

Always, where one "gang" is "hammering" prices
down, are free lances, who take their cue from the
others without reason and gamble on chance, "sell-
ing short," hoping to buy low. When the price
jumped these traders "ran for cover," bidding furi

ously

up, to get the stock

they had contracted to deliver They

have it at a los

must

at any price; or go bank-

330

THE NEW DAWN

rupt, begging for the buyers' mercy; and they bid
in yells, desperate, determined, wolves trapped
.... "shorts squeezed" .... better bid at what
would be a small loss than a total loss . . . and
up ... up .... up they bid against Rawlins; but
always Rawlins, with the gray-pebble-eyes cool and
shining, overtopped their bid one point .... two
. . . ten .... twenty at a jump! Trucsdale Mines
touched five hundred ! The brokers "short" must
announce suspension or, to meet their sales, borrow
stock at a charge that meant ruin.

Such a rise had been known only twice before
on the Exchange during ten years. For weeks the
newspapers were full of stories about fortunes made
and lost in an hour; bank clerks who had chanced
to hold a few shares of Truesdale Mines and sold
for a fortune; bank clerks who tried to do likewise
with other stocks and other people's money, and
went to penitentiary; actresses who had received
presents of Truesdale Mines at forty-eight and sold
at four hundred and forty-eight; brokers who an-
nounced their failures for a week afterward with
the fizzle of detonating firecrackers; and, especially,
of one Canadian premier, who had spent his life
and his fortune on politics only to be discarded by
his party and who unluckily was in mid-ocean on
the day when the sale of his thousand Truesdale
shares might have netted him half a million.

A quiet smile creased the face of the gray-whisk-
ered manager, jotting the last transaction on his
writing pad. He was sure .... so sure . . . that

THE CREED IN ACTION 33,

the manipulators, "the bluffers" were caught;
that they had no shares to dehver; .... that they
could not buy Truesdale Mines at any price; that

they were crushed "done for, in their own

trap. I hey must go bankrupt or settle on Trues-
dale s terms. The smile creased again, and the peb-
bly eyes gleamed. The next time they tried "to
whack" Truesdale Mines down they would think
twice I Rawlins felt sure that he had Ward by the
throat. He had bought more stock than all Ward
held.

There was a breathing space. That is, messengers
dashed over the floor as if pursued. Men shouted
like maniacs. Onlookers wiped the sweat from their
faces.

Then the second thing happened.

Messages had been sent spinning by wire and
note and hand to every human being known to own
one share of Truesdale Mines. And now answers
came back from holders, who but an hour before
had thought themselves ruined by the low prices
ordering traders to sell . . . sell; and every offer
was borne down with the wild rush, the whoop, the
yell, the stamping and trampling, the hurling of
the solid impact of a thousand men, fighting to bid
for the stock that meant fortune or ruin! And
always, with the tigerish leap, Rawlins was among
the wolves, foremost, highest, victorious in his bid-
ding! There were no "bears" now! The "bears"
had been gored to the death on the horns of the
bulls." There were no "lambs" now! The little

33»

THE NEW DAWN

speculators had scampered off bleating, frightened I
There were only the wolves being scattered by the
one little, tigerish, gray-whiskered man with the sand-
papered voice and the pebble eyes and the ambush
brows. Rawlins wiped the sweat from his brow as
he jotted d( vvn that last bid. They were only a few
shares — probably some clerk's or actress — but they
had cost a thousand each.

It was at this stage that Mr. Saunders walked to
the floor .... Ha! He had come to the rescue!
. . . Ward's block of Truesdale Mines hurled at
the floor would avalanche any price to the bottom-
less pit! ... . The "gang" flung themselves on
Saunders with rebellowing hurrahs that shook the
building, that reverberated to the roof, that roared
out to the quivering, listening Street! Obadiah
paused, glanced at the clock pointing near closing
time, and affected a mild, supercilious scorn.

"Fools — much they know Tom Ward," he was
thinking.

He halted, raised his head and his hand, and
shouted an offer of "sell!"

Five-hundred bellowed their bid; but still he held
back. A thousand and one ... a thousand and
ten ... . eleven hundred! The small bidders
dropped away. It was Rawlins, low-voiced, cool,
gray eyes expressionless, who threw up his arms
.... a nod; and again he quietly jotted down "the
deal" on his pad. This happened three times with
the same result, except that the other bidders

THE CREED IN ACTION 333

dropped out of the game. It was Rawlins vs. Saun-
ders.

Evidently there was no more Truesdale Mines
stock "to come out." Rawlins had drained Saunders
and sat quietly down under the post. Saunders sep-
arated himself from "the gang" who had vocifer-
ously demanded in language more picturesque than
polite "what in blank he meant by boosting the price
up" on them? The secretary thrust his hands in
his pockets and walked meditatively up and down
the floor beneath the gallery, with occasional pen-
sive glances at the faces of the visitors. There are
several ways of being self-conscious. One way is

an excessive affectation — with a yawn thrown in

of indifference: that was Saunders' way. Small
traders walked unsteadily away from Truesdale
Mines post, trying to hide their losses. Boys scur-
ried yelling across the room. Paper scraps show-
ered down in a snowfall. Room traders had scat-
tered to the different posts, when a messenger rushed
sliding to Rawlins with a telegram. There was a
pricking up of flagged interest. Only Saunders af-
fected to see nothing, with a wreathing glow that
was almost a sneer creeping over the wan, world-
weary features. Men glanced sharply to Truesdale
Mmes. Had Rawlins yet another move in the
game?

"Seems to me you have things all your own way,
Mr. Rawlins ? You can squeeze those fellows pretty
tight? The stock's all in your hands!"

334

THE NKW DAWN

!i!^i

"I hope 80," mildly answered the sand-papered
voice, as Rawlins broke the telegram.

If the truth were told, e\ery nerve, every fiber,
every muscle was tense, trembling, elate with pride,
with victory? He had saved the firm! He had
beaten Ward at his own game in an open field.
When "the gang" — which meant Ward — came to
settle, they would have to beg terms with Truesdale
for the stock which they had sold and could not
deliver! The smile creased again; and Kawlins
read the telegram. Just at that moment Saunders
halted in his parade, and — furtively, sidewise as a
weasel perforce must look — glanced at Truesdale
Mines post.

This was the telegram, not even in cipher.

Directors failed to meet. AH have scuttled and
sold on rising price. Be careful at what figure you
try to squeeze sellers. Ward holds stock for gang.

Rawlins blinked. Always cautious, timorous, a
terrible fear gripped at his heart. Had Truesdale's
directors, who had "scuttled" and sold on the rising
price, sold to Ward? He read the telegram again.
He could not grasp it. The strain, the terrible
strain, tha; 'lad keyed up heart and mind, nerves
and flesh, seemed suddenly to snap ! He felt him-
self tremble .... turn coldl Then Ward might
have the stock to deliver. Truesdale's directors
had been found as the price went up and, tempted
by the dazzling fortune — had sold out! Truesdale

THE CREED IN ACTION 335

now owned all his company's stock — but at what
price? A price that would multiply Ward's gains
on "the deal" by a hundredfold, a price that would
bankrupt Trucsdalc when he paid for the game.

Over the room fell a mist, a gathering darkness.
The rumble, the roar, the crash, the multitudinous
voices, the multitudinous feet, the march, the
trample, the thunder of traffic .... faded ....

^•"fred grew faint, rolled away like a folding

scroll. The roar, somehow, grew fainter, farer, like
an echo of reality. Rawlins looked toward the chair-
man. There was 110 chairman ; only a glazed dark-
ness; with motes of white paper fluttering . .
fluttering down 1

Suddenly over the the pandemonium of traffic fell
a hush ... a silence ... a fear; . . . widening,
spreading, rippling from group to group, as if the
cold hand of an Invisible Terror noiselessly touched
each man! A woman in the gallery had uttered a
low cry, pointing with petrified gaze where Rawlins
sat I

He had straightened out rigid, stiff, and was slip-
ping from the bench to the tiled floor. The chair-
man rose, bending over the railing. He did not
need to strike his gavel. Messenger boys, as if by
magic, stood motionless; and a circle of startled
faces had surrounded an open space about the Trues-
dale Mine post. Then some of the men turned their
faces quickly away with a blur across what they saw.
First one, then another, then all heads, uncovered in

33<

THE NEW DAWN

utter silence. The little foreign trader bent down
with lips that had turned blue whispering:

"Great Gott dis man is

deadi"

*»*♦•*

There was the measured march of floor porters:
and a ladder, on which had been thrown an over-
coat, cut through a gap in the silent circle. There
was a measured marching, and the body had been
carried out with another coat over the face.

Then the bedlam, the crash, the rumble, the roar
of resonant traffic broke bounds once more.

The little foreign broker stooped to pick up a
telegram that had fallen from the dead hand. He
read it and tore it up; but, as the gavel struck the
gong sharp to the minute of closing, he remarked
to Saunders passing out:

"You worked that mighty well I Truesdale's
caught, all right. He's caught tight! We've got his
scalp I"

***♦♦♦

News of the battle reached Ward as he was dress-
ing for his wife's reception.

CHAPTER XXII

THE MOMENTUM THAT PUSHES US FORWARD

If this record were concerned with a complete
record of Truesdale's life, not a few grave facts
might be set down of how he met the blow that
struck his fortune down in the Stock Exchange when
Rawlins died Hghting at the Truesdale mine post.

When undeserved evil strikes like a bolt from
the blue one of four things may happen: A man
may tight and conquer, entering into that best of all
peace, the peace that is a victory; or, he may fight
and fail, crushed to the melancholy belief that des-
tiny is malevolent; or, he may flee in servile fear,
entrusting his faith to lying platitudes, like the os-
trich that shuts his eyes and thinks to hide by thrust-
ing her head in sand — a sort of God's will be done
resignation to the devil; or, he may reason that,
since evil triumphs, evil is safest, and so go over
bodily to the enemy. When this is done by a man
we call it turpitude; by a woman, defilement.

The first thing Truesdale did was to settle with
"the squeezed shorts," the free lance brokers un-
connected with Ward, who had contracted to de-
liver stock which could not be bought at any price.
A few of these went voluntarily into bankruptcy
337

338

THE NEW DAWN

in order to begin again with a clean sheet; but the
majority compromised with Truesdale. This saved
him paying the exorbitant price Rawlins had bid for
their stock; saved the banks that had backed these
brokers from failure; and established credit for
Truesdale at these banks. With this credit and the
security given on his mines, he was able to pay
Ward the price which Rawlins had bid when Saun-
ders had tried to break the market. Ward made a
fortune out of what the papers called "the deal";
and Truesdale Mines were encumbered with debt;
but, except for a few odd shares of stock, such as
those of the Canadian premier who had been in
mid-ocean when the battle took place, Truesdale
now owned all the shares of his mines. By selling
his yacht and horses, mortgaging the Rookery where
his offices were, and giving up his apartments at the
Metropole he was able to meet the interest of his
heavy borrowings and continue to enjoy the expen-
sive privilege of a seat on the Stock Exchange.
This was the fact that troubled Ward. He had
hoped Truesdale was off the field. The bears may
pull the bull down ; but, if the bull gains breathing
space for wounds to heal, he may charge again with
lowered horns.

Truesdale's next move was with the labor unions.
He had learned his lesson. The world of events is
the final test. The ultimatum of fact revises theory
in letters of blood. In this struggle no man could
stand apart. Each must choose sides. Truesdale
chose sides. He sent for McGee ; they compromised.

MOMENTUM PUSHES US FORWARD 339

Truesdale signed the union scale of wages, which at
once averted the .trike. McGee met the recogni-
tion by not insisting on the exclusion of non-union
men And he worked like a demon. He passed
weeks at the mines without coming to the city; and
weeks m New York without a run home; and months
without seemg Madeline Connor. At first, he had
written letter after letter to her declaring his love.
I hese letters he destroyed unsent in a fury of self-
contempt. He would not seek sympathy. He would
win first and then know the peace that is victory or
die trying to win. He would not bow supine before
the Strong Power. He vould become stronger than
that Strong Power. Though he was not a sym-
pathy-seeker-the most sapping of all vampires-
there IS a suspicion that Mr. Jack Truesdale
plumbed the bottom of some very black depths- for
It was at this period that he confided two items to
his note-book. The first was this :

If there is no justice here, how can we expect any
hereafter? If we don't find a live God in realS

The second was this:

It's the blast of the north wind makes the pine
grow straight. It's got to take tighter grip, find
deeper roots, or— snap 1 ^ ^

All this sounds very simple— plain sailing on a
summer sea, a paved road of easy up-grades. It did

340

THE NEW DAWN

not work out so. He could laugh afterward; he
could not then. After he had paid his fare from
the mines down to New York frequently the balan'-e
of cash on hand would not have bought a newspaper.
One night he had been delayed so long with his
broker that he missed his home train. By extraor-
dinary effort they had gathered enough money to
pay the money due next day. Truesdale had left the
checks with the broker; it occurred to liim, as he
watched the rear car of the missed train receding,
that he would have to solve the question of spend-
ing the night in town. He could have borrowed or
gone to a hotel on credit; but small borowings and
small unpaid b- si bills are Lad signs — worse than
big borrowings and big debts — when suspicious
creditors are watching a doubtful debtor with lynx
eyes. His watch he had already sold; and he had
neither maiden aunts nor married cousins in New
York. As he turned from the Grand Central Sta-
tion he recollected that he had not change enough
for street car fare. Truesdale passed the night
"looking for a man" in the waiting-room of the
station. At least that is what one of the porters
told a sleuth detective who had been tracking him
for hostile brokers.

Other nights he spent walking slowly through
the dim, half-lighted East Side, where men and
women flit bat-like through the dusk with ribald song
and harlot mirth from flashy saloons. Here he
learned how "the other half lives." Once, down
Cherry Hill way, two footpads presented them-

MOMENTUM PUSHES US FORWARD 341

selves at a dark corner without credentials. If he
had had a pocketbook to defend he might have
struck out with both fists; but the humor of thf
situation was piquant and he laughingly held up
both hands. With an oath the footpad mumbled
out that he "guessed" Truesdale was "not the party
they d bin layin' fori" Truesdale said "he guessed
not. The footpad said "biz was bad." Truesdale
said he "had found business very bad"; and the two
went off muttering that "it was enough to discourage
men earn' an honest livin'."

It was before the first quarter's interest fell due
that Truesdale was hardest pressed. He had
worked all day in New York and now remembered
that he had forgotten all three meals and that his
meals the day before had consisted of a glass of
beer with some crackers. It is at this stage that so
many strugglers in the metropolitan battlefield lose
their grip on life. They exchange the beer for
whiskey, despair for the hallucinations of a stimulat-
ing drug.

He was taking a short-cut from Wall Street to
one of the East Side ferries when he looked up and
noticed the sign of a free lodging house to which
he had yearly sent a check. The next moment Trues-
dale was inside shaking hands with the matron, who
led him to a little private table reserved for patrons
visiting the house, and who all the while poured out
a voluble stream of welcome: she was so glad to
see Mr. Truesdale; his check had been such a
help; they hoped he would continue his contribu-

342

THE NEW DAWN

jiii

tions; wouldn't he stay a night and have a meal, just
to see how things were conducted? He said he
would. In going the rounds he felt a shock of
petrifaction run from his hair to his feet when an
arm struck his shoulder and a bi iff voice exclaimed:

"Hullo, Truesdale! I didn't know you patron-
ized this sort of thing?"

Truesdale found himself face to face with a noted
Wall St. eet plunger.

"Same to you,'" he retorted tersely.

The plunger looked at Truesdale; Truesdale
looked at the plunger. Then both men roared with
laughter.

"Shake," said the plunger, extending his right
hand.

"It's like this," he explained, walking to the end
of the corridor with Truesdale: "Matron, God bless
the dear old soul, always been wanting me to come
and see what they do with our money. My wife's
up at 59th Street: keeps the social end going, you
know, dinners, suppers, dresses, that kind of thing:
thinks if she doesn't appear it would affect my brok-
erage business. She's right, too — it would. If
clients knew I had been skinned, they'd stampede.
People don't bother my wife with bills; but it's get-
ting so darned ho*: up at the 59th Street hotel for
me I want to keep out of sight till we get our deal
through. I owe 'em too much for them to squeal till
they get some of it; but I'm not at home just now,"
and the plunger laughed.

Six months later the plunger had paid his debts

MOMENTUM PUSHES US 1 ORWARD 343

and sailed for Europe with his wife. In the morn
ng the „,atron hoped Mr. Truesdale hadTound
honed^r -t- actory. M. Truesdale l„ta, '
hoped hat the Angel of Records took note of the
matron's unseeing eyes

^ ***** *

. ?"' to Madeline Connor this sudden reserve car
ned nun.b.ng blight. fFhy did he not write ? /^Iv
had he not come to see her? //'/,, had he led her
on by seem,ng to take their mutual love as a
foundation or conduct and then-stepped back"

LJ tdllr '" ""'."'"'^ """'^'^ 'y an'avowal of
love and not meet that avowal halfway? She
had read the accounts of the Stock Exchange battle
^^ome of the unsubsidized organs had gfown re
I.g.ous and declared that men like Ward a'nd Tru -
dale, who deranged the commerce of the couZ

l^S'::t%Lt^"^^--^'^H=-ei?s

Then the dual nature came up in Madeline Con
nor: one nature, full of love, devotion faith h.n
honor, fighting another: jeal'ous, s^pi^i ^^'.etS !
fu , hard, angry, cynical, capable of vindictive h"e
There were times when her love of him f I
against her hate of him; whershe el 'Ts ?"£
could not endure the susnen.:P ft, 5

344

THE NEW DAWN

maidenliness to the winds, seek him, go to him,
demand explanation and proof of the truth. The
wound was not that he had failed her— she told
herself. It was that he seemed to fall below her
estimate of him. But her common sense steadied
her. If she had been a fool before love came, she
would probably have become a greater fool now,
and thrust Self across the directness of the man's
Purpose; but the common sense that had guided
calm weather now piloted storm. Being in an agony
of doubt she did nothing— nothing but what women
may always do — suffer in silence; and in the silence
those famous words used to come back: "The
wound thou doest me I can forgive; but the wound
thou doest thyself — never!"

The break with Truesdale drew her closer to
Mrs. Ward. Her little journey in the gay world
had disgusted her with tinsel. Hereafter she would
seek individuals, not masses of individuals. Best of
all, she would seek the art to which she had set her
life's Purpose. The little journey in the gay world
also had its effect on the art dealer, who loaned her
the studio. He thought in terms of the dollar bill
and had but one ambition— the patronage of what
he called "swells." With a desire to use Madeline
Connor to attract trade he requested her to move
her studio to the front or public part of the shop.
Madeline at once gave up the studio completely.
It was her first experience of womanhood being used
as a trade quality. She felt as if she had been
mauled by coarse thumbs, as if her ideals were be-

MOMENTUM PUSHES US FORWARD 345

ing caged, trapped, degraded to a trade; as if her
art were beating helpless wings against iron bars
of necessity. At worst, she could always pawn the
rub.es. Meanwhile she thought of accepting an

r M ^°«° ^V' ^°'^' ^"^ ^he passed much time
with Mrs. Ward.

When mid-winter gayety lulled into Lent they
up^"] '?, '■":|i°g«her. That is, they lounged with

Paolo or Cyrano," or "Sonnets from the Portu-
guese, or Omar," upside down on their laps.
Later when a peripatetic lady lecturer, who knew
less about philosophy than attudinizing her own
hne figure, but with a few catchwords— "esoteric,"

subjectivt, • "mentality," "law of mental attrac-
tion —gave an address on mental science, Madeline
and Mrs. Ward took to reading misty authors of
the German thought-shops. If the truth must be
told, the leaves in most of the books were not cut
ret they had a curious effect, those books. One
evening, when they had lumbered through a heavy
argument to the effect that the Christian rule of
conduct was more a guide than an iron law, "cate-
goncal imperative for the guidance of the imma-
ure, the book called it-Mrs. Ward threw down
tfte volume with an impatient gesture.

less'/ ^"""^ ''^'"'^'' *''°"^'" """'" '^"^ ^''^•^'"led rest-
"I don't sec what difference it makes," said the
girl. If you don't follow some guide you co to
smash over a ledge; and if you don't obey laws you
get hurt I" '

346

THE NEW DAWN

"Just this difference," interposed Mrs. Ward,
with her face alight, "that, if you found a better
guide than the old one, you would be perfectly
justified in following it."

"And what better guide has the world found,
Lou?"

"Love," answered Mrs. Ward triumphantly.

What it was the girl could not have told, but
her instincts felt the presence of an alien influence.
She answered something about "love being the ful-
filment of law, the fruit of the blossom" ; but her
voice was a far echo beating vainly against the tu-
mult of her companion's warring emotions. They
left the books lying where the gardener turned the
hose on them and walked arm in arm to the other
end of the conservatory.

"Madeline, what do you think of my husband's
creed? Should one bow to it, or resist it, or flee
from it — or what?"

"I don't know what it is," said Madeline simply.

"Supreme — Selfishness! The Triumph of the
Strong! The Great Blond Beast!" The words
came with a venom of loaining.

They passed under an arch to the vinery before
Madeline spoke.

"IVhy did you marry him?" she asked.

"Why; ' The animation changed to supercilious
scorn. "Yes — why? Why do mothers marry
daughters to rich men every day? Why? For an
establishment. It's one way of earning a living;
But it is a hard way, not an easy one. I thought it

MOMENTUM PUSHES US FORWARD 347

meant horses, jewels, trips, houses; and so it has,"
she added bitterly. "I have my bargain: that is
the ghastly hatefulness of it. I can almost fancy
that I hear the devil's laugh. I have my bargain;
and It s worse than empty."

They lingered before a rose that climbed the
arch leadmg to the vinery. The girl picked a whit.
blossom and uould have put it on her companion's
lace front; but Mrs. Ward gently pushed the flower
back.

"Not for me," she said. "Put it on yourself!
I tell you I loathe this life! I tell you I hate it'
I tell you I can't stand it much longer! You don't
understand. You don't know what it means to have
sold yourself, for to-day and to-morrow and eter-
nity, . . . ." her voice became unsteady.

They did not speak again till they were in the
art gallery, sitting, as usual, Madeline in the chair,
Mrs. Ward among the cushions on the floor with
her face resting on the girl's knee.

"Lou, you frighten me sometimes! You have
done it again to-day! i ou g.'ve me the feeling of
something terrible impending. A little while ago
you said that love might supersede duty. Now you
say that you can't stand your lif ; much longer. Do
you know what all that might mean?"

Mrs. Ward sat up with her hand over her eyes.
A flush mantled slowly, darkening from her neck to
her hair, burning in deep spots on her cheeks.
"I can guess," she said ironically, mockery playing

348

THK NEW DAWN

about the curling, thin lips, the drooping cast of the
proud eyes.

"How do you know this may not lead you to
worse unhappiness?" asked Madeline Connor un-
abashed. "You did not think that you would ever
rebel against this life when you married for money.
How do you know that the blind forces may not
use your discontent to lead you over a precipice?"

The sunlight came sifting through the colored
glass of the gallery roof, red-shafted, an aureole
around the woman's face. Madeline thought that
destiny in the person of a man might readily risk
the precipice for such a face. What was its charm?
A perfection of feature? Other women had that:
so had fashion plates. I'ride, melting into gentle-
ness; gentleness, charged with fire; beauty hovering
on the brink of vague danger; love, unspent, crushed,
if crushed, the more fragrant; love, if roused, that
might dare the very destinies; perhaps, too, though
Madeline Connor was not experienced enough to
know this — the strange, perennial charm that be-
witched Greek heroes of old, the charm of the soul,
when lights play with shadows, when weakness wars
with right, aspiration with impulse.

"You are very beautiful," the girl half whispered.
"How can anyone help loving you?"

"It isn't that," retorted the woman passionately.
"He does love me; but it's in the wrong way."
Then Mrs. Ward looked up with a quick smile.
"You draw out the best that is in me." Then, hark-
ing back to the old self pity, "How do I know that

MOMENTUM PUSHES US FORWARD 349

I may not go over the precipice?" she repeated ab-
sently. "The truth is — / do — not — carel There

don't look so shoclccd ! Nothing could be worse
than this life! I have something to suggest. Tom
says there is a wonderfully early spring out in the
Rockies. He is going out in our car to some meet-
ing or thingamabobs in San Francisco late in May.
He says while he •> at the meeting we may have the
car to run up through the Rockies, if we like. Don't
go off to old New York in the lovely spring. Come
with me — do come! I shall get into mischief if
you don't! I shan't have anyone to preach me dear,
gentle, severe, cold, north-wind, Puritan sermons!
Do — come."

******

So Tom Ward's private car sped across the
checkerboard, patched farms of the Kast; across the
Middle West, beginning to chali. off her prairies into
the little fields; on — on — to the Far West of the
heaving, fenceless, endless, rolling prairies, with the
wild rose clutching the tie-banks of the railroad and
the railroad dwarfed to the proportion of a link-
worm crawling through immensity. Somewhere west
of the Mississippi Ward left his wife and Madeline-
his train fading in a smoke-wreath over the southern
sky-line, where cars and engine dropped like a ship
over the edge of the sea; their train tearing with
the speed of furies on — on, north and west, pur-
suing a flat trail of track that looped and dipped
and wormed its way through cuts till it, too, dropped
over the rolling sky.

350

THE NEW DAWN

Madeline, like many eaiterners, had expected to
find the prairie as flat as sand, ugly as mud, and
monotonous as a washed slate. What she saw was
an ocean of billowing green, bending and rippling
to the wind like waves to the run of invisible feet,
with here and there a lonely-eyed immigrant, looking
out from his tented wagon-top, lonely-eyed but alight
with hope. The girl felt as if she had been flung
out an atom in infinity. There was room — room;
room for hope, for endeavor, for success, without
I lie trampling of one struggler under the feet of an-
other. Her pulses throbbed to the glory of the
boundless world flashing in panorama past the car
windows. Mrs. Ward sat back like one in a dream,
unseeing, untouched, self-centered.

I'or two days the train followed the prairie, palpi-
tating with a veiled mist of light all day, quivering
under the sheeted lightning at play in a primrose
flame among the heaped cloud-banks of the faintly
lighted west all night. The third day Madeline put
on a hat "with screw-nails" — as she told Mrs. Ward
— and entered the mountains sitting on the cow-
catcher of the engine. The ubiquitous tourist was
already at Banff. String bands were strumming,
globe-trotters talking, lone fishermen solemnly
posted on parade below the white fret of the falls,
and middle-aged folk with time to think about them-
selves limping breathless and rheumatic up and
down from the baths. Madeline took out her paints
for a picture of the white-tipped, purple-folded am-
phitheater that opens through a gap just beyond

MOMFXTUM PUSHES US FORWARD .3;,

the falls; l,u. Mrs. Ward was rcstlc. She wantcl

o g., where (here were fewer people, ,he said; and

the car was shmued up to the F.ake in the Clouds

oarhT v'^x^ "'%^''' "■"''' '■"' ^''""« fhc bridle
path behmd Mount Temple, lo,,:;,;,^ ,,. . , ,„. saddle-

back between two peaks in' - -hat •.vondcf.' oortr,

known as Paradise ValL . Lp from the ,orRe

sheer as the drop of a s,.,,,c, .,ur,e , „<,l,..;c , s.gh .i

with the s.lt of a thousand .laors, l„ ,hc deep
shadows I,kc a silver thread aero., a ..„m bank-
the moss a forest of pines.

"This is too good for paints," cried the girl "I
am gomg to photograph it mentally so I can com-
pare ,t w,th Heaven some day," and she seated
herself on the ledge of rock that projects over the
gorge m a block of masonry beyond the vertical
wall.

As the sun struck the snowy helmet of Mount
1 emple a thousand rivulets leaped to life and began
the.r mad race from ledge to ledge, thin, silver,
wind-blown waterfalls that set the valley echoing
with a pattering as of fluttering leaves. The silent
heights became vocal in the sunshine with the grand-
est of all music, the voic: of many waters calling to
each other, faint and far, like the echoes of wander-
'ng souls. Here and there the sun's ^eat loosened
a rock from the icy edge of a green Racier on the
upper tiers of the precipice; and down it crashed,
bounding with increasing impetus, clattering with

35*

THE NEW DAWN

I i

rocketing echoes, smaller, fainter, till it was out of
sight in the depths, out of hearing in the distance.
"I don't understand why you like it." Mrs.
Ward drew back from the edge with a shudder.
"It's like another world— it's so cold, pitiless!"

"Look!" cried the girl, raising her hand. "Look
at the clouds with the silver wings; and the sunlight
scales off that rock like sparks from steel."

"But that is just it," interrupted the other, im-
petuously. "There is such a dreadful hard fierceness
in this sort of beauty! You feel as if — as if some-
how — oh — I don't know how to say it — human na-
ture were impotent against physical might."

She fell silent, finding a place for herself on a
lower slab of rock. The mists slashed slant-wise
across the sun, filling the v..i!i7 with shadows, with
a somber hushing of the waters.

"It depresses me!" Mrs. Ward laid her arm
across the girl's knee.
"Why?"

The rush — rush — rush of the torrent came up
faint as a sigh. The sough of the wind among the
tossing pines might have been an inarticulate cry.
Mrs. Ward shivered.

"Listen," she began in a tremulous whisper.
"You made me promise if ever . . ." she bit her lip
irresolutely, then hurried on impulsively . . . "Don't
stop me! I must tell it! You once asked me Iiok
I could keep from going over the precipice, hoiv I
could stop in time. I thought if I ca.ne away out
here with you I might forget, I ..ilgnt get away

MOMENTUM PUSHKS US FORWARD 3,-3

from it; but I tell you-it is useless! Take your
arm away from me! Do not touch me!" A shud-

but, Madelme_,t ,s „o,_my husband; and-ifJ
^ve-be-wrong, I have „ot stopped in time!"
Her gloved hand clenched. Her eyes were dry Teal-
gorge "' ^'""^ '^''^'^'^ ^°^" '" '^' 'likened
The mist drifted from the sun, but the girl saw
no glory of l.ght. Again the waters leaped to lif"
.n thousand-toned laughter. She did not hear it

^Xt^zX ^^^-^---'-.■

so !':.'■ '"'-^'="^'^'*"'=' ^'o- face has turned

The girl's arm tightened round the other's shoul-
ders as if to ward off a blow.

near .'ll'-"'''" '^' ""'""""^ ''"^'y' "'''« ^'^ »re too
near this precipice. '

CHAPTER XXIII

BY-PRODUCTS NOT INCLUDED IN LEDGERS

The superstructure of Madeline Connor's life tot-
tered. She had believed so firmly that the best emo-
tions could never lead to as great woe as the worst;
that life founded on the spirit was invulnerable, un-
assailable, impervious to the things that sap founda-
tions of sand. She had ignored — or, rather, had not
had experience to understand — that of the three
crosses on Calvary, the bitterest was the one borne
for love's sake.

The subject of Mrs. Ward's avowal was scarcely
mentioned again between them. Madeline rccalk.l
the gossip of the reception and knew to whom Mrs.
Ward must have referred. It was as if a blight
had swept over existence; as if serpents reared ugly.
treacherous heads; as if satyr facv» leered darklv
in the shadows that are always concomitants of
light — leered at the poetry of youth; as it ove
might be a mirage of distorted vision luring whcr.
thirst is slaked in death

She recalled the art, the music, the literature they
had enjoyed together; the day-dreaming among the
Easter lilies of the conservatory; th« rambles by
354

BY-PRODUCTS

clf in flame. Were these

355
paint

tlie attraction,' A • "" ""'^'"8 elements, as

.,- , " ^""^ shivering," remarked Mrs Warrf
i-<:t ut go downV ward.

KckinK a last cluster of waxy flower, from th,

Aip.n,'t:adotSi;':r;r^^-':"f'°

-ss into the he..y .hade of th.^^^T. tTc'eT

a wrrf'irTll"?"'"''"^ r--^'^ ^''^- '<--^"-

echoi Jt 1 th "*'""'[ '^' "''^' "'"^ ^ P«"liar

occaio'n, rifts n f °"' "^"7 ""= '''''« '-" -'th
as onal nft m forest and mountain showing the

far gl.mmer of scarred ice, criss-crossed on the t ace
oi a distant precipice. "

J-iA^f

356

THE NEW DAWN

The girl led the way. She could not talk. Her
thoughts were chaos ; and chaos takes time to resolve
into clear outlines. To be sure, she need not have
cared. She could have shut her soul up in a cloister
existemce and shut the facts of life out; but she was
no« sufficiently unctuous. She was learning that ideals
are mawki'-h stuff till they meet the shock of the
reals and triumph. She was learning, too, the most
important lesson of a woman's life — to face facts
and conquer.

It was dark when they reached the hearth of the
Chalet. A surveyor was telling some globe-trotters
gathered round the roaring fire of Construction
Days, when an army of workmen and adventurers
invaded the mountains to build the railroad, and the
flood-tide of spring thaw used to throw up as many
as forty dead after a Sunday brawl. The impres-
sion of Saxon warriors came to Madeline as it hail
that night when Ward and Dillon sat in the dining-
room laying their plans. Those old, barbaric fight-
ers had been in\ aders of mountains, raiders of low-
lands, conquerors of new lands. I'hcy had gone
forth in bands of hundreds — brigands catling their
winnings "plunder." The modern conqueror num-
bered his hosts in hundreds of thousands, invaded
mountains, too, sought new conquests and called his
winnings "profit."

.'\ftcr supper Madeline and Mrs. Ward joined
the little democracy round the fire. Suddenly the
girl rose and left the group. She went upstairs to
the dusk of her own room, kneeling at the window

BY-PRODUCTS 3^

with her head bowed on the sill. She did not see
he white wall of Mount Victoria ghostly in the star-
light, with the new moon hanging like a silver sickle
above Its snow meadows. She did not hear the far
crash, hke booming artillery, break the night still-
ness where an avalanche etched fresh grooves down
the vertical face of the white wall. The rush,„K
of the mountain torrent raving down from the snow
helds died to a hush, a sibilant murnur a lonclv
beat— beat— beat, as of muffled drums. A sllal,',
vvmd fanned the lake in front of the Chalet to a
ripphng m,rr„r, the snow > wall of Mount Victoria
reflected m the far end, the shadowy precipices of
both s.des . trembling replica along the shores,
bhe saw nothing of the night's hushed beauty noth-
ing but a vision of two faces swirling past in deco
waters. ^

She raised her face t • the starlight in an agony of
questionings as old as time, as multifarious as life
as unanswerable as the riddle of the sphinx. What
was life? Was it hunger and sleep, sleep and hun-
ger, till the last long sleep? Was it a life of prey
if civilized, so much the cruder; if refined so much
the craftier? What was love-this thing that
swept one over a precipice, led another to the
f-ights,- that was neither joy nor pain, but an ecstasy
ot both? It was no longer a speculation— this ques-
tion of love. It was there, a reality, above her own
lite, above her friend's.
"Madeline?"

3s8 THE NEW DAWN

Mrs. Ward had glided in unheard. She slipped
to her knees beside the girl.

"Let us forget," she said tenderly. "Dear child,
let us dream while we may ! Let us dream till we
must awaks! .... What could women do if they
did not dream .... a little? . . . ." The heavy-
lashed li" J opened wide. "Let us dream that love is
.... tender, .... not cruel; .... that happiness
.... lasts; . . . thai vows are . . . never ....
broken; .... that love's trust is ... . never ....
violated! .... Let us dream that we are most

like God when we love most; for who

loves .... most, most Is forgiven! ... It is good

for women to dream; to dream; .... to

trust .... til! trust .... is betrayed . . . . ;
.... crucified; .... trampled under foot; ....
defiled; . . . cast out with the outcast things! You
don't seem to know how humorous all this ,0, . . . .
dear child! Laugh! .... Laugh! . . . Dc "t weep!

It's an old .... old story; ... the way

of the world, dear! .... Let us dream! .... Let

us dream ! . . . . When the wakening comes,

we shall have had our dream."

The girl did not answer. She could not. Her
voice shook. Her eyes blurred to the sight of all
else but the vision of two faces sweeping past in the
dark. "I am a croaker," said the woman gently. "I
have filled your mind with gloomy thoughts 1 For-
get them, child! Go to sleep; . . . and dream!

The door between the two rooms closed. Mrs.
Ward had gone.

BY-PRODUCTS

359

It IS one of the peculiar virtues of mountain life
that you may go to bed with wakeful thoughts if
you but climb hard enough the mountains will put
you to sleep. Madeline slept the dead sleep of a
weaned body and a hope-sick heart. Toward morn-
ing she wakened herself sobbing feverishly, tear-
Icssly in her sleep, with an odd sensation of some
one m the dark leaning over her. She sprang up
and threw open the window shade. It was a hallu-
cination. There was no one; and when she looked
out a blaze of wine-colored sunlight had turned the
white wall of Mount Victoria to a city of jasper
with the crisping, emerald waters reflecting templed
peaks, wind-flung clouds, and a sheen of snows.

A little noiseless fluttering through the forest a
pattering of pine needles, a sudden radiance of gold-
shot mist in the gorge, a quivering over the polished
surface of the emerald lake; and it was day.

Madeline noticed that the door between the two
rooms, which had been closed when she went to
sleep, now stood open. Did she dream or had she
seen a white form slipping ghostily through the
gloom? But when she looked into the other room
Mrs. Ward lay asleep.

PART IV
POWER TRIUMPHANT

CHAPTER XXIV

THE CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS

Sam McGee, labor delegate, trod air. His head
was in a cloud of dreams. Demos, the down-trod-
den; Demos, the haltered gin-horse on the tread-
mill of bootless labor; Demos, the dumb slave,
beast of burden, blind toiler in the dark of countless
centuries in the divided democracy of rich and poor,
was arising, throwing off his yoke, finding voice,
opening his eyes to emancipated manhood! No
more anxious fright tossing on sleepless pillows!
No more hungry-mouthed want coursing wolf-like
through the shadows on the heels of maidenhood,
hounding virtue into vice ! Mc<jee was winning the
battle. That was the po»nt. He had »on over
the Truesdale Mines and was gradually besieging
the Great Consolidated into surrender. McGee's
appearance in the Nickel Plate saloon was the in-
stant signal for clinking glasses and stamping '<i
feet, and cries of " i speech." Then McGce would
remove the felt hat and, through the clouds of
360

CREED RECKONS WITH UEMOS 36.

smoke, beg his followers "to stand for the sacred
rights of the workingman"; "to sacrifice the present
for the ultimate fact of victory: to keep eves afront
on the great fact of the Revolution, when every
worker wou d throw down pick and shovel and en-
ter into his divine heritage."

"Sacre,! rights! Pah I" Goldsmith, the Socialist,
brought his pipe down with such a click that he broke
the stem. "What I tell you. Mc(]ee, is this-//,.. „/,/.
mate fact h the dollar bill/ Vou think you bring
the death of that fool fellow Kipp up in the courts?
Your courts be damned. The ultimate fact, there,
|S the dollar bill tool You think you link labor
with capital while you both pick the pockets of the
public? Pah! The public may be fool one time,
rhe public may be fool two times. The public may
be fool three times; but, by and bv, it say-'Herc
you two fools, you've had your sha;e. 'Jhink y<.u're
going to get a cinch on earth and air? Here, everv-
body-come in and help yourselves. De earth s
f"l of coal. Take it! There's food, and plenty
G.t out o the way you fellows, labor and capital :
the people are hungry. Come in, people-eat!
That's socialism.'"

Goldsmith drank a glass of beer. McGee
laughed. The Socialist wiped the beer from his
neard, and rambled on:

"feudalism, serf and lord, you fight that? Pah'
It IS a money feudalism we have, captains of in^
dustry w,th tjeir slaves ! It is the money feudalism
«-? nave, i he man with big enough money can

36»

THE NEW DAWN

! I i

tweak the Pope's nose; and patroni/e God Al-
mighty; and bluff the church; and bribe the courts;
and murder a wife or two if he has a mind, or put
one wife in the asylum and another in his house;
and tax the people till they sweat blood, tax 'em
in higher prices for meat, in higher prices for bread,
in higher prices for coal, tax 'em, I tell you, till the
man on a salary can no more save money than thi-
Jew on the rack of a robber-baron! If he has big
enough money the whole world will sing him a halle-
lujah chorus, and dance to the Devil! 'Tis the
money feudalism we have! Your charity is rotten
with it ! Your charity is cheaper than justice ! Your
courts are rotten with it: if it doesn't buy the judge,
it buys delay! Your press is rotten with it: make
money by a steal, make the steal big enough; and
the paper that would flay you for taking a loaf of
bread will praise you for a financier! Your morals
are rotten with it! I know a little criminal of the
black-cat stripe who shot his own brother, and poi-
soned a witness who saw him do it ; then bought all
the lawyers in the town and played the habeas cor-
pus racket till he tired out public opinion; so got oft
free! 'Tis the money feudalism we have! Your
morals are rotten with it; and your churches
dead!"

The big German smote the table with his fist.
McGee no longer laughed.

"Granted it is the money feudalism we have,"
he said, "how are you going to wrest liberty from
it the way the serfs wrested liberty from the barons?

CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS 363

How but by compelling a division of the profits
■ ... eh? That means higher wa(fes to the work-
mn ! ^ou thmk the courts will fool me about the
death of K.pp? .... We'll see! If I had brought
a charge of murder against the Great Consolidated,
who would have listened to me? Do you ihink I
could have made the public prosecutor act? Do
you thmk the press would have b.en paid to touch

.twth tongs? No, sir . . . I know what I

am doing! If we had sprung that sort of a charge
we d just be where those fellows were who tried to
get a verdict in Chicago when the whiskey ring put
dynamite under the independent's cellar! Did you
ever hear of that case? .... ever read of it in

the paper? ... No why? .... Mush

money! There'll be no hush money for Kipp, by
God! I'll spring it on 'cm before they kno«- it!
We'll join Truesdale in the defense of this civil suit
about tunneling off his ground ! When the evidence
comes m about the tunnel we spring the facts about
KippI Then, our civil suit becomes a criminal one,
see? Justice will have a murder to deal with .
see?"

Goldsmith looked long through his dim spectacles
straight into McGee's eager face. The dreamer was
looking at the fighter.

^^ "/ understand," answered the German, slowly,
"dat dc ultimate fac' in dis countree iz—iz— de-
dollar bill!"

♦ * ♦ »

MICROCOI^ RESOLUTION TEST CHART

(ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

1.0 !fi^ I

IL25 i 1.4

2.5

2.2

1.8

1.6

^ APPLIED IIVHGE Inc

1653 East Main Street
Rochester, N«* Vork 14f
(716) 482 - 0300 - Phone
(716} 28B- 5969 - Fa.

364

THE NEW DAWN

Nevertheless, when the time came for Ward's
suit against Truesdalc in the matter of tunneling
into Great Consolidated ground, Goldsmitl. and all
his coterie helped to pack the crowded court room.
It is unnecessary to state how this case was post-
poned, relegated to the long delayed among the
advertising columns of the newspapers under the
heading "lis pendens." Once, it was a witness miss-
ing. Again, it was a witness ill. Then, President
\\'ard was away. Then, the counsel for the prose-
cu'ion required more time to prepare the evidence.
T*- -n, the counsel for the Great Consolidated op-
r rtunely fell ill. Then, the discovery of Kipp's
body, "come to death by means unknown" — was the
verdict at the inquest — had necessitated a complete
repreparation of the evidence.

I think if Mr. Jack Truesdale could have been
found about this time, a gentleman of soft voice,
and soft tread, and silky beard, might have been
commissioned to offer a settlement of the case out
of court; but, Mr. Jack Truesdale had disappeared
in a resort known only to one man; he, a crippled
plunger of Wall Street. Mr. Jack Truesdale had
reasons for wishing this case to go on. So had
McGee. So had the striking miners. So had nol
Obadiah Saunders. 'I'he confidential secretary de-
vised reasons for six months' more delay. That let
public interest simmer down. Then, the opposing
counsel had another sparring match for the delay
of the trial. Public interest became fatigued. What
was it all about, anyway? The man in the street

CREED RECKONS W mi DEMOS 365

quit reading about it. Thus can the law be delayed
to the confounding of justice so that more than two
thousand eases wait for longer than two years in
every leading city of a country of libeitv.

Then came a rumor. N'obody knew who set it
going, nobody but McGee. The striking miners no
longer kept to their homes. They gathered in knots
of loud talkmg men on the street. They hissed
Ward as he passed. They grouped in front of
Truesdale's old Rookery Building, and cheered the
deserted offices. They stoned "the scabs"— foreign
miners— who came up in flat cars from New York
to take the place of the strikers; and when the mi-
litia was ordered out it was not hard to see that the
volunteers were only too willing to be hustled by
the rioters. Then the rumor ran like fire: "Ward
was funking"; "Ward's suit against the Truesdale
mines had been bluff"; "Ward was scared to face
the music" ; "Ward had begun the suit and daren't
go on"; "it was stock-jobbing— speculation— pecu-
lation— a steal!" The rioters paraded the streets
by torch light, singing.

Back in the ofRces of the Great Consolidated,
Obadiah heard the singing, and had an ague. The
papers said nothing of the rumor and reported the
riots jocosely. Great Consolidated dropped ten
points on 'Change. Tom Ward's securities began
to show symptoms of flagging. Nobody bought.
Everybody wanted to sell. Then, the master hand
of Tom Ward played its trump card. The law's
delay vanished like mist. ''Greai Consol. vs. Trues-

366

THE NEW DAWN

dale Mines" jumped clear beyond the two thousand
other delayed cases, and the trial opened.

"It will bring Truesdale out of hiding, anyhow,"
Ward said to Saunders. Saunders had an ague and
turned the complexion of butter.

"Was — was — it judicious?" he stammered, and
he went home with the roof of his mouth peculiarly
dry, his lips feverish, the base of his brain gnawing
as if the vampire thing had again fastened its teeth
there,

The court house stood apart from the main city,
a gray stone structure with a statue of blinded jus-
tice — the face of a woman with bandaged eyes —
above the door. Goldsmith and McGee entered
together. The Socialist paused under the bandaged
face.

"See," he said, pointing up to the stone figure,
"that strumpet pretends not to see pity! It's truth
she fears, the hypocrite! She's afraid to look at her
own work — innocence under the heel of guilt! Pah !
Your womanish mercy that outrages innocence and
pampers guilt! You'll feminize the manhood out
of America yet! Judgment, it is the greater mercy!
You'll split your democracy with your loose laws!"
The court was thronged. Men stood in the aisles.
Goldsmith took his place at the back of the room.
McGee pressed on through the crowds to the
benches behind the witness boxes. Ward was to
one side talking to Dillon. Mr. Saunders bent low
over some papers. Truesdale had just entered a
door behind the judge and a buzz rippled over

CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS 367

the court room. Some hitch had occurred in pro-
ceedings and the judge had leaned across to confer
with a court official in blue coat with brass buttons.
Saunders bent a little lower over his papers. They
were elaborate drawings of the mines by the en-
gineer of the Great Consolidated, with reports on
the different workings; but Saunders was not think-
ing of these reports. At the back of his head was
a gnawing, as if a trapped rat were working up
through stones to the top of a shaft. .At the same
time he had the most curious, pious feeling of grati-
tude that God was pitiful. What would we do with-
out reliance on Deity's mercy to cover up our smug
hypocrisies? Saunders was still in that crude state
of belief when a man tries to persuade himself that
he has only to say "come," and God comes; "do,"
and God does; "undo," and God undoc God was
a very convenient belief for Saunders Jusl then. He
was so very anxious, was Saunders, that that tunnel
trial should not uncover anything about Kipp, who
"had come to his death by means unknown." Saun-
de: nt lower over the papers. Once, when a
gruh ,,'orkman, leaning over McGee's shoulder,
whispered. "Goin' to bring your corpse on?" the
confidential man felt needles of ice run down inside
his spine. Out of the blackness of his terror some-
thing seemed to emerge from a shaft.

There was evidence by the engineer of the Trues-
dale mines, and the engineer of the Great Consoli-
dated; wonderful evidence as diametrically opposed
as the facts of history recorded by different his-

368

THE NEW DAWN

torians. Tliere were drawings submitted more com-
plicated than a puzzle. Down in the audience, Mc-
Gee's followers nodded their heads and bade each
other, "Wait! It's coming!"

It was an hour before the adjournment of the
court for the day when McGce toolc the witness
stand. Necks craned among the audience and the
whispers suddenly fell to a profound silence. Both
Ward and Trucsdale leaned forward attentively.
McGee testified that he was a labor delegate, first
employed by the union to secure the cooperation of
the Trucsdale miners. Here, it was observed that
the witness looked scornfully in the direction of Mr.
Saunders. Workmen in the aisles nudged.

Yes, in response to a question, he had also worked
in the Great Consolidated mines under Kipp, the
dead engineer. Yes, he was perfectly familiar with
the internal workings of both mines.

Would he recognize these drawings as accurate
representations of the Great Consolidated work-
ings?

Most emphatically, he would not.

Why not?

Here, the counsel for the Great Consolidated ob-
jected that the opinion of a novice was not to be
taken as evidence on a subject that required the
knowledge of an expert. McGee turned directly to
the audience and smiled broadly, but after sparring
and cross-sparring by the lawyers — sufficient to con-
fuse the issue in the minds of the most of the hear-
ers — the labor delegate succeeded in saying that

CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS 369

he would not recognize these drawings as accurate
representation^ of the (ireat Consolidated working
for two reasons: First, they did not conform to
what he, himself, knew; .econd, they did not con-
form to the official report of Kipp, the dead en-
gineer of the Great Consolidated.

A sudden hush fell over the court room. Again
the counsel for the Great Consolidated sprang up
with the objection that the report of a dead man,
who had been dismissed from the company's ser-
vices, ought not to be admitted as evidence; and
again, the counsel for the Truesdale mines countered
by saying that it could be shown this dead engineer
whose death had been so wyslerioush hushed, had
been dismissed and reengaged for' reasons con-
cerned with the suit in question; and, again, McGee
turned directly to the audience, smiling broadly

lorn Ward's eyes were not on .McGee, but on
Saunders; and Saunders' face wore the imperturb-
able look of frosted glass. He was sitting erect
now, caressing his beard, gazing into space.

Did the witness mean to a.ssert that he pretended
o remember-this with an insinuating scepticism-
the highly technical, intricate details of the engi-
neer's official report? ^
No; the witness did not pretend to trust his mem-
ory Here, McGee paused, as if mustering facts
to be crammed in his answer before he could be
stopped. But, as he had met Mr. Kipp walking
wi h the secretary of the Great Consolidated just
before Mr. Saunders had ordered Shaft 10 filled

370

THE NFAV DAWN

';!

up; and, as that was the last time Mr. Kipp was
seen; and, as he (iMcGee) always considered the
disappearance of Kipp a little queer when the Great
Consolidated continued paying Mrs. Kipp the en-
gineer's salary "

"Confine yourself to the answer of the question,"
thundered the judge.

McGee flushed angrily. This time he did not
turn to the audience. Taking a grip of the broken
recital, he went on doggedly: "And, as he had kept
hunting for Kipp's body where he thought it might
be found, though the company gave out Kipp had
gone to Peru, and, as he found the body just outside
the shaft that had been filled up so mighty quick,
and as he couldn't trust his memory for the report,
he had made a point of obtaining Kipp's report
about that tunnel ; and — lltere it litis, drawing a
crumpled sheet of paper all pasted with torn scraps
from his breast pocket and laying it down.

If a pistol shot had been aimed at Obadiah Saun-
ders, and richochetting across had hit Pre;, .ient
Ward in full view of the audience, the effect could
not have been more surprising. Silence, heavy, pal-
pitating, deadly, fell on the court room for just a
second. Then the hush exploded in a buzz. Tom
Ward had involuntarily started forward. The
judge was putting on his pince-nez, and the vacancy
on which Saunders' glazed look was fast ned sud-
denly filled with a blackness, a blackness with some-
thing formless clambering up, hand over hand,
through the dark, the fury of a nameless vengeance

CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS 371

unshunnable as death. The only movement of the
secretary was to thrust both hands in his trousers
pockets, looking up at one of the windows as if he
felt a draught of cold.

The next moment the opposing counsel were at
>t with a fusillade of dog Latin and legal terms
that obscured everything for the auditors; and Mc-
(-■ee heard his character torn in such shreds that he
did not know it. Then the court adjourned.
* * ♦ *

Mrs. Kipp was all agog. The curl papers had
bloomcc l,kc apple buds into a wonderful array
01 frizzled blossoms all round the sulphur-colored
lace. There was a love-lock on her low forehead,
and two little curls just in front of her ears, and a
whole border of fiiz/led curls all round the mar-
gin of her neck, where a big imitation tortoise shell
comb held up the back hair.

Mrs. Kipp had gone in curl papers day and nignt
for a week before the trial, each curl -rewed so
tight that it pulled the skin back till the sea-green
eyes were almond in shape. She had not had time
to buy mourning costumes for the inquest over poor
Kipp s body, but she made up for that neglect by
gorgeous preparations for the lawsuit. Great Co,,,
sol. vs Tr„esdale Mh.es. To be sure, widow's
weeds had gone slightly out of fashion, but then,
as Mrs. Kipp told the foreman's wife out at the
mining village, "the widow's bonnet and white bor-
der, and ong veil was so distangay, she was goin'
to wear 'em!" And, as for siceves-you should

37»

TMR NF.W DAWN

have seen her sleeves. She told the foreman's wife
they were bell sleeves, and the new engineer's wife
they were bishop siceves, and every neighbor who
canr" in to see "the goin's on for the lawsuit," agreed
that they were "stunnin' sleeves." Certainly, what
with tucks, shirring, and pleats, and flares, they
were wonderful sleeves; and, then, as one of Mrs.
Kipp's beaux said, "her little white hand had such
a dev'lish pretty way of flirting at you just where
it emerged from the sleeve." If Mrs. Kipp "turned
on h'-r flirtatious look" along with the flipping of
her hands "you were done for."

Then, Mrs. Kipp affected the Grecian bend at
her waist: that is, she leaned vrry far forward
with her chin and v-ery far in at her waist. It re-
quired practice, particularly tor sitting down, but
Mrs. Kipp took plenty of practice in front of the
mirror. The fit of her long, black dress with the
floppy train and flaring skirt was a perfect Grecian
bend. If to all this you add the facts that Mrs.
Kipp walked with a lithe spring to each step, and
a little saucy toss to her head, and a little flirtatious,
self-conscious darting of the most killing glances
from her eyes — you will realize that Mrs. Kipp
could be distinctly dangerous. As the foreman's
admiring wife had said, "Mrs. K. was raving hand-
some in her mourning."

Just behind the judge's chair in the court room
was a door leading to a sort of private ante room.
Here sat Mrs. Kipp the last day of the trial, wait-
ing to be called. If the truth must be told she was

CREEP RECKONS WITH DEMOS 373

HeginninR to feel

veil tioii/d j/o askew; and

nervous at wai

to the foreman's wife, wh

iting so long. Her
tWvT.ty times she remarked

do I look?

o was with her, "I<;h, h

tow

K r . . I Ih « I'.. I

^'PP! . . . And >s my hat on straight?
Vou d t k„o,. what it is to he loved as p'oor Kipp

,. , is the hick hairp m rght?

J.St to thmk a year ago poor Kipp was ravin' Kali
"US of every man that looked a^ mel . . HI list
walk mto that court room .... like this " trut

Ts:t:J:^' '''''?"''■ Wfr-rk

aTve h;MK ■ ■ '"■' '-'"'' '"''"• '' -PP wu..

iat .::J:,^.'°"^ ''""^ -'''»' I ^'oodf rum

"Don't luk as if ye didn't care. Airs K •

advised the foreman's wife. '

But the injunction fell heedless on Mrs. Kipp
Lands, did ye see him, though?" she asked
D,d you see Mister Saunders? He winked

^ru''T P^'tted my... hands!"

i he door opened softly

My dea. Mrs. Kipp, try to bear up! It will a^l
be over ma mmute," he whispered as he lid he
to the court room.

queu, of a hve-aet drama with the eyes of the whole

374

THK Ni:W DAWN

world fastened on her beauty. She swept to the
court room with a spring to her step and a toss to
her head that was meant for pride, anil a pathetic
enough droop about her eyes to make the gods of
laugliter weep. Then, just for a second, she forgot
herself. It was only a second. The gaze of many
faces, the vague stir, the masculine burr of voices —
frightened her. Someone handed her a book; and
she was kissing the book, forgetting to be graceful.
Then, a voice was asking in tones of deep respect:

'• your late lamented husband felt bitter

to he company, Mrs. Kipp?"

'Yes, sir!" Mrs. Kipp remembered to draw
out her pocket handkerchief — the Irish linen one,
hemstitched with real lace — and wipe away a sus-
picion of tears.

"Can you tell what his grudge was against the
company?"

"Yes, sir; he wanted more salary!"
"More salary? Was he not getting five thou-
sand a year, Mrs. Kipp?"

"Yes, sir! I al'ys told him he was gettin" more'n
'e waz worth, but 'e thought 'e could make 'em pay
him ten thousand!"

Mrs. Kipp acknowledged this with the air of a
grievance against Kipp.

At the back of the court room, Goldsmith gazed
through his spectacles, shaking his head. McGee's
jaw slowly dropped. He looked as if that hammer
of power which he thought to wield so well had
somehow rebounded and knocked him on the head.

CRKI'D KliCKONS WITH I)i;\/()S 375

I he woman, this one woman, this crcatu •• in the
tuckers and switch and Hopping veil— he had pro-
vided against everything, everything but this Je/e-
hel! Hut, Mrs. Kipp, all unconscious, was going
on with her testimony

"Ves, sir! J le said 'e did.i't care whether it
waz true or not! He wa/, goln' t' send in reports
what would raise the 'air H their mental roofs:
that waz what 'e said, the exact words! I wa/. agin
It from the tirsf! i said the com'any had treated
'mi fair, and 'e ought to play square, but 'e Miid
Mister Saunders could go down the niir by hisself,
and 'e hoped the poor gen leman mip break his
neck! Kipp wouldn't go down with him; said 'e
wa/. goin' t' th' city; and that the com'any waz
goin' t' send 'im to I'eru ; and I wazn't t' be alarmed:
the com'any'd pay me the salary jist the same!"
"Oo you mean to say that your husband was try-
ing to compel the company to pay him more by

sending in false reports?" interjected the judge,

bending forward.

"Yes, sir," murmured Mrs. Kipp behind her real

lace handkerchief.

Obadiah Saunders looked prayerfully up from

his feet to the ceiling. He caressed his beard.

McGee suddenly gripped the railing in front of him

as if he could have torn the woman to pieces.
"..... then, you think your husband must

have fallen in the river as he was coming out that

night to tell you about his appointment in Peru?"

the lawyer was asking.

376

THE NEW DAWN

"Yes, sir!" Mrs. Kipp applied the handicerchief
to a laciirymose effusion.

It is not the part of this narrative to follow eluci-
dations of learned counsel for the Great Consoli-
dated, showing that the report of as unreliable and
bibulous a witness as Kipp was not to be taken as
trustworthy evid ;nce ; nor the appeal by the learned
counsel for the Truesdale mines for a stay of pro-
ceedings until an impartial commission could exam-
ine the workings of both mines. Suffice it to say,
the commission was appointed, and it would be a
good thing if we could induce fate to relegate our
sins to a commission, too : we might be fairly certain
of doing as we pleased afterwards.

The suit Great Consol. vs. Truesdale Mines was
dropped, which meant that Truesdale had won, but
no verdict was given against the Great Consolidated.
The striking miners who had hoped for a verdict
that might weaken Ward, filed from the court room
sullen, grumbling, resentful against that vague thing
Justice.

"What did your corpse amount to, anyway?" one
of the men roughly demanded of McGee.

McGee could not answer.

A light woman with sulphur skin, mincing eyes,
and 'ripping walk, a light woman who would have
sacrificed the souls of all workmen for one triumph
to her vanity — had come athwart the rights of
Demos, had tossed her saucy head and flipped her
hands at the stern thing called Justice.

"The .... jade," McGee ground through his

CREED RECKONS WITH DEMOS 377

Wh"^J°J""' ^f'^'"''"^ =>f the door, "she made

em think he d suicided or fallen in drunk "

Ah . . . my fren'," soliloquized the big,
bearded dreamer, "'tis not the woman. She have
much too much of blame from you ! // /. de dollar
""' ■ ■ • ■ dot ts de tillimate fact'"

McGee threw back his head with an angry laugh.

By God, Im not done yet," he said.

In that moment he had made up his mind that if

IlL'°n "xV'r ^"'''" ''^^'"y he would take it
Illegally The Socialist looked queerly over the

T ull TT'^''- '^'''" he slipped his arm
through McGee's. From that moment McGee be-
came a ramping red." The courts had made the
convert. Ward's creed had now to reckon with

CHAPTER XXV

UNMOORED

Hounds behind and precipice ahead, the deer
risks broken shanks in one wild leap. So with hfe.
The way behind closes. One way alone opens to
the fore, and desperation plunges— though what is
called "reckless" when it ends in a smash is counted
"brave" when it escapes whole-limbed.

The art dealer's design to use Madeline Connor's
social connection to draw custom— shut one door.
An offer to go to New York opened another. Per-
haps, too, she was pushed to the resolution by a
haunting fear for Mrs. Ward. The spoliation of
a life is not a laughable spectacle, except to ghouls;
and wounded love, like the wounded animal, can
but drag its pains away to hide in the dark of a
gradual forgetfulness.

You would have stopped Mrs. Ward if you had
been Madeline Connor? So have wives thought to
stop husbands, and husbands thought to stop wives;
and broken their own hearts trying. So have chil-
dren bowed under the crushing weight of an inheri-
tance they could not redress. Unpleasant facts—
yri say? ''ray shut both ears that you may not
hear the cry. One sleeps sounder pillowed on plati-
378

UNMOORED

379

tudes, poetizing, sentimentalizing with shut ears;
for the cry is a harsh one. Smug faith is a more
comfortable thing if it tucks its head under its wing
that it may not see the Grim Giants. It is easier
to believe that all things are as they ought to be
when we refuse to look at things as they ought not
to be.

The glimpse under the surface of Mrs. Ward's
life filled Madeline with a kind of numb, love cold-
ness. She could no more still the throbbing of the
great influence that had come to her own life than
stop her heart beats; but she resolutely shut the
doors of memory on loss. Love had seemed to
open the portals of Heaven. She resolutely shut
the portals. She was afraid. A presence as of hope
or jf blight seemed to hang over her life. What
would Mr. Jack Truesdale have thought if he had
known that Madeline Connor was thankful he had
dropped out of her life?

New York was suffering from one of its frequent
fits of spasmodic goodness. That 's — it had been
discovered for the thousandth time that the "graft-
ers" — politicians, magistrates, police — received toll
for squeezing taxpayers, oppressing the poor, shield-
ing vice. The discovery was stale, but news was
scarce. Artists and reporters flocked to the East
Side. Babies were portrayed dying from lack of
ice, while city rulers drew profits from the ice trust.
Draggled humanity was drawn struggling in cess-
pools of iniquity, while respectability stood on the
margin pushing the swimmers back till toll was paid.

380

THE NEW DAWN

An art editor who had seen Madeline's pictures
of ragged children now sent for her. It was her
first experience of the great unchurched world, and
she found very good hearts beating under unclerical
vestments. If this were a record of Madeline, in-
stead of Ward, it would be interesting to know how
Perkins, the art editor, sprang a proposal, when —
as the boy who carried the proofs back to the print-
ers, said — "Perkins popped, but the pop pied."

Simms, the city editor, who was good fellow to
everyone from the mayor to the king of China
Town, was always coming to Madeline with some
rag-tag of humanity whom she could help better
than he. It was an unchurched world — where Mad-
eline found herself — but it wns a world where the
right hand does good turns without telling the left,
or without any turning up of the whites of pious
eyes to the Angel of Records for a good mark.
There were no professions of goodness in this world,
but some very fine examples. Instead of talking,
people did things, and the highest praise ever given
was the terse comment — "that's all right," or "it'll
do!"

Before, with an unconscious aloofness, she had
witnessed the seething torrent of life from the shel-
tered haven of her own home. Now, she felt her-
self an infinitesimal speck on the buueting billows
of a human tide. Before, she might know or not
know. What conflicted with a young girl's ideals
might be thrust aside. Now, good and evil, all the
intermediate interminglings, were too close to be

UNMOORED

381

.n^ 1 ,° "P"'^"^'-'- «■■ g-^t a dissecting wound
under the delusion of studying the anatomy of sin

plain through the bruises, feet suffer when they wan-

,r,Tn J A '"7 °P'"' ''^'" '" ''' hewn open by hu-
man hands. n a word, Madeline's convictions be-
came personal when the virtuous fit of the press
gave place to a war fever. Orders for sketches fell

The inevitable apprenticeship had come. It was as
I the big city which engulfs so much effort were
putting her to the test. If she were worthy, she
would come out the st.onger; if worthless-then
part of the jetsam and flotsam of the city's wrecks
At most, she could always pawn the rubies. She

over r, r." °"'rr"' ' ^^'^ ^"' ' ^''^' ='"J '-"^J
over a solitary fifty cent piece a great many times

before she thought of the pawn shops. One even!
mg coming home from a private hospital-the city
ditor had sent flowers in Madeline's name to some-
one whose thanks he did not want: poor Simms

suit Ma?r"''' ^'T^* '■"^° ''^"^'^ °^ P---
suits-Madehne passed a low-roofed shop in Sixth

Avenue which displayed the signs of a banker with

he goods of a jeweler. Inside, a gentleman with

hooked nose and aded-green coat accommodated

the^public with cash for deposits of personal be-

To-night the window caught Madeline's eye
Iherc were garnets marked "rubies," and glass

382

THE NEW DAWN

ijr.i

clusters labeled "diamonds." The sham rubies re-
minded her of real ones with an irony that gave
Madeline the feeling of a weight on her chest. A
young girl slipped furtively from the door. Some
love token or heirloom had been left behind. What
next might be bartered to stave off penury? Made-
line discovered that the verdigris smell of a pawn
shop has the same effect on courage as frost on
mercury.

And then, in a flash, came the odd sensation that
she was being watched. Wheeling haughtily with
a sudden rush of blood to her face, Madeline set
off sharply fur her apartments between Sixth and
Fifth Avenue near Central Park. She was angry,
and ashamed of herself for being angry. Such
little things unnerve when the larder is lean. She
had often looked at the odd display in the corner
window without any sense of shame. She i..iJ even
gone in to examine the workmanship of old-fash-
ioned jewelry.

A feeling tha" she was being followed stole over
her with a stealthy shrinkage of self-respect. Then,
in a monient, she was furious. Erect as a lance she
almost stopped walking. The footsteps behind
quickened. A slender woman, slightly stooped,
q".ietly dressed, with a mass of reddish, lack-luster,
oily-looking hair, passed. Madeline glanced back.
Theie was no one. Had she been mistaken? But
in the glimmer of lights beginning to twinkle the
woman paused in the shadow of the house where

UNMOORED

383

Madeline had lodgings. As Madeline turned to
the door the woman moved forward.

Her face was in the light. The two met with a
quick, measuring glance, the glance of distrust that
becomes almost a second nature in the city What
was It in this woman— a something more, a some-
thing less, than other women? Altogether a poor
creature, Madeline thought; mean in bearing and
clothes with black rings under her eyes, the sharp
Imes of stramed vision on her forehead, the sallow
complexion of ill-eating, ill-breathing, ilkhinking,
tne drawn mouth of a consumptive; possibly a seam-
stress of failing health with no remnant of better
days but the wonderful mass of reddish hair. The
ight of a vague, caressing familiarity, half-timid,
half-bold— came to the faded eyes like the flicker
of a dying candle. The woman did not belong to
the begging class. There was nothing of the im-
portunate whine about her. Her look fell before
tne girl. Madeline's hand was on the door when
she^ was astounded to hear her own name.
"You arc Miss Connor?"

It was all timidity, now, and pleading, the fa-
miliar light gone from the eyes, the rims red, the
intonation with a rustling breath as from fogged
Kings, the hands in ill-fitting gloves picking ner-
vously at the fringe of the dress sash. The woman
spoke pantingly.

"You are Miss Connor? The

you went out, and I followed.

distressfully. "1 want to

you

I boy told me
She coughed

384

THK NF.VV DAWN

"What do you wish?" asked Madeline, coldly.

She had a sardonic desire to laugh. There was
exactly the fifty cent piece in her purse. She felt
horribly near the squalid penury of this mean-spir-
ited woman with the wasted frame and supplicating,
worm-like air; and yet pity for the wrecks of lift-
restrained her from brushing past.

"I ought not to intrude. Miss Connor, after all
that you have done," the woman went on with filling
eyes and quivering underlip. "I have no right to
speak to you when 1 know what I am. You have
helped little Budd so much that I wanted to tell you
why I seemed to run away and desert him. I am his
mother. Miss Connor?"

Both the woman's hands cle-.ched suddenly. She
drew into herself as if wrenched with pain.

"After you got him a position in the Great Con-
solidated, and .... and took him into

your home .... a poor, little, ragged boy, ar-
rested for stealing .... I thought if I disap-
peared .... if I went away where nobody knew

me. Miss Connor Budd would be better

off without without," her voice sank to a

whisper, ". . . . without the reproach of his mother.
I thought he might rise if .... if I were not
there." She had caught at the wall for support.
Madeline moved a step and her arm was round the
woman. "I thought," she stammered, looking up

with a rush of blinding tears, "I thought

before I died .... I'd like to see the Miss Con-
nor that helped Budd."

UNMOORED 38^

voiriiL'St-iillf'^""'^; ^'■''' '''<= "-="' in her
stones. "''"'-' °' =• ^"""^■•y brook over

with the bitterne oTnVtv a' u" "" ^"""^^^''
of Budd's curlv hen I r '., '^ P'^^'^K^Ph brooch
Madeline's ,;i;d ' '""^"^'^ ''"«"'"« doubts in

-Tehi/:--~-p-s

somewhere-I think! vl, I ^"' ''^'"^

when you have ^It c u/h " Won't'^or;' ""''"^
tell me about yourselP Pelh '^ ""' '" '"^

someone who wou d help you t .0 T T"" ''"'^
till you are .ell. You'knZ t was M '^He"b7'
helped me to get the position for Budd Bu^cn
■n; and you will tell me all." But come

Madeline disengaged herself ^nrl .*
find the latch-key in her pur" ''°°P''' '°

"Who .... ,vho J- J
helped Budd?" didyousay

The wo.nan had drawn her head erect liL,- , c

all the womanhood of her fice frn,, . , ^

neliden. i hen, just for a second, a

386

THE NEW DAWN

gleam — as of triumph, as of revenge, as of reck-
less screaming, shameless mockery — rose scrpent-
ively, furtively, from hidden, turbid depths, to the
surface of the faded eyes. The woman seemed
no longer a woman but a fury white with the passion
of a burning vengeance. Then the physical weak-
ness of the woman overthrew the fury, and she was
coughing again, harsh, wrenching coughs, with a
metal ring and a swelling of the veins in the fore-
head.

"Now .... come!" Madeline drew up, and
with a push held open the door.

The woman did not move. She stood breathing
in hollow rasps, gazing blankly at the girl. Sud-
denly her frame curved forward as if to striki

.... or to kneel! Then, before

Madeline Connor realized, her hand was seized,
kissed passionately, with a stifled sob — and the
woman was gone. A broken-winged thing that haii
fluttered into the light, had fluttered broken-wingc\!
back to the dark.

! >

CHAPTER XXVI

OLD FRIENDS IN STRANGE PLACES

A NUMBNESS of horror which oh,. <-« \a
quer came over MaHei;„„ r *^°"''^ "°^ "^"n-

to draw one\ ,kir»c • i T' . '° """^^ «as er

li'.e mrght aVe b^* ^^ .^'=.'- ^'^^ ^^"-. '^at Made-
"ide, if her own r, ITT^'^ °^ ""^ ^°'"="'

Whe;e couS 1 er e f"' r.' '"" '° '°'^-
^nd, she was butane of ind/r, "[.-'''"'^'^^
women supportinrr then.. , °"'*"'^'' °^ milhons, of

the big, heSs'ci; "Atm^slr "'^: ""''"' '"
0( course, there w^re hn i ^^^ ^°'"^"?

frornman; n ,a„7oe7"^ w ^"^'^'""^ ''"<=-
that such homes are fUTT"^ ^V^' ^'^^ ^'''f"^
long waitinahst „7 '° overflowing with a

bilif andSe'r^itToTtht "xh^^''"^ '°'''
a shortage of wrecks and delel-::, ^''"'^ '— "

-d it thre; ITl. flZTtl' ''"'''''"''
2onba.tota.awo^„l:n^tr:-£r:

387

388

THK NF.W DAWN

My Precious: Why have you never ansucred my letter*
all tliese many months? It is too vital to iis hoth to indulge
in preten'.c. 1 rcf»«- to disholicvr the evidemc >oii so treely
gave, you meant I should have when jou imcpicd m) love-
token. What is it, dearest? Have spiteful tongues been at
work? A jealous woman may have reasons for spite. Did
you receive my letters, or were they intercepted? Mrs.
Ward has given me your address, and the Wards and mother
and m>5elf shall be in New York on the way North to-
morrow.

My life is bound in yours. You can do with me what
you will. You can make a new man of me. I have not
been what I ought; hut jou can teach me to redeem lost
)c:irs. It h.as not hecn all my fault 1 have been tempted.
I am only a man, but never before did I meet anyone
whose love might be a redemption instead of a curse. You
know, dearest, if gold is mixed with alloy, the nholr is no
longer pun gold. So it has been with my life. I ha'e
looked for love. I have met folly and passion; and my
whole life has been lowered. Only noiv have I met the
pure gold. Give my love leave to speak. For God's sake,
do not turn me kick, M.adeline! 1 love you: you love me.
Life is so short. Let us gather the golden hours. Put your
hand in mine and lead me back to that happiness which I
hive lost.

I have thought of yon so often ill this weary summer
with the Wards. Anvw a\ . she app -eciates you. There is
that to her credit. I shall conic for my answer. Madeline.

Whatever that answer,

I am,

Devotedly vours,

DoRVAI. Hebden.

Madeline never knew how shf. reached lier rooms
from the elevator cage. She sank to a rocker —
stunned. Some men seem born to take a woman
at her weakest point, to come to her at the weakest
moment. Here was an easy way out of her diffi-

OLD FRIENDS

389

l^lT' n r^"'^"' ""'"'"" ^y °"^ highest n,o.
m nt,_ Our l.vc, ar. often determined by the low-
est. Odd how these tests leap out from amhush
on u, a when we arc least ahle to „,eet them.
And odder stdl how these crucial moment, are
deculed not by the present, but the past, by the
habits formed, the foibles, the vanities, the weak-
nesses, the trends of thought.

After rereading the note, when she came to the
slur on Mrs. Ward at the end, she tore the naper
to tatters and stamped it under her feet. Then
from h.T fury emerged the one clear thought—
.e Wards would be in New York the next day.
J hat meant dresses, and gloves, and summer blouses
^.•Ith costly lace, and cab fare, and the hundred
other trifles that only a woman knows.

In a word, it i^ieant money. The rubies would
have to go.

Again, Madeline's feet carried her to t:.?t part
of Sixth Avenue where the sign of a banker is dis-
played below the window of a jeweler. It was in
the mormng. 'fhis time she did not stand gazing
at the trinkets behind the glass. She did not hesi-
tate. She boldly opened the door, which jingled a
bell; and a frouzy woman with coils of greasy black
haircame waddling out behind the glass show cases
Goot day! Vat gan I doo for you, Miss>"

One glance had told the woman that Madeline
was new to pawn shops.

Madeline took out a purse. The woman observed
that the purse was thin. Madeline picked out a de-

390

THE NEW DAWN

tached red stone and laid it on a patch of dusty
velvet above the show case. The pulse that some-
times throbbed in her throat became so active that
she could not utter a word. The woman licked her
lips, wiped her fingers on an ample stomach, picked
up the sparkling gem between two stubby finger-
tips.

"Vot iss itt?" she asked thickly, smudging the
thing with her moist hands. "Glass — heh — Miss?"
She gave Madeline a curious look. She was won-
dering if the stone were genuine tvhy Madeline had
not taken it to the expensive stores on Fifth Ave-
nue and Broadway. Either the girl was very fresh,
or — here, the woman looked at Madeline quietly.

"How much do you give for that?" asked Made-
line quietly.

"Yacubl Yacub — come dis vay," called the
woman.

Jacob emerged in shirt sleeves from a curtain
behind the counter.

"How mush for dot?" demanded the wife.

Then the man looked at Madeline, too, instead
of the stone.

"Heh?" he said, turning the gem over and over,
then looking at it through a pocket lens. "Glass —
heh?" said Jacob.

The woman stuck her arms akimbo, and tilled
one elbow into Jacob's ribs. Madeline did not
speak. She felt disgusted with herself for being
there. Jacob spat on the ruby and polished it on
his shirt sleeve.

OLD FRIENDS 35,

For glass it emitted remarkably fiery sparks.

Ker e^n r- ^^l ^°'"'" ''^'"^ again, bump.

^'How m h u°' ""■" *™" '"^° J''^°b's ribs.
Connor " "'"■"'•" "''"^'^^'^ ^^^eline

The woman pouted out her lips. Jacob shrugged
h.s shoulders, wmked at the ruby witl one eye, Sin

-m"vt'''' l!' ^^"^"'•^'l,"',^*f«iv^Iy- "Two dollar
ingTst'spr""^^"''"^'"^''''^^''"-"'^-"-

Madeline put out her hand for it.
vaitl" said the woman.

"Give it to mel" ordered Madeline sharply
toJh'^:re;7af'^^^°' He dropped tUsto„e

"Vait, Miss— you vait," he said.

Madehne picked the ruby up and brushed the

rethlspX^^^^' ''■ "^' - -^ ~

pudrtir"" ^■''"'•""^'"^"'^^'^'^'^ woman, im-

. She probably did not mean to express more sus-
p.c.on than she usually evinced toward the people
patron.zmg her shop, but Madeline was so plainlv
new to such bargaining and the stone was of such

nusua value that the air of tacit accusation Tn J
prepared for a mmimizing of price

Madeline hardly grasped the insinuation. Then
't came m a flash.- the woman thought her a thief,'

39»

THE NEW DAWN

one of the sharpers who rifle rich houses. It was
as if the Powers that Prey on Poverty, the Yelping
Furies of Vice that pursue the Heels of Want —
suddenly gripped her by the throat and threw her
self-respect into the gutter. She had closed the
purse on the stone and turned to the door when
the woman called:

"Vait — stop her, Yacob! — Offer her ten — Ya-

cob!"

The door bell jingled. Madeline was out on
the street with a smothery feelir ^ of stoppage about
the heart and a hysterical desiie to laugh. Plainly,
someone else must sell those rubies for her. Be-
fore she knew wiiere she was going the car had car-
ried her to Twenty-third Street, and she had walked
across where Broadway and Fifth Avenue intersect.
There was the usual eleven o'clock jam of vehicles
and people and cars. A horse reared, shoving
another carriage to the curb. The window of the
cab was open. Sitting inside, the man's face black
with anger, the woman's pale with discontent — were
the Hebdens and Mrs. Ward. Madeline caught but
one glimpse of Mrs. Hebden's white hair; and the
carriage w<is whisked past.

With the smell of the pawn shops in her nos-
trils, chagrin swept over her in waves. It was as if
the poverty that had been tracking her stealthily
now leaped out to shame her in the open. She
had distinctly intended to go and ask the city edi-
tor's advice about those rubies, but she found her-
self in the Fifth Avenue stage bound homeward

OLD FRIENDS

393

with a heaviness of heart that she told herself was
altogether absurd.

If she had not been so absorbed in herself she
might have seen a young man threading through
the crowds of Twenty-third Street, hailing the stage
driver with the mute curses of a clenched fist when
the 'bus run-.bled off without him, and at once jump-
ing into a hansom to follow. It seemed her fate
to be inter: pted that morning, for barely had she
entered the apartment when the porter was say-
ing: "That's her, mam, if you want to see Miss
Connor!"

"A lady an' gen'leman just been here in a ker-
ridge to see y', Miss Connor, and this here lady
bin waitin' more'n an hour."

The person so designated might have been a
washerwoman or lodging-house keeper of the East
End. She accosted Madeline in a voice meant for
the people across the street.

"Are ye the Miss O'Connor what Mrs. McGee
come to see last noight? Sure, the poor thing 's
bin goin' on, out of her hed iver since I Rapes
goin' on about the gin'leman's picture what's under
her pillow, and the Miss O'Connor that she wint
to see! I set up wid her las' noight, mum; but she
kapes gom' on about yez ! Sure an' I'm thinkin'
wid the cough, an' the banshee callin' all las' noight,
an' the gibberin' way she talks— she's not long fer
this earth, mum! Bcin' a Christian woman, I come
fer to see yez about her! Wud ye come to her,

394

THE NEW DAWN

sure she moight die more quiet like and dacent,
mum 1"

"Where do you live?" asked Macjline.

"Tis King Street, mum, and nr place fer the
loikes o' you; though me lodgers are all hard-work-
in' honest folks! But sure, poor thing, it's koind
o' sort o' pitiful fer her to be lyin', dyin' there
alone! Suro, it's koind o' queer, mum — she don't
wear no ring, and nobody niver comes to see her
but the bhoys wid the sewin' from the shops! She's
bin all alone, payin' her rint roifht reg'lar as the
week come round, but Lord love you — how kin she
sew wid the death whistle in ivery breath?"

The woman rambled on garrulously while Made-
line turned over in her mind the risk of responding
to the appeal unaccompanied by some friend. Vice
follows close on the heels of want. What if she
had been watched again at the pawn shop, and
the woman's emotion of the night before had been
a piece of acting? Priceless rubies offered in a
cheap pawn shop might have set sleuths on her
trail. It is a choice we all have to make, whether
to risk danger for a doubtful good or let the strug-
gler sink and save our skins.

A hansom clattered to the curb. Someone had
run hurriedly into the hall, and Truesdale stood,
hat in hand, beside Madeline and the woman.

"So I have caught you at last! That blankety
'bus went on, though I waved like a windmill!
What is it? Someone ill wants you to go to them?
■Where— King Street? Oh- -better let trr. go with

OLD FRIENDS 3,^

you Mad ,i„e. There m.y be pigs in the orchard.

c. the w ., ^';.j:^'^^^-

back odTtT- \''- ^'"- ^'^G"- ^''-d floor

McG h.,ii;;tir:r;e1^
at the lawsmt the other day. Come; but you shouTd
have someth,ng to eat. You are as white as a sheet
I saw you at a distance in Sixth Avenue and h ve
been on your trail hot foot. Never mind HI K
you a lunch basket when you r^c™'; ^ ; ^^
They were .n the hansom and the horse was d p-
^oppmg down Fifth Avenue for King StreeT befor'e
Madeime remembered that Truesdale was to be
dropped out of her life, that the portals of a viln
a hope, a rapture, were to be kept shut, tha sh^
•-as henceforth to be as a stone to love and a 1 tha

''S,xth Av " ^"^V^' P"'" ^''"P- H^ had said
Sixth Avenue." Then she realized that his self-

possesion would hardly have been so complete if

he had not known that self-possession must cover

the embarrassment of two. But what was he say'

|ng, and what was she answering, in spite of il

those braise resolution: ?

<rel?° T ^■':'"^"^ber that last walk we had to-
gether the wmter n.ght before several thousand
to. o^f^somethmg fell on top of me in the Stock

396

THE NEW DAWN

"Remember?" That wa-s all Madeline could say.
How could he ask if she remembered the confes-
sion of love which he had drawn out and met with
six months of silence?

"Jove, T felt so brave when I left you that night,
Madeline, I thought I could fight -nything. I felt
like the old knights who used to ride out carving
rascals to mince meat!" He laughed with a boyish
tremor. "Well, the Stock Exchange knocked all
that poetry out of me, I can tell you. You must
have thought me a very jackanapes of conceit and
confidence, the wriy I talked that night. Anyway,
I couldn't bear to come to you with the story of
failure after all you'd said to me! I thought that,
if I couldn't crawl out from under the avalanche
that hit me that day, I'd never have the face to look
you in the eyes — you, who are so fearless of conse-
quences in your goodness ! Then, when I won that
lawsuit, I thought I might come and report prog-
ress, but they told me you had gone to New York."
The hansom was delayed by a jam of crosstown
vehicles at Thirty-first Street, and Truesdale hoped
the procession would last. In Madelinp's mind
waged a struggle. She had been proving— proving
so definitely to herself that he was unworthy of her
love; that his silence had been dishonorable; that
nothing could possibly excuse his conduct. It was
so much easier to vanquish love when he was not
there, but if he were all she had thought, all that
her love had hoped, if he were more than she had
hoped, worthier than her love had dared to dream?

OLD FRIENDS 397

If he were all she had dreamed of him— rauld she
vanquish love if she wanted to? Her hanus locked
fghtly m her lap. She looked ,ay. Perhaps he
misunderstood, for he began impetuously. He knew
they had only a few more minutes together

"Madeline, if the banks had not advanced me
money it would have been a complete smash-up. I
could never have got on my feet again."

Seized with a fear that he had seen her at the
pawn shop, Madeline turned her head to hide the
flush.

"New York is hard enough for a man, Made-
line. Many is the night when I had not one dime
to rub against another that I've walked up and
down these God-forsaken places we're going to

"Was it as hard for you as that?" asked Made-
line, not trusting herself to look.

"What does it matter how hard?" laughed Trues-
dale. "A man can rough-and-tumble I A woman
can tl '

The flush began to flood her face again. "He
saw me at the pawn shop," she thought.

"Madeline," he continued eagerly, "let me do for
you what the banks did for me ! Let me help vou '
1 mcanif ever you need it, you know," he added
b undenngly "It would he the greatest pleasure
of my life— let me !" he pleaded.

Madeline looked away. She could scarcely tnjst
her voice.

398

THE NEW DAWN

"You, who are so icornful of lympathy," »he
said, "you offering me — help?"

"But don't you see it is different with a woman?

She did not answer for a moment. When she
spoke her voice was thrilled with unexpressed mean-
ing- .

"1 scorn sympathy-seekers just as much as you

dol I don't want the kind of help the banks gave
you, but I have some stones, jewels, I want to sell,
and I don't seem to know how. I wonder if you
could find where such things are sold?"
"What are they?"
"Rubies."

"Oh!" Truesdale knew those rubies, and he
knew that Madeline would not willingly pr.rt with
them. "Why, of course, I can sell some rubies for
you," he added quickly. "I know a fellow who is a
perfect ruby crank. We'll charge him a ripping
price. Can you wait for a week? I have to go
back to the mines this afternoon. Will you send
them up or shall I come back for them?"

"There is the stone I wanted to sell." Madehne
handed the jewel from her purse.

Truesdale recognized the stone as part of the

necklace. . . » u

"I think we may get a fair price for that, ne

said quizzically, putting the stone in his pocket.
As the carriage turned down King Street, where

the tenements grew gradually poorer, he turned to

Madeline.

OLD FRIENDS 399

"Do you know anything about this McGee
woman?"

"Only that she is Budd's mother."
Truesdale thought for a moment.
"I think I have heard sad stories among the
mmers about her," he said. "She was young, and
she mistook — well you know She mis-
took the light in the wayside pool for the sky, you
know, till the muddy waters were stirred up— and
I am afraid she lost her— her faith in things," he
added vaguely.

A sudden love-coldness swept over Madeline.
"It is cruel," she broke out pemlantly. "How is
one to know the tinsel from the gold?"

"I thought," answered Truesdale slowly, "that
I had found true metal, that I had found the high-
est love when I found you, Madeline. I know that
I have found what gives the lie to baseness in you,
if only .... if only I prove true metal, myself,
when life tests me . . . ."

She heard the throb in his voice. Her whole
being, all that was strongest, all that was weakest,
drew to him. She gave him her eyes in one quick
glance. She could no more have hindered what
that glance rev-aled than have stopped her life.
His hand had closed over hers in a quick, tense
grasp.

"God bless you! . . . Now I go back to the
fight stronger .... If I win .... I may hope 10

win the best of all .... no matter " what

was it he had said? Madeline could never ;ecall

400 THE NEW DAWN

when the carriage stopped, how she n.ounted the
tenement stairs to the third floor back and rapped
on the door of a dark hallway with the echo of his
"Take care of yourself! ... I must leave

voice,

youl . . • ■ The train in an hour, but I'll
the lunch sent up, and the carriage will wait."

have

CHAPTER XXVII

MADELINE MEETS THE GRIM SHADOW

The lodgers on the third floor were moving si-
lently, speaking in whispers. Children stood at the
open doors of the other rooms staring at the closed
door of the little room on the southwest corner.
I he charity doctor had gone into that room and
come out agam, closing the door noiselessly.

Inside, Madeline sat on the edge of a little, white-
iron bed, waiting, fanning a face the color of the
pillows. Somehow the furrows of bitterness had
left the face. It wore the calm of an almost ginish
peace, or dreamless sleep. In the slant rays of the
summer sun the reddish-gold hair looked like a
nimbus, a crown. The woman lay with her face
a little to one side toward the window, which h..d
been raised. Madeline had bunched up the pillows
so that the afternoon wind croi'sed the bed, bu<- the
woman had not opened her eyes, only the labored
breathing had become easier. The charity doctor
had looked over the foot of the bed, shaking his
head. A matter of time was what the look ex-
pressed.

"Will you remain with her?"

^02 THE NEW DAWN

That was all he had asked Charity doctors
learn to ask few questions. She had nodded an
affirmative, and he had gone out; so the mornmg
slipped to afternoon, and the afternoon to sunset,
with pools of yellow light quivering o- the east

"""Behind the door was a sewing machine, where
a life had been sewed out for the sweat shops and
bargain hunters. .\ cutting table littered with paper
dress-patterns filled the rest of the space not occu-
pied by the bed. The room was hke a l.ttle cage,
with the window open for the captive to escape.

One hand lay motionless on the roverlet. Ihe
other arm was coiled under the mass of ha.r the
fingers clasped across the front of a l.ttle photo-
graph locket. Toward sunset, two red spots began
?o burn in the white cheeks. Madehne had , onged
hands and face, but the woman had not awaken d
from her lethargic sleep. Only when Madelme had
begun fanning, the sleeper's hps moved.

"Budd ought to know-he ought to know about

his father 1" . , ..

It was barely a whisper, and consciousness lapsed.

The roar of the city hushed to the palp.tatmg

of a great power asleep, and Madeline watched the

,un sink through the yellow summer haze t.U the

•"ght struck athwart the window. When she looked

to the bed the woman's eyes were wide open, filled

with tears. ,11,. I'.ir.

"Do you suppose," she whispered slowly, do

_ ... you suppose .... that

MADFI.INE MEETS THE SHADOW 403

that I wai the one in

God .... think* . .
the wrong?"

And MDdcline, who remembered what One, who
revealed God, had declared about the sinners going
into the Kingdom before the righteous — could only
clasp her palm over the wasted hand.

"I thought . . . . God was dead all these

years .... till last night," murmured the woman.

"I thought .... God must be dead or He

would never .... have let it all happen 1 I thought

God was dead .... till 1 saw .... you

. . . . last night."

Madeline no longer saw the face on the pillow.
The room had gone in a blur. But the sunlight
had fallen on the woman, and her mind wandered.
The rush of the elevated railroad echoed from the
distance like a sigh.

"Listen " she whispered all a'.-rt. 'Listen

. . . . the wind in the wheat! He will come! . . .
He will .... come! He will .... never desert
... he will never fail me I
it . . . .die; sent ....

... die! Just think

die of hunger I Oh

• God how I prayed!

I threw myself at his feet I

mel If I do not tell
.... He let .. .
the nurse away; let it
let the little one ....
it was cruel ! Oh ... .

How I prayed!

.... I kissed his hands .... his hands that had
carried me jewels and flowers! I begged him . . . .
to kill me; not to cast .... me off; not to throw
me down to Hell; but he said it was my fault . . . .
my fault? .... my fault that I had not stabbed

404 THE NEW DAWN

him to the heart? He said .... he had me ... .

in his power; if I told 1 would be hanged!"

A shudder ran over the wasted frame. She drew
herself up from the pillow. "Is murder .... only
murder .... when it's known? .... And ....
oh ... . how I loved him! I would have died
rather than harm one hair of his head; and he
.... he laughed .... when it died; said I was in
his power! Look .... it's the harvest moon! It's

the wind in the wheat! He brought me

the sword cane .... when he came from Japan
.... see over there! He brought me .... the
locket! They are Budd's! You'll give them to
Budd some day? What have I been saying? Did

I tell a name? Where was God?"

A fit of coughing stopped speech. Madeline had
put a glass of water to the fevered lips. Setting
the tumbler down she had wound one arm round
the woman when there was a faint whisper. "Pray

pray for me . . . ." and Madeline, who had

almost forgotten, in her own despair, how to pray,
found herself on her knees uttering a cry as old as
time, a cry that gave the lie to her own doubts,

" oh Christ by the agony of the

Cross, by Thy crucified love .... receive this, my

sister into Thy rest, Thy peace."

There her voice broke. The locket fell noisily
from the woman's hand to the floor. She had sunk
back to the pillow; and when Madeline stooped to
pick up the locket the world went black, for the
pool of light on the wall had faded, the face on the

MADELINE MEETS THE SHADOW 405

pillow was dead, and the face in the locket not Budd,
the ragged boy, but Mr. Dnrval Hebden.

She never knew he. she !cf> ih-i tenement, how
she happened to be b .Kl.ng swoi , cane and locket
in her hands, how th. nr'nsorn .eemed to be clip-
clopping up Fifth Avenue in the summer dark. Slic
knew nothing, saw nothing but a dead face massed
with a glory of reddish-gold hair, a face with the
calm of an almost girlish peace, the beauty of a
child in dreamless sleep, the long, sweet rest of end-
less quiet. She saw only the dead woman's face on
the pillow, the living man's face in the locket that
had fallen from the dead hand. All the shams, all
the excuses, all the hypocrisies, ail the platitudes
with which we poetize wrong, compromise evil, gild
crime— fell away like fluttering vestments of rotten
clothing from the skeleton of a naked horror; and
Madeline Connor was face to face with the Grim
Shadow of woman's life.

She felt a strange and terrible fever in the palms
of her hands, in the throb of the blood beating at
her temples, in the pulsing of her throat like the
grip of a giant clutch. All the strength, all the
courage, all the fury of all her ancestors who had
fought their way up, generation after generation,
from savagery to humanhood — rushed into her
blood, her nerves, her muscles, her brain, in a fluid
of flame. The quiescent principles of her girlhood
suddenly leaped into a living Power, tigerish, mili-
tant, relentless — a fighting goodness, a goodness

40 6

THE NEW DAWN

that realized as though the fiat had been flamed in
letters of fire that goodness must be strong.

How bitterly she remembered those drawings of
the tenement vices, of humanity struggling in the
cesspool, while smug respectability pushed helpless-
ness back in the mire and itself paraded the world
in a white vest! How little she had thought that
the hand of the cesspool could reach up into her
own life, that the iniquities of the underworld could
poison the lives of the upper! It came to her like
a flash why the pagans despised pity, and subordi-
nated pity always to justice. There was no pity in
her heart for the face in the locket, but a boundless
fury at outraged justice over the face on the pillow.
There was something primordial, elemental, un-
crushable, deathless — like the power drawing the
cataract willing to be shattered over the precipice
so that it but reach the sea — in the sudden trans-
mutation of her quiescent idealism into a tigerish
reality.

The stopping of the hansom, the driver's protest
about having been paid, the porter's queer look at
the sword cane in her hand, the elevator boy's ver-
bose explanations about a friend having asked for
the key to her apartments and gone upstairs to wait

were a dream. She did not pause to wonder at

the fact of her apartment door being unlocked, or
at the light burning dimly under the red shade of
the studio. Afterwards, she recalled that a faint
odor of perfume had floated through the rooms.
She passed swiftly to the inner sitting room, switch-

MADELINE MEETS THE SHADOW 407

ing on the electric light as she entered. A figure,
sitting bowed in the deep alcove of an open window,
sprang from the curtains.

"Madeline— at last— thank Heaven I I did not
hear you come in: those trucks make such a rat-
tling! You must forgive my boldness, but I could
not go till I saw you I I tipped the porter to give
me your key— told him I was your brother," and
Mr. Dorval Hebden stood before her debonair and
buoyant under the full blaze of the electric chande-
lier.

"You I" she said.

Involuntarily, she had drawn back, gathering the
folds of her skirt behind in the hand holding the
sword cane.

"Yes . . . Madeline .... it is I ! Why have
you never answered all my letters?"

||Letters?" she repeated in a low, tense voice.

"^^ you did not get them? I suspected

my poor fond mother had a hand in this!
Why do you draw back?" he asked, advancing anx-
iously.

"Yes— why? Isn't it strange?" she repeated
woodenly.

"Have I been too bold coming here this way,
Madeline? Great God, Madeline, you will not al'
low the little mean conventionalities to come be-
tween us now? . . . What do these looks mean?
.... Have spiteful tongues spoken against me?
.... I tell you, Madeline .... you are too pure
to know the traps for men; I tell you it's an easy

4o8

THF NF.W DAWN

thing for a woman who has trapped a man, who
has pursued him with unblushing shame, who has
played on his chivalry to her womanhood, on his

sympathy, on his friendship it is easy for her

to lay the blame on hi.u and traduce his name!
I . . . . have not deceived you ! I have not even
tried to derive you ! I have not been what I ought,
but you can make a good man of me! I have
sinned . . . . ! I do not steal into your life with a
lie! I have done what I ought not, but what's done

is done, and only you you alone, of all women

... can help me to live a new life, to leave the
wasted foolish past!"

He had grown pale with his passion. She saw
him steady himself against the bacli of a chair. His
voice was smothered, agitated, tremulous, and his
eyes burning. Madeline Connor did not speak. She
had recoiled till she was standing in the dim outer
room. No color flushed and waned as of old in
her cheeks. She was white to the lips, with eyes
that blazed a blackness, all her strength, all her
will, all her courage, all her unbending pride— held
high in the unconscious poise of chin and neck, in
the imperious flash of the eyes no longer gray but
dilated to a blackness of fire.

How splendid she looked in her disdain, in her
haughty beauty flashed a fire, in her insolent re-
bellion against the pleadings of his passion' He
had not expected her to take it this way 1 Other
conquests had melted to his will. Her pride only

MADELINE MEETS THE SHADOW 409

piqued his passion. It was like conquering an em
press, taming an eagle! '4uenng an em-

but I yearned for you with such a longing . ' ' ^h
vo„ ;n\i, u . "^^ '°''^ '""'' ''»^-'-- whispered to

■ • . . ■unshed to prav till i <rrp«, t« 1 1 "

love was 1-ii T ' ^ ° ''"°'^ ^^'^at pure

and the foil - of it-M. Ir u "''^ P''"'^"''

life seem--"^ °2:.;^-M^f '"^. you have made my

of hone f;^"r}j"; ■ ■ ■ 7" '^''^'^ been like a star

"nr' l" u'^, ^^"-^^^ ''^^ ''='^'^ t° God "

IJo, she broke out passionately, "do but whife
-sh your crimes with a little .-eligion, wi h a li tie"
hypocr.sy, with a little affectation of ;,elodrama c
repcntance-and I think I can learn . . T lah

'"^ TfoTe^.■^h • \'^^ ^"" -- • • -'^'

out the locket ' '" ' '°^ ^°-'^^' ""''^''^^

woman'; "you ^'''"'"" " " " ' ^''^""^ 'he

woman! You were young Great God'

fourTui^^""'""™^ " ^'^""8 ^'^'"S °f thirty:

^""..lons^"™'""^' ^"d f!ii^ girl ... this

410

THE NEW DAWN

country girl too weak, too ignorant to de-
fend herself .... whom you took by the throat
and cast down to Hell, . ... she ... . was a De-
lilah, .... a siren, .... a temptress that sheared
her young Samson of his virgin strength, ....
his virgin name! Hypocrite!.... Does a lewder

thing, a more despicable, craven thing . . .

than you walk the earth outside of Hell?"

He had covered his face with his arms.

"Child!" he stammered out, "you do not under-
stand "

"You did not ... . murder it?" she

said, with a bitter laugh. "No! .... Tha- would
have been unsafe; .... That would have been
too manly, .... too outright! .... You might
have been arrested! . . . You m' i '^ had to
face your act, to have ' ' . ?me un-

pleasant circumstances! .... Bui yuu ordered the
nurse away .... and let it starve! And, when
your victim ... oh ... . you chose your victim
.... well, .... when she cast herself at your
feet .... you .... you laughed! . . . Don't you

see what a brilliant splendid .... manly

feat it was ... to murder a new-born child so clev-
erly that the law could not catch you, and then
... to laugh? .... To bind a poor, simple coun-
try girl .... to you .... in crime to

threaten to have her hanged if she tried to break

from your vile ties, .... and then, to

laugh! . . Great God .... the r''' WaJ .^hat feed
on their own flesh could not .\es* ^er pr'

MADELINE MEETS THE SHADOW 4..

"Madeline for God's sake stop!"

he p eaded. "Have you no pity?" He was S

"Pri" H '';" "!:''^""' "' ^"^^ "-'» hfs lips'
h,/ ^ t I '''"^'''" ""S aloud. "What pity
had you for her you trampled into the gutter?

Inr^I r? P"^ ''''' y°" ^°^ 'he woman; . . .

nto vvhose l,fe you stole like a thief because you

h need to know that she was unhappy with her hu,"

„, .' ■■■."•• ^^°^^ ^'^« you wrecked for a

sonspasfme;..,, hose wretchedness you

sucked as a vampire sucks blood? . . . Pitji"

She laughed again. "Who said pi„f ^

What.s .p,v,. . . . . Pity? ^'. ; N„|

and boast of our cnmes over poor fools with neithei:

w.t, nor strength, nor coura„.e to strike down

to nethermost Hell . . . .%uch as ^ou Leu
augh and boast and point the finger of scorn I

wn m'm°'u', "■'"'" ^°'' ^'•i^h ^ lynched negro
would blush! . . . There goes a woman to Hdll

.Our work! .... Ha-ha! . . . Laugh!

• • . . A mans work! Hypocrite," she said "a

beast of prey could not do so vile; thing!

"^l'" a man!"

He had paused pacing in blind distraction. Now

e turned w.th a threatening look. Civilization had

fallen from them both like a rag. They were

M ct elemental. The recrudescence of his past

ot generations of pasts reaching back . . . .' had

412 THE NEW DAWN

crushed down his momentary aspirations. Behind
him was his own down-drawing life .... the hfe
of his ancestors .... the life of a type that slowly
receded into a past, when men were thmgs of prey.
B-fore him were vague hopes of a Better 1 Lmkmg
that past to the hopes was the thread of the present,
which snapped under the onset of her accusations
like a cobweb holding a craft from the vortex of a
maelstrom, plunging his manhood back m all the
turbid brutalities of primordial man. His manhood
sloughed off the courtesies of the ages like a vest-
ment. , , ,1 f »
"Madeline," he interrupted sharply, you forget
that manhood has its penalties as well as its court-
esies 1 You forget that outraged manhood may be
compelled to defend itself, even against one whom it
would die to defend! You are taking advantage
of your sex! If you were a man 1 should compel
you to retract those words 1 By Heaven," he cned,
wheeling, "you shall take them back! They are
a vile calumny! You have forfeited the chivalry

that strength owes a woman- "

"Strength?" she laughed. "Chivalry? U'd

you say chivalry?"

"You shrew," he muttered, with a sudden menace
of his hands, "have you no fear?"
"None, . . . ." she laughed.
"Is your rage so blind that you do not reahze
vour position?" he demanded.

"So .... very blind," she mocked,

neither swerving nor moving her eyes from his.

MADELINE MEETS THE SHADOW 4,3

• • • . would you eive fh„ , .

•••• at this hour alone?"

Again that vision of a pleading face down in
the niire under the horses' hoofs! One touch of h"
.mag,nat,on had already transformed thi3 woLan
who was to save hin, from destruction nri
whom he would destroy. She should pay a life
penalty for that spurning of his repentance, for hat
um,,at,on of his manhood. She had la'ughed a

all h,s hfe. He would send the echo of that laught r
down the rest of her Wfi- m , k • ""!,nter

no tears could wipe l'"''"^"'"«^^Sret that

Hal That was like a woman! To strip asid,-
courtesy and then cry out when the defens Tf cTur
tesy was stripped from her!

i.If^i'.'iLsrAn'","!;;;::^:;" "'"1 "■•

„ • ^1 , . 'Ill 1 dSK is that you sit down
quietly and let me explain how "

.,}^' aT ^"'"^"^- "^ ^^^ unmasked when he

unrestramed from the moment he had spoken.

414 THE NEW DAWN

There was the splintering of the bamboo sword
case. The sheath flew across the floor in broken
bits and Dorval Hebden stumbled backward with
both hands to his face, a flash of limber steel glitter-
ing in circles across his eyes. _

"That 1 should stoop to soil my hand striking a
thing ... so vile .... as you 1 Choose your

victim wiser next time! H you rise on your

feet," she whispered, bending over him, it you rise
upon your feet in my presence, I swear I will murder
youl You threaten my name? And .s bUickmail
worse th-'n ,n ;rder and worse crime that I should
fear so slight a thing? Before God, ..... she
said, "if you lay so much as one hand on the outer-
most hem of my garments, if you utter so much as
one breath across my name, J «"*" i^'"

you I

She threw open the hall door.

"Go," she pointed.

In the hall the porter saw a man dashing down
the stair- to avoid the elevator. A handkerchief
was across his face. He ran as one distraught,
reeling against the railing and rushing out into the
street, not seeing where he went. The porter fol-
lowed in time to see a man sink back m a "b, curs-
ing and sobbing— then the driver whipped off like

'"''Madeline locked the door of her studio. A man's
hat lay on the desk. She seized it and hurled the
thing through the open window as far as she could
throw Then she sank down in a horror of shame.

CHAPTER XXVIII

AFTERWARDS

'ng us grave with the outcasts; vices recant th
wronged under the feet of the wro ge "S ;hut
■ng .ts eyes, shutting its ears, drawing £ asije
from unha lowed hands; respectability bulwark n.
crime; justice asleep I ■"/ omwarking

If man were but an intellectual brute why did a
queasy conscience give the lie to his creld of th
Great Blonde Beast? Animals were red in tooth
w. hout a qualm. fVhy did man try to hide o
ju t,fy to argufy his crime? The humani ' d dog
might be aught shame of its bird-killing, its sheepco^

S him;ei; Vt ""'^ ='"™='''"'^ -- -"'d "0°
IT '^'""'- • • • Why? And, strangely

Madl: r" ^^^\.l--r.s..r.A question' that hdd
Madeline Connor like an anchor back from the
shoreless seas of the vague fatalism that sToftt

Another thought held her to the sane whole
someness of life. It was Truesdale. Hebden htd
4IS

4i6

THE NEW DAWN

vowed love, invoked religion, actually believed in
himself up to the moment when a stroke of steel en-
lightened his sight. Trucsdale had said little of love
and less of religion; but had lived both and held
the faster when all went down under the smash of
the actual test. Wherever there is a man to stand
up against the Nebuchadne./er creed of existence
there will also be a woman; and that lost paradise
of which Hebden poetized and unto which ho would
have stolen may be realized.

At davbreak Madeline roje from the sofa with
an ill-deiinod dread of meeting Mrs. Ward. She
could neither have told nor left untold what had
passed. Life ebbed too low in her veins, she was too
thoroughly shattered in body and mind for any con-
cealment; but Mrs. Ward did not come. Had Heb-
den been at work with a mincing smile, a shrug, a
faint, deprecating gesture; drawing a herring across
the trail of his own guilt? Clouding the waters with
unclean suggestions, as the cuttlefish clouds the sea
to escape in its own slime?

Genuine suffering hides from sight like a burn
from air; and Madeline could no more have written
to Truesdale and told the extremity of her need
than an eagle could have transformed itself to a
reptile. The eagle may drop dead— it will not
crawl- it may be the victim of parasites— it will
not become a parasite. The transfer of bric-a-brac,
bronzes, and books to a Thirty-fourth Street ]unk
shop nened sufficient returns to pay another month s
rent. By accepting a cheaper kind of work she was

aftj:r\v.\rds ^,7

able to meet her other expenses; but this necessitated
domg more of the cheaper work to make . h h'
had formerly received for a single drawing I have
often wondered if Mr,. Ward had thought mo e

it wo utoTh"' '"^ °V.''^ ^' ''"■' '--vheX
me en he A7r''f ^'' """ P""-hmcnt; but
Ime can be selfish; and selfishness wields its own

After sending the dead woman s body I ome to
M Gee, the labor leader, in the norther, city

htcu"f:7'";,';""°^''''''<^=«J-kardto
h , cup-for orgetfulness. \ight came, not with
sleep but we,r<l dream fugues, tranced <r ooTm
myst,c so that she hardly knew- wheth r st h ,'
passed the n.ght sleeping or waking. Now she wt
on the edge of the precipice with 'he mil ,os ng
about her so that she could not take one step for'
ward or back ; and the precipice was life. ^

^7 '^ ^vas the figure of a running man on the
\ -. . . -recp.ce; and the man was humanity.

. . nt :„ 1 .J ^"^''* "■'*'' '^' darkening
^^ .nt..,n. loakmg down impassive, stonily, spirits

f ev, mockmg the puny creature disturbing'
Ton sdences w.th his cries. And ever, as he rn

an the wolves at his heels-I.ust and Ihn^e '
Poverty and Vice-driving over ,hc prcc pi "To

LfoT^/b'-^""^' ""''''■ ^^"^-^'- dream
came t palsied her power for work; for another

rrir' "■''"""<' ""-"■""■"""™'-

On„ she fc.„,d .he ,., b,ct In ,he d.y, „(

4i8

THE NEW DAWN

prosperity, before Ward's stock jobbing had pau-
perized and killed her father. The graveled walks
ran through lawns as smooth as velvet. The light
sifted through the park in shafts; and her mother
came down the path leading a little girl with red
curls; but the child was crying. Madeline awak-
ened sobbing.

To all this could be only one end. It came one
morning when she had somehow succeeded in dress-
ing and hauling herself downstairs to the dinmg
table, when her coffee cup slopped round in her
hand like a beam sea. Madeline could not lift it
to her lips. A great medical specialist lived in the
downstairs front rooms of the apartment house.
Madeline went to see him.

"How in the name of thunder have you been
tuckering yourself out?" he asked jocosely. "What
have you been doing?"

"Work," confessed Madeline meekly.
"And -vorry— eh?" added the doctor gently.
And what did she do; and why did she work; and
was it ambition or necessity; oh, it was both love
of work and need of money, was it?— a bad com-
bination; and where did she live; and why couldn't
she go home; and was there no one to relieve her—
give her a breathing spell— so to speak? And many
more questions, which Madeline answered. Some-
how, this great doctor gave her that impression of
the untold goodness beating under unchurched vest-
ments. The doctor stroked his bald spot, and
studied her through his glasses.

AFTERWARDS ^,

The doctor smoked hi; blld "°"" '""'* ''"•
laughed. Madeline I ^^ '^ '"'"' """" ^"^
he were not sjt "d , S' l°j'T '''. T'^'
a softening would help hef pluck XZ ^^ ?"
tor sa d does not l-,„i, n ^ *^"at the doc-

of his saZ i° but it '""' '""^ '''^ '"^"""
the effect 'llf,^ l."^^" ' ""'^'= statement to

chiwirtheXTrn^*. °' '"°- ^^- ^"^^ -s

Look here," he arlHpr! "t l

the .cord b/teinSg^'/o^VtluTh..'"'"'^'''''-^''
ihe artist smiled feebly, feeling all fh. u;

'ToI^^eno^lkind'V^-""' "'''' '^•" '^ ^^'d.

and flatte;:'::;dti?pi,irv:: r^r^-

women who come to^me o be flattered T'""1
and wept over couldn't be cS^e^forgo j'aK

;:^rg^:;-^f~S^

Wt.„ an, more unless ;r;°.^e^7t^S

'■I suspected as much from a sudden piety in the
reg.on of my knees," she said ironically. ^

420

THE NEW DAWN

"If you rest, if you crawl off into a hole, or go
off to the wilds and play ihe savage ten thousand
miles away from worry and work and too much
thinking, nature won't fail youl If I were a
woman," he broke out, "I'd be a dairy-maid before
I would be sucked under by this maelstrom! It's
this damnable pride and ambition and high pres-
sure and foolish, dilettante daintiness — instead of
just resting in the eternal order of things — that is
playing the mischief with modern life! An office
man earns the salary of a workman; and the office
man's wife wants to live the lazy life of a queen!"

To all of which Madeline agreed; but what was
the use of knowing what ought to be done when it
was impossible? That was the dead wall, the im-
passe, the negation of her faith in the order of
things.

"I can give you something to wind you up; but
the snap will be all the more disastrous when it
comes! Don't mistake — ours is the suicide age!
We attempt so much that we attain nothing but leave
to quit! If you were my daughter I'd pack you off
to a backwoods village a week away from telegrams
and paints and letters !" And he gave her the pre-
scription.

The medicine she took in quantities that would
have surprised the doctor; but she could not work.
Besides, she saw how poor this forced work became.
If she stopped working she might as well stop liv-
ing. If she went on working — what? The final
snap; so she ceased to pray. She ceased to hope.

God seemed so fa

AFTERWARDS

support. 5^S, w f^"'' ^° ^'"" '^" "'Cher's
stock jobbln. waTroL ^^ '^''•■" '"''^ ^''^^ ^is

she had been? Ward's hT.h ^^ '° '^'""''^ ^'

opposite page for daily comment ThS T '
was headed in print: 'fexTs-Trle f J p"^ ^'^^

giy tnat she could not get away from the truth.

4aa THE NEW DAWN

ments penned on the blank pages of the birthday
book. Here are some of them:

We cannot break law. The law breaks us.

Unless we hitch our efforts to the movements of
law God Himself cannot answer prayer.

"When I was a child I spake as a child" • • • ■ •

"The bed is shorter than a man can stretch

himself on the covermgs narrower than

he can wrap himself in" 1 wonder did Pau

and Isaiah, too, find the creeds too narrow to fi
facts? They didn't shut their eyes, g.ve up the
facts, and talk twaddle about resignation to the
Devil. Neither do I.

Is law in its essence love?

If one keeps drawing on faith without realiza-
tion there comes bankruptcy.

The ultimatum of all faith, all love, all hope, all
creed is — fact.

Wrath of God : violation of law. That is at least
rational.

Knowledge comes through pr-m.

Though God sees the sparrow fa'l He does not
stop its death.

AFTERWARDS ^23

Innocence is no, its own protecHon. Angels do
no, guard innocence. That is poetic- butlfis ^

Shall we say "God's will be done" to evil? Is
Gods W.1, then evil? Shall we sav "God's wi
b done' and-fight the evil? Isn't M., God'

Goodness mu.t be a fighter; or go out of com-
m.ss,o„ ana g.ve a new creed the chance. Good-
ness must conquer or— quit!

There is no mistaking plain facts. Shall I hide
my eyes from pain from sorrow, from wrong?
bhall I give a palliative to the Devil, saying "God's
W.11 be done" to what^I^or, shall I-fght^

cZtltu '" J°'l"i^the way, not through
creeds, not through prayers, but by bruised feet.

leastTl?"" '"p- ^^hen,die! That is the
east of sorrow. Better die than not try; better die
than be conquered! <=iicr aie

snould I blaspheme the wheel ?

Circumstances are the rock; law the bonds bind-
'ng man to .t; necessity the vulture eating his vitals.

II '

424 THE NEW DAWN

Christ, too, had to choose between the easy way
and life or the hard way and death. He chose to
die rather than submit; and He conquered. If a
Christ dared to speak the truth to-day would He
not be hooted and crucified just the same?

If you steal small, it is crime. If you steal big, it
is a credit. If you murder a woman openly, quickly,
mercifully, it is a crime. If you murder her secretly,
slowly, cruelly, in the name of love, it is — a joke.
The fiends of Hell must have much laughter.

For as long as time lasts I send my thoughts
across the darkening dark to youl As an all-con-
taining space carries electric waves to outermost
bounds of infinity, so an all-containing deity, power,
entity, which I call God and you call Force, carries
this thought from me to you 1 As long as time lasts
you shall never escape the mute pleadings! If there
be any hope in Heaven or Hell; if, sometimes in
the still night, hope streams through the starlight
with memories of a peaceful past and joyful inno-
cence; if sometimes in laughter come remorse and
self-loathing; if sometimes you wonder why "the
light that never was on land or sea" has gone for
you from laughing summers; if sometimes a mem-
ory comes of a peace too deep for words; if God
is not a joke and purity a dream of sleeping ser-
pents; if sometimes the baying of the vild beasts
quiets so that you hear once more the silent voice,
then know that I call on you in the name of Christ

AFTERWARDS

42s

to arise and follow the light! To cast the n-,cf (
ever behind! To slough'off th. sk ftL' ptu

race of the swft and the stron g to the highest goal!

What is love?_A fire! What are we?-The
burnmg! If pu,e, the fire becomes a light- if i!
pure-fury, smoke, destruction, ashes.

Shelterless for the t"^ is the homeless city!
On all s.des, at all times, in all places, are the

do! the ch IT'"?' ^^'^P^'"«- *-P''"g' Wha
does the church for the unchurched ?_Bids them

TsL^d'^rom the^r^ "^'^^'--'" ^ P^'' ^"^

ofTj! t"™ °!,'''^ '^"d will disturb the sleep
of the slayer. Does the dream of murdered in
nocence disturb those asleep in Zion?

All the toilers need is rest, rest, a little hope, a
Me love. Who .s there to say "Come in and rest" ?
None to g,ve the cup of cold water for love's sake
m the name of Christ. Pause, you busy women
who would emancipate^theworld, and thilof lat!

If I must die, O God, let me die bravely! If I
am not strong enough to battle for right, and truth
and punty, let me die-trying, fighting-' Savx me
from self.p,ty; from the love that is not love; from

4a6

THE NEW DAWN

the goodness that is compromise; from the purity
that is whitewash; from the resignation that is
weakness; from the piety that is an insurance pohcy
against fear; from the righteousness that only masks
servile fear of the Devil ! Let me not hide my eyes
from the ti ith! Let me not know fear of aught
but my own cowardice! Let me die brave, rather
than live a coward! Let me not draw my skirts
aside from unhallowed blood! Let me die brave,
or live strong! Save me from the reptile virtues
that cringe, that crawl, that dodge truth and shirk
difficulty! . . . "by well-doing .... seek-
ing for glory, honor, immortality ....

eternal life I"

If woman, stripped of womanhood, be but rep-
tile; and man, stripped of manhood, be but beast:
better n.adness and death than dust.

Teach me to laugh at death; and be • • ■ • •
Strong 1 Teach Spirit to be Stronger than the Great

Blond Beast!

* * * *

A week after she saw the doctor came Trues-
dale's letter. It was almost telegraphic in brevity:

Enclosed find check for ruby. Chap I "Id you of paid
gladly. Trust I did not let ,t go too cheap. Dela> called
by chap having to wait for the money-he asked for time.

Don't forget.

1 am,

Yours to comqiandi
J. T.

AFTERWARDS 427

P. S.— Think you should take a holiday. Can sell
all those jewels to that ruby crank if you say so.

J. T.

Madeline looked at the check. It was five hun-
dred for the smallest of the rubies. She looked
again, dazed, unsteadily. She fingered it. Then
she began to laugh softly, her eyes wells of glad
tears.

"Thank God," she was saying, "oh, thank God t
It isn't the money; but, oh, thank God, love is
is really lovel"

She slept that night without medicine or dreams,
but all the while, sleeping or waking, a floating
consciousness suffused her existence like a light of
transfiguration, a consciousness that love was love,
that God was not an attenuated joke, that truth and
puri»y and goodness were as real and strong and
faithful as Death itself.

Two days afterwards, "the boys" in the news-
paper rooms were saying, "there seemed a kind of
goneness about the office." Madeline had taken
the train for a backwoods, habitant village on the
St. Lawrence.

CHAPTER XXIX

WHEN LABOR ADOPTS THE BRUTE CREED

The ethics of Hunger versus the ethics ot Power
— when these two become pitted against each other
it is not surprising that Hunger becomes excited
first. The stimulus is at the pit of tb- stomach.
Anxious Fright has no time to choose fine words.
Power can afford to be cool. There is no gnawing
of Hunger, of P'ear, of Desperation.

The record of two or three old-world democra-
cies should have taught observers by this time that
Demos is apt to take short cuts to justice when he
is roused by hunger or outrage; that Demos is even
foolish enough to prefer a despotism, whose justice
is swift and sure, to a democracy whose justice is at
the mercy of a blackguard sharper of the lawyer
species or a light woman carrying the corruption
of bribery in one hand, flesh in the other. These
struggles bnvcen patrician and plebeian, rich and
poor, were called revolutions in ancient days, and
invariably led to the downfall of democracy and
the upbuilding of a despotism. We, of to-day, call
such strugii;les "problems," "questions of capital and
labor." Questions they iuidoubtedly are, with an
4>8

LABOR AND THK BUVTE CKKl^D 4.,

our Lord, the pX „ prj ''"' '" ''"^J"^ "^
If twelve, in the co.nl^^^nrT; ':"'"'!
Happmes,. miscarriages of ju" ic /h m " '' ""^
of the lawyer species fh/ ^""''~''"= blackRuard

dual bribeino Tonge; lead ^Z " 7'"''" ""'' ""=
much more terrible u ■^""'"t'on, but to a

Lawlessness! • ""'''"^'^'' '"='^-'"=-t 'Lbing-

hoarsnilVt t^'^^^'^^^^POs^^^^t., himself
who think to h nS rZlvvIe ""/"' ''"«^'^'^"
in. the result inr'/of ^ ^1 '°,::,;'-^ Tf'
dared to his followers that th^ v re 1 , " ^" t
progress of the ■,„^. f 1 ■ ' . •'•adcrs m the
.0 5own to ste:?:;-,; f rS; 'fl '^at would
must sacrifice their pee ,,rt T'' '^'' ''"^^
that .he only way to rea' " - u"'"'" ^°°'^'

and meat, and cloTh „d ^V"''"^^ °" ^-»d,

possession of all industries fhatne'f", '" '^"^"'^
one act of violence mTIV .. '''' ''^P "ow,

lose all fouJht for H ^ ."' ""' "'■"^ '"'''■fa and
that Lif -I ibe" T^ '^' "^'^ ='""^'"" 'months:
cause to fight ^.^^^Hre 3 " ^'°"°"^ ^
the Great General Strike V " ^"P"'' °^

^word and muske - „ V"'"'' ='«° ^ith

Jives and dau^gtrs, soVr/Litt ^d fd

tx:;;x;.^;t:t:Sr'^-7^-^"

had won-righrs to Tir °r "''''' °"^ ^='*f'"='
Oneofhis^;:e^.^-;-Ha^n^sr

43°

THE NEW DAWN

"Where'i Kipp's corpse?" followed by a fierce roar
of jeering laughter.

"What's »auce for the goose is sauce for the
gander! If killing's no murder for Kipp, it ain't
for Ward"; and the straw effigy of the financier
was burned in front of the (ircat Consolidated
offices. McGee had only succeeded in scattering
the malcontents before a squadron of mounted po-
lice rode across the city square.

The primary appetites are always riotous; espe-
cially hunger; and many of the unmarried miners
were already living on what they could shoot or
fish, the strike funds going to the families. When
the suit against Truesdale was settled by compro-
mise out of court, the men felt themselves vaguely
aggrieved. The advantage of probint; the investi-
gation of Kipp's death had been lost, and now, with
Mrs Kipp's evidence on record, the public prose-
cutor refused to act. If the Truesdale mines had
been shut down, too, the public would have been
so short of fuel that general indignation would have
compelled Ward to come to some understanding
with his men— a commission, arbitration, legisla-
tion—anything rather than a sacrifice of the public
to a One-Man-Power; but the Truesdale mines
were working, and the public were comfortably in-
difFerent to the great conflict between capital and
labor. Every day was exhausting the strength of
the strikers. Every day was strengthening Ward's
hand. The men knew it. McGee knew it.

He knew more, what he scarcely dared to ac-

LABOR AND THE BRUTE CREED 431

knowledge. No one voiced it, but McGee saw the
looks of suspicion when groups of his followers
gathered to talk Th.y no longer confided in him.
When he jo.ned the gr. ps they stopped talking.
One night when he had been conferring with the
miners about appealing to other unions for sup.
port, a man interrupted with the querulous demand:
And how long will that take? Are we to die of
'lunger when there is food for the taking? It's all
'J^l"'lT ^° '""'• M^f^'^-talk's cheap! You're
fixed/ There the man stopped, for a fire smote
trom the big leader's eyes.

Then the union thought that he had sold him-
self to I ruesdale— that was it! Afterwards, Mc-
(.ee went privately to the man and offered him
by way of a loan," a ten dollar bill. For a mo-
ment the fellow looked dazed. Then he burst into
a laugh.

"Remove that damphool," he said. "Your char-
ity IS cheaper than justice," and he threw McGee's
money into the gutter.

And, on top of all this gradually dulling failure,
came a blow that crushed McGee to earth with a
shame that he could neither fight nor face— the body
of his dead sister. He buried her out in the family
plot in the corner of the wheat field, where the
mother, who had suicided, lay. There were no pall-
bearers, only the boy, Budd, and McGee, who ear-
ned the cofBn in their arms from the wagon to the
grave.

432

THE NEW DAWN

"Who was it, Uncle Sam ?" asked the boy, white-
faced, as they filled the grave.

McGee did not answer. He lifted the last sods
with his hands and placed them on the knr>!l.

Then he sat down in the gray autumn twilight
with his face between his knees. Again, it seemed
twenty years ago. He was a harvester out in the
wheat fields; she, a little girl with red curls, carry-
ing oatmeal water out to the workers in the sun. A
young boy rode past on horseback. They said he
was the son of the great lady who had bought a
country place oh the adjoining farm. Then it was
fifteen years later. He had become head of the
house, and the little girl with the red curls had
returned from the Methodist Young Ladies' Acad-
emy with the love-light in her eye, and the day-
blush in her cheeks, and bits of poetry full of all
sorts of crazy yearnings at her tongue tip, and the
prettiest, daintiest tricks with her hands when she
played the Sunday hymns in the evening on the par-
lor organ. He could hear her voice yet — singing —
singing like some spring-time bird too full of happi-
ness for silence. Then all was blackness, a stalk-
ing darkness, with the light burning over the farm
fields like the black lights that must burn in Hell.
A servant woman was running across the fields,
gasping out that his mother had suicided, and Sally
— something dreadful had happened — Sally had
gone.

There was no thought, no recollection, no se-
quence after that. Farm and stock had gone under

LABOR AND THE BRUTE CREED 433

weapons of force ^nd craft- B,.r c V . u °^"

3res.raj^^!fcr;rS-J-l-

t^nt "r t' r"" °^" '^'■^ followers wssl.^-
Pmg from h.s hands— why' Beca,.<^ h. , ,^'
go the M /,„,,, „f his cre'ed. H h d h stllo""'
ers w,thin the limits of law. Did wtd l^^J;

c Law.-- McGee laughed huskily.

warrTor Chr . J' '"■'* P""'^' ^"'^ honesty as a
wamor-Chnst m.ght strike-a Christ-militant, not

434

THE NEW DAWN

the Christ-maudlin that the dishwater creeds of a
blood-guilty, degenerate, compromising, creed-mon-
gering Christianity had set up in the place of that
true Christ! Prince of Peace, He had been called;
but did the maudlin do-notnings forget that this
Prince of Peace was also the Prince who brought
the Sword — a Prince of Peace; but a Peace that
was Victory, not surrender, not defeat, not cringing

fearl

"What is it, Uncle Sam? Can I help you?"
asked the boy, trembling, awkwardly unable to ex-
press his sympathy.

"Help — me?" flouted the man, laughing bitterly.
"God — no! No 'iving soul on this hell-spawned
earth can help ai.jther! No soul can give another
light unless the eyes are opened I Help? — Lord —
no 1 You've only got to help yourself in this Hell
of a life, git strong— git strong, I say— d'ye hear?

git strong — strong enough to batter the gates o'

Hell down ; or else cut your throat at the beginning
of the game I Come on 1 The horses are waitin' 1
It's a good thing to be a horse, sonny! You don't
need to think," and they drove into the city with-
out another word.

Budd took the horses to the livery man, explain-
ing that he had to go back to the offices for some
special meeting of the directors that night. McGee
went straight to the Nickel Plate. He did not think
of it till afterwards that there were no other men
at the tables in the little restaurant, and that the
waiter had muttered out something about "trouble

LABOR AND THE BRUTE CREED 435

uptown" ,.„d "the regiment boys I" An evening

con'r^ T."' *""^- ^'^'^' ''^ gl-ced o I ;f
contents Then, on the fourth page, where news
was tucked into obscurity beside thVedtorials he
re.d what was a wind fanning the fire of his smol
dering fanaticism.

There was a half column-for this was a sedate
and proper and circumspect journal, indeed d!
s.gned for fam.ly reading-retailing the ly„ hing
of a negro m the South for resisting arrest and
stabbmg a constable. ^ "

This was not what angered McGee. Below was

stick" of 'T"'~:"^"' '^' newspapers call "a
t.ck -of a lawyer's acquittal in the same state

Z/ """/t"" "' '" ^'"'"^ "^^ylight under the
shadow of the court house. That was all the news-

Tjr T,f\ 7"^^ correspondents had been well
Z f ^f^'-''f"f' ^'^^ charity, covers a multi-
tude of sms; but McGee knew-as all who labor

thaf ' K^ri '" ""'''""^ ^"'^'"e strange facts
-that self-defense," in this case, covered not the
murder done .n broad daylight, but two other mur-
ders, one of a child, one of a woman-of so dark
character that the relatives, who were of the ruling
and nchest class m that Southern state, had pre

shment The acquitted murderer had been de-
fended by every leading lawyer in his state, one a
representative of his state in Washington, another a
party boss, another a type of that class of domesti-

436

THE NEW DAWN

cally good men who can create sympathy for a client.
The judge had been bought, the jury coerced.

The stalking daricness of Nameless Wrongs, red-
eyed, maniacal, bloodthirsty, brooking neither law
nor argument; sweeping the sharks of court and
church aside like a wakening giant scrunching vam-
pires; striking straight home for truth, and honor,
and purity, and honesty — took fire in McGee, took
fire in the darkest of all blind furiss — Mob Vio-
lence I He had on'y to give the word and he could
win back his followers, and — then, his reckoning
stopped, as all mob reckoning stops!

Next to the items about the negro and the mur-
derer was an editorial the length of one's arm; for
that was the length of the sheet, hysterically con-
demning lynching. "What was decency, civilization,
Christianity, coming to?" the editorial asked in a
climax of indignation, "when mob violence was be-
coming the prevailing court of justice in the fore-
most nation of the world?" Not a word was said
about the triple murder, the bought judge, the cor-
rupt jury, the lawmakers of the nation conspiring
to defeat justice.

"Blasted — dishwater!" muttered McGee, sling-
ing the newspaper under the table.

"Good evening, McGee! I was out when you
came to see me, so I thought it only fair that I
should come to see you," and Truesdale touched
the labor leader on the shoulder.

McGee sprang half out of his chair, then sank
back.

LABOR AND THE BRUTE CREED „,
"yy too lat.," h, „,„„d Mv.gcly. "I thoMri,,

ro:^^it:irs;-»t^:srs;

yo» go ™.k„g „!„„ „„, „j k„i,'„,';;l °°"

by 00,. fool ,„, The „i„„,. ,„ t,jr,M^'
you V. go, to „p,„ ri„| ' *,°."r""

»t.,»j,,o.v,go,,o...tto„g,„':°',;';;;-

.p m".!"'' Do*;'','"*' '""■"" "■■■'"' *'"• """B

.f/orLf-^rzyzt-io^t-s'-

power on earth-labor or capital-can Ty 2

haTats -r'"" r ?' '^^''^^^' ^''' --

nave a ballot .n one hand, a gun in the other The
moment you waken the „,asses up to the fact some
body ,s monkeying with the courts •'

nJerC'ri^"''^ ^^^"' "^°"«^ -th lying wit-
n«ses, bnbed ,unes, and bought Judges, and fot'n

sharplv"^'Vt ''"'' ''^";" '"*"^"P^^«^ Truesdale
^"arply. The masses make the laws, and you lead

438

THE NEW DAWN

the masses. Stop them selling themselves at less
than the price of a hog at the polls !"

McGee uttered a loud, harsh, taunting laugh.
"By God— I do lead 'em! But if our represen-
tatives sell us in the Congress, and the Senate, and
the courts, I propose to give them a dose that will
help them to respect freedom !"

"Bombs, and that sort of fool nonsense? de-
manded Truesdale.

"What, then?" fleered the other. "If courts and
congresses don't guarantee freedom, are we to bow
our necks to the yoke and thank God?"

How the words happened to recur to I ruesdale
he could not have told. He had not heard them
since he left college.

His memory wavered with the uncertainty of an
echo. "I think I've heard it said, or told some-
where, written or sung in bygone ages," he said
absently, "that righteousness exalteth a nation.

McGee had only time to bellow a contemptuous
guffaw, with muttered advice about "changing the
bottle," when a din, a shout, a stamping of feet,
arose from the street, and Goldsmith, the fog-
dreamer of socialism, rushed into the restaurant with
his eyes agog and his hat flying.

"Sam, where have you been? There's Hell going
on at the Great Consolidated. The militia's ordered

out!" ,. ,

"Militia!" McGee leaped to his feet.
"Hold on," implored the German. "Come into

this inner room."

LABOR AND THE BRUTE CREED 439

be bloodshed, man-let me go, Goldsmith!"

is Wo^iV" "'"""«'-"= y°" ^ girl to faint if there
" blood f Come m here with me, I say! IVe got
a plan ! You re playing a losing game, '.ut you can
score now-theyVe laying for your life, you fool "
and he dragged McGee bodily to an inner room
A moment later the labor leader broke from the

Sri'ch^ir- ^''' '' ''' "^^- ~'-"^
The law had befooled him; justice cast him de-
fenseless to the outer dark; and now the hammer-

ng heartbeats, che riotous flesh, the flaming bra n,
the wronged soul of manhood were animated onlJ
by one ternble, wild-eyed, mad-beast Thing mini
acal, b.oodthirsty, blind, brooking no h ndrTnc
-eepmg like a hurricane of fire,^ed-handerd !
struct,ve, p.tdess, crazed with an indignation that
was a murderous hate-the Spirit of the Mob!

The Great Blond Beast may be majestic when
he marches m ordered rank to the misic of the

1a tJ' "7i-l '^' ''""' ^-^'" *he beast goes
mad The only difference is that all the wild dogs
muzzled m the cellars of human nature are un
leashed at once.

CHAPTER XXX

WARD RKVISES HIS CKEED

Craft dead on the pavement with its brains
dashed out — in the person of Mr. Obadiah Saun-
ders; Mob Law self-destroyed — in the person of
the labor delegate; the deceiver punished with his
own weapon, eating the fruits of his own deeds —
in the person of Mr. Dorval Hebden, what more
should be told in this record than that the virtuous
people lived happy ever afterwards?

The happy ending is easier than a record of ego-
tism slipping into self-pity, self-pity to recklessness,
recklessness to folly, and folly — blind as the pro-
verbial fool — into a dark something which we may
poetize, and sentimentalize, and gild, and glaze till
the naked ugliness is hidden like leper sores under
fine vestments. Nevertheless, the leper sores have
been known to creep up to the face, where they
wrote their defilement. Beauty dallying on the edge
of folly, beauty flying to the Gretra Green of the
modern divo-.e court, beauty playing the part of the
tragedy queen in a fool's paradise; and then — just
at the psychological moment, just when the moth's
wings were all but in flame, just when the acrobatic
lady poising her slipper-tocs, however daintily, on
440

WARD REVISES HIS CREED 4,,

when ehe tragedy ouerof .' ."''''" ''"^''' ^"«
step too far for th. fi T T^"^'^""^ risks one

on the sc ; hero c ,!"ver "•= °^ ''' ''"^■■"«- ^-^^

«in.s down t^":;rtrar;HTn !rir^/»"r-

the conventional ending '^ ^ ''" "

in storiesf if,':hen he m" ^"«"""'' " "^ '°

mine were just liffle n.. r • • deception of

domesticated "u C'" '^'" '>■•' hadn't become
and the finest hlarth 7 "" " """"^ «'°'*''''

body of itfancestrrs ''"' ^"^ """ ^ ^"'^ '" *"«

-ndT;'?he;rst":'h" t"'""'"' '^ - --■'^

dedarafont ^Z.:^:S /Ti: ,r' ^'-'"^
« those accents of oufs i '^ h '=^^"««nce

F'"i.t.ssion to the madhouse, and thp ,i;,.
court, and the hpil ^ii ( ■„ , . ^ uivorce

Bui. unfl!: i ', ;;'i't' 'r r '"""'=•

■fer.-.rd. iik, ,h/,„„ ""' "' •"'' ''•PPy-v.r.

44»

THE NEW DAWN

about and meet your repentance. What if your late
love faces about to meet with loathing? What if
the soul you sent coursing to perdition, to loss, to
ruin, to the cesspool that turns a soul into a ghoul —
cannot be called back by all the prayers you send
after it, all the tears you shed to wipe out those
blots of the past?

However scientific and commonplace, such
thoughts are not pleasant. They "leave a bad taste
in the mouth." Let us forget, then, and turn to
the conventional ending! Let us talk of mercy and
forgiveness! Let us repent hard enough: be sure
God will forgive wide enough ! God's forgiveness
would need to be wider than man's repentance. We
may be washed of stains, but what of the soul you
sent to the cesspool instead of the fountain springs —
the soul which does not wish to repent, which will
never wish to repent because it did not choose the
evil knowingly — yon trapped it into that evil — you
may be washed, but with whose stripes is that soul
healed?

Tom Ward's life was not conventional, though
you might have thought that it was from the news-
paper comments on his movements, or the sudden
bating of breath when he entered a crowd. He
had gained his aim — Success — that is, wealth, power,
influence more pervasive than the rule of an auto-
crat. As long as the strikes lasted he had kept on
his feet, though he was perfectly well aware that
the fast, heavy breathing which had first come to
him as he watched the mob, and increased to an

WARD REVISES HIS CREMJ 443

agony as he ran up the iron stair,, and brought .
sudden stab uhcn the falling cornice struck him ,1
he clambered along the „rc escape-boded ome
th.ng wrong. He had gone directly to his room

the trn n ?."^' ^''^ '" P^"-^"f bloo.lshed by

-et the presKlent pacng the library in great pain-
of body or m,nd, who can tell?lwith both fists
clenched as if to strike an invisible enemy The

warfi'Zn'h"" 'iri""'^ "=•' '^'' "'^' P'«'J-
va^ hghtm himself"; and who can sav that fhe

;oy was not right? Who can say t a The convt
t.ons formed as he w.tched the Lob- J tTi" "
personification of the Great Blond Beast gone ram
pant, mad, sclf-destructive-were not fighfin^hoTe"
other lifelong convictions on which he had fr med
his course-that supreme selfishness was the seTret
of Success, that I-orcc was the umpire of victory'
Who can say whether he now felt his own triumph-
ant Force assailed by subtle doubts which h c'Sid
not fight, by an invisible power that was not Fore ?
Boy-first, he had ordered, as the doctors came

died off to the private ward of a hospital, where
he prompt^, fell in love with h,s nurse, ^r th

of a na.l file and perfumed water dated from his
acquaintance with that nurse. I may also add th

was she who taught him to keep his thoughts i"
«de as clean as he did his body outside. For years

'Jill': NF W DAWN

afterwards that nurse used to receive bunches of
flowers with no signature bit "(i. 1'." which Budd
had learned was hospital slang for "Grateful Pa-
tient."

There was much of this, as there is of every riot,
that could never be explained. Who had fired the
rifle shot? Why had Saunders leaped like a tiger
at McGce? What plan had (joldsmith, the anarch-
ist, suggested that sent the labor delegate dashing
out wild-braineu to join the mob? Where had Mrs.
Kipp disappeared? What caused the explosion?
How came the watchman to be off duty that night?

A crack-brained youth found in the mob with an
empty rifle would have been sent to the penitentiary
if Ward had not intervened. Ward had acquired
the habit of interfering with justice. He had his
own reasons for wishing to allay bitterness, and he
paid the fees of the great nerve specialists who
gave their opinion that the youth was insane.
Neither McGee nor Saunders lived after they struck
the pavement, and their secrets died with theni.
Two or three of the rioters were sent to jail,
and detectives said that they had found traces of
explosives under the elevator flume, but Ward de-
clared that a gasoline tank had been stored there.
They could go on with their investigating if they
wished, he said, but he did not back up his per-
mission with a check, and Justice again obeyed the
beck of the financier's finger. If the Wards and
the McGees, the shark lawyers making loopholes
for themselves to escape and the shark legislators

WARD REVISES HIS CREED

making berths

445

Who believe that 'onl".""""' ?"'' """ ""'""^ntalist,
i."ivt tnat one crimina saved from .1,-. a

"( h>> "wn deed, i, of more worth than n 1 '"'"?
■nnoeents protected-have charJ . ^°"""''

other hundred years oneJon r ►.'"'"" ^'"' ""■
thing it will be. Ward ;: 7 j-h't rnnnner of
When he found that Justice i' t"'' '^" ''""'■
farce, he ignored it ""'' '"^"' J '"^■»

;;c «ood^nature7:j;i:; ;r^.r-^^- "-

!Swten:r"'"^^---^?-^

"Stop-; and I bor ;:f f" *'''?" '" =* '^"P" «""

•^'v>4» wii,th?nl;:t,; xr^^'r-^pf -.^y

"cnt back to work. VVarlr,. It?' k '*"''"'
"o one but the doctor guLe^'^Vr"''''^^ ""^

-PS. rtes^T. thj, te'Sr" ""V" ""'^^

^- Hard, have been-L^"o^«^--:

But now the conflict was over -in,1 W i

mained at home to rest for tLTn "'^ "■'■

l'«n ordered An TI ''°>"''^'" '"^'^ ^ad

orucrcd. And the rest was no re<!t H„ r 4

too much time with noth

iturc or art, nn i he had

ng to do !)ut th

fnrn U- \ """'ing to do I)u(

fore, h.s thoughts had always reach

ed forward.

446

THE NEW DAWN

I '. I'll
,1 • f'

Now, they somehow turned back. He was not con-
scious that life was revising his creed. Indeed, he
was barely conscious that he had ever had a creed:
but he knew that his life had been shaken from its
foundations. He had not known fear, even when
the bullet went singing past him with a curious,
whistling hum; but when he had clambered down
the fire escape with the; mob that but a moment be-
fore would have lynched him, now howling frantic
applause, and arms came reaching out to him with
a glistening of tears on the multitude of faces gazing
from the dark, something hard as adamant in the
man suddenly melted. He felt very much like a
good man overtaken in a flagrant wrong, or a sinner
caught doing some startling goodness.

One day when Truesdale cal'-i! he found Ward
lying back in a study chair. Mrs. Ward had come
in from a motor run and was absently drawing off
her long gloves.

"Where are your rings, Louie?" Ward was ask-
ing, noting both hands ringless.

"The wedding ring?" Truesdale thought the
smile a trifle too languid. "Oh, out of fashion,
Tom! They spoil one's gloves!" And, when she
turned, Truesdale thought her indifference a trifle
too indifferent.

"And now, Mr. Truesdale, you can tell us about
Madeline?" she said.

He did not respond to her pause.

"What is the latest news of her?" shi- ked.

WARD DEVISES HIS CREED „,

Truesdale nn l-^ ''"'"'" S"="'Jed?

watch's;^;!;' Jan 'UTLTsltr' n" ''"
find out another A I^H^ l "^ ''""8 *°

"C! ™der disdain '' "" ">">«»"-

without exacting it. Somehow, tL t ac s h , !

be on the top-most shelf of the hbrarv r I
t.me Truesdale had captured the look 2; U I '^'

aid both her gloves an'd her ht re c ef -^tTe'
hunted them in separate corners he had n
wonder whether such women wo:id ul imatel/S
a man ,nto a poodle dog or a footstool ' "

I- was going to read with Mr Warri " .h -j
reaching to the .antel for a letter ^'hich'^

448

THE NEW DAWN

dale handed to her, "but now that you have

"Pray, don't let me interfere 1" Truesdale lifted
his hat to leave.

"Read wilh me, Louie?" Ward laughed aloud.
"I'm hanged if we've read together since we signed
the marriage certificate, but sit down, both of you !
I want your advice ! Louie, there are ten chairs in
this room. Why the devil do you want the one
that must upset all my papers? Here, True, here
are chairs for you both."

Her by-play, her scorn, her grace, her languor
were all as completely lost on the big man as the
coquetting of a butterfly before a lion. They were
not lost on the younger man. What would have
piqued interest and tickled vanity in some men
roused a sudden and unreasonable loathing in him.
If she had for one instant forgotten herself, if she
had for one instant forgotten to play the actress,
he would have been offering her homage uncon-
sciously; but a man of the world meets too man-.
Mrs. Wards to care for the type off play-board'^

"I'm much obliged to you, Truesdale, for run-
ning me out of that hobble with your machine, th--
night of the riot," Ward was saying. "1 hear th.
strikers were pretty close hauled between the devi'
and the deep sea. I say, Truesdale, there is noth
ing to gain keeping up ill feeling, now that the stril"'
is over. Your men are collecting a relief fund for
our miners — they wouldn't take a gift from me. f)"
you think you could smuggle in an anonymous liol

Hiaiiirw^..* *».

WARD REVISES HIS CREED ,,,
from me in that relief lisf? v„
"Wigedl I'llsendh chick?" '^";f- ^^"'^'^
- your own name-till Jru'-^" ''°"- ""'^^^ '' ""t

and tapped her gloves !:;:IX ^^''« - -id.

^c-f tit7t£^i,2T/rhet ri '° -' ^■•-

that Miss-vvhat do you c^, ^' ' , ^ ""'^^"'^'nd
girl, all forehead soul th.. J ^ouie ?-artist

fished the brat ou of the , '°''' "^ '^'"g' ^'^^ who
«r r "' ""^ slums, vou knn«,?"

I fancy you must refer to a vn

I have heird so " she s^H i-
^nd a.nln that felinr'V""''"^-

-pen acknow,,,;," "?' ^'''P ^^^-kins, that that
'-^'ht h<. n l,a,> to .on/ ""'■'' ^'"- f'" ''"^band

--n,y,itti^hapt^a;';:';r;^i,f't;""/^'^^"

'~">od material spoil..|, fruesdX ,, r' ' ^'"'

'■' some boys' school «h,.,- r ■ ^' '""'''"K f-i"!

r^''-d-re,:i:'rt::v7:r-!^'-'

'^■"■n to kick it nut in th,, r u '"'^ '"'" t"

^frs

450

THE NEW DAWN

Louie covdd hunt up some boys' school that would

suit?"

A low exclamation had broken from his wife.
For the once. Truesdale saw her forget hersell'
with a sudden rush of tears on the verge of laugh-
ter or sobbing.

"You are not going to " she had begun, when

her husband took the words from her lips.

"No, of course, not in my name! I wanted
Truesdale to hand the money over to Miss Connor
so tiiat she could do it!"

Afterwards, out in the parkway, Truesdale stood
still, thinking— thinking what these offers meant in
the change of Ward's attitude toward life, think
ing what those sudden tears meant in Mrs. War>l
when the boy's name was mentioned, wonderini;
what Madeline liked in this woman. What True-
dale forgot was that Madeline herself was n
woman, not a man, seeing as a woman, not as ;i
man. The grating of a horse's hoofs over tl?
driveway roused him from the reverie to see Mr.
Dorval Hebden riding up to the Ward mansion.

Inside, Ward had gone to a back piazza over-
looking the slope of the hill to a rear arm of the
sea. His camp chair was directly between the door
and the window of the back drawing room, hidden
from each opening. He must have fallen asleep,
for a warm wind of late Indian summer sprang ur
blowing the portiere across the doorway, shakini;
out a perfume of lilac sachet, so that the dreaming;
man saw himself once more a boy back at the little

'^smmBgg'M-w

WARD REVISES HIS CREED ,„
unpainted cottage with th.

hedges, and the roslrerf l '""'''-""'^^'"g lilac
«ar pricking throrj, X r''' '"'^ '^' '^<="'"S
--' ItsfeJdfohe "■ -'^'; H°- still if
hear the robins cJL^\hT' ''""■ "«= ""'^
hough, of the pines Far "'T """"^ *°P-™"»t
the city were fing,^„ faintT^'w ' '^"''^ ''^"^ "^
"ttle girls were pSg^ 'j^ "'' ^-.'>- -d the

"^ -- lying on the'l wn .t his""'.' T"^'"*"
watching with a sort of u / '"''ther's feet,

thin, white hands"artd';S 7" "• "^"" '^^ *>-
the Bible where she read -u'"""'''^^ P^^^-ges in
came din,„,er, he would take the^Blhr "'', ^''^' >"=-
yo"ng eyes, read over the m . ""''' ^''h his

fhey were all promi eT^" '^' ''^^ "'"''^d.
g"ce, of con,fort far suffer'"'/^ ''''' ^"^
The old choke cal to hlr"^' u ■""' ''" God.
^hen he read thoTe p^o ' "\ ^^ ''''^^y^ "-"e

the lines of suffering o'nth Val "'"^' "^ ^° '"

the drean, had shiffed He ' T''"' ^^^^- ^l^^"-
her face grown cold an 1 I '"' ''""""^ '"^'- ^^'^e-
-■th shut eyes; and ; 'iil,' "" P"^"'^ ^°'- hi-

^- .'-e" weighted is tthir,°V'°»'^"--
runnmg through the wo,„)7 "^- "« ^as

the city like a^glare o7b,o .'""' ''""^ ''' ''^^^ "^
^^nd the woods had turn rl?""^ '^'^ "'«ht skv:
^^«s, mad, wild-beast 7n L^' ' "'"'^''^"de of

Hell-dance in the ;S^„";:'-'^-" dancing a

452

THE NEW DAWN

McGee with his wild, maniac eyes, raving of
wrongs; women and children, multitudes of women
and children, poor, hungry, cold, hurling reproaches
at him, Tom Ward, running through the wood to
the red light of the great city that sent up its in-
cense to the God of Traffic. Fear? Did they think
he was afraid, those fool faces with their deathless
reproach? ^ le had no more pity nor fear of them
than he had had of the dog; but the leaden weight
had come back on his chesc again with a horrible
consciousness that bedlam, and pandemonium, and
Hell had broken loose in the world; and that he
could never satisfy his mother's simple ideas of right
and wrong that what he had done was well. He
could hear her reading to him above all the uproar,
reading from her Bible with her simple, old-fash-
ioned faith of the Beasts that would war for the
souls of men, Beasts of Lust, of Gluttony, of Con-
quest, of Error. Then he was arguing with r.er
so violently that the vehemence of his words wak-
ened him with a start, standing erect, panting for
breath, gazing out to sea, his heart beating a queer
force pump pulse, that sent his soul tense.

" 'Shall' is a very strong word ! I don't like the
sound of it from a woman's lips, l-ouie!"

Who was talking to his wife, calling her by her
Christian name with that easy, nonchalant faniibar-
ity? Ward gripped the back of the chair.

"You shall not .... go away just .... now!
You may as well understand that! If you could go

WARD REVISKS HJS CREED 4,3

what you hTve owed IThI '''"l '^" ^° ^^
life '^^^ '''^ °"e hope of your

"Some of Louie's damned hysterics" fJ, l

why not call it off and 'l'' y'°" ""'',' ^''' ""''
am changed' If I ", T .^""/'""P'^'n that I

"Yes \ '"^"^' ^^''y "°t quit?"

'" . why not, indeed?"

haty^^^Tt^allbr/^r^'r' ''''' "''" °^ --"' <>(

^e>t h-,.e a mt:t;;i gTo^';TuM„T1• ^r'

powerless. A sudden tnm ' ''"P' ''"f

He seemed to hetf rhX,';"':"' '" T"^^''
story of the Gre,f r r j ^ ' "P '" ^^^ tenth
tickiL in r Consolidated, ticking .

-uiitrsTo:Si;t^^^^^

Poi^tatthis,too,asth;T;uit":fr^frcrd'"^''"

childhood. The dv^n.. ? '^"■'""^ ^^'^ t°

across the darkening "" ''"'.'°"« ^''='^^=' °^ '"'•■J
and the bats btan dar '" '' **= 1°°^ °^ ^''^ '^i"'
fees. He had almn r ^ 'T"^ '''' '"^ ^''"'""t
voices hSbe' to trr'^"' "T"'' ^''« '^e
'vhen a low one of 'I"-'"'' "^ ' "'ghtmare,

portiere '■'^Postulafon came from the

■WFrT »*1,

T'/^^^

454

THE NEW DAWN

*■

"I should think your sense of the fitness of things
would suggest the propriety of my going away,
when your husband is so ill?"

Mr. Uorval Hebden was always so sympathetic,
so very Cf ^derate, so very comprehending with-
out beinf; ' .Id— was Mr. Dorval Hebden.

"Fitnc > of things?" A woman's voice laughed.
"Does the man who swore that love transcended
all conventions now talk to me of fitness of things?
Fitness of things?" she laughed in a hard, cold,
grating, mirthless tone. "Since when did you be-
come so solicitous of my husband's honor?"

There was a long, terrible silence with no sound
but the quivering of the dead leaves blowing across
the lawn. Ward had sunk back to his chair, broken,
aged, bowed, trembling.

Then, in the man's voice, agitated and scornful:
"You can hardly reproach me on that score,
Louie 1"

"No," she retorted. "We are even therj, and

even .... we shall stand .... to the

end! Do not mistake! . . . Even we shall stand
to the end, be the consequences what they may!
Oh .... I think thieves have more honor! 1
have heard of thieves who did not become suddenly
repentant just when the risk necame greatest! I
have heard of thieves who did not take credit to
themselves for repentance at such a time. Yes,
she added with compressed intensity of anger, "and
I have heard of thiev. ; who had a certain and final
way of dealing with a traitor."

WARD REVISES HIS CREED 45,

J'^flV" '^^' '"'*"'» ''"P'-'i'nt footstep, re
ounded from the hardwood floor as if he' Jr"
striding up and down. "If you like fn „„u
parens with criminal,, ,ou ^,"^1^.''^ '°'-

But, as for you," she retorted auicklv <Vh-

pan-son would be out of place, ^.ouldif'n^./'Vrj

are no memories, are fh^ro .u" 1 '■"^"

-ake even a ciim'ina; blush?" " ""' '"^^ '"'«'**

The footsteps ground sharply on the floor.

was an^werin?-' T,' ^"' ^""^ "^^'■"«'" '^e man
was answermg and I care less for your threats'
A final way of dealing with a traitor-eh ? You
dioo dd ways of recommending happine s tl a

WarH-« -r. °'^^ '"°'^'' '"»" ^hen you were
Wards wife how do I know that you might nol

wffe? yT'' =""' '°'" ^"°^''" -''- y°" were Ty
You J r '°T"^ "" >"'"'• ''"'band's death I
Vou are makmg plans dependent on his death "
The man laughed brutally. "How do I know hat
you might not similarly count on my deathV jf
you were not so blind, if you were not so infatu

>^l°"7''"''^ '" '^'' "^y h=>"gin8 about here
with Ward at death's door is the fast thing in the

chl to" hiT ''°"' ^.'" '"'• '^"P^- B--- you

chose to hide your real nature under a mask and

because you chose to lay aside that mask w th me

am I o blame for what I found beneath the mask""

And so, she interrupted, "a man may hang his

aseness like a m llstone round a woman's'neck,V„d

all It a caress, till she sinks; then, if she clings to

the one hand .hat should hold her up, blame' A^r

4S6

THE NEW DAWN

for dragging him down ! Great God — that I could
have been such a fool I And, now, you would go to
Europe because death might leave the way open for
what you vowed and swore by the holiest of human
ties was the one aim of your life? You think to
make lovers' oaths for a pastime, then to run away
when all obstacles to the fulfilment of those oaths
are removed? You think to have your way, then
let others carry the consequences? You hold my
reputation in the hollow of your hand because I was
fool enough to believe a man could be a woman's
friend in time of need? You could tell the world
all? You could even accuse me to him? If I ob-
ject to a friend turning traitor and thief, you will
throw my reputation into the gutter? Reputation?
Have I cared for reputation since I was fool enough
to take you into my life? Should I be talking to
you now if I cared for what reputation means?
Wolves — they say — single out the wounded for their
victim. You knew that I was unhappy. Through
that unhapplness you crept into my life! Yes, I
know," she hurried on, as if to stop his speech, "I
know we are both to blame, as you have said. I
do not shirk my share of blame, nor do I shirk the

consequences; twr shall you! From

a friend creeping through my unhappiness, through
that unhappiness passing all barriers of reserve, you
posed as the ardent lover begging me to free my-
self that I might marry you; and now that I am
about to be free you will skulk off to Europe ? Go !"

WAkI) REVISES Ills CREED ,„

C J I • . • • 8" • • ■ . too 1

Suddenly the light of the sunset smot. th u
t'«e open door with the colossal ,hV/ /""«''

Tl ' * ' ' **'* • • • So low •*"

staggering, hr ^ i / twY , k' '''''''' ^'^ ''-''•

."iow. The dead LtrSr^c^l'ret"''
in a ragged flock \ k- i • • ^""^^ '"e lawn

for a nlenf:' the'rai C:? thTo'""' '"''''
a lonely autumn cry, and as go e 'Vhe"; "'T'
dd not sneak H. i , ^""^- "le president

Jhe president sank to a sofa
Come here!" he said

MICROCOfr (ESOIUTION TIST CHART

(ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No, 2|

1.0 !fe m

1.1 I "^ iilliM

^ TIPPLED \hMGE In

I65J EosI MQin SI'fet

458

THE NEW DAWN

she would act when this crisis came, she could not
ignore his command.

He was leaning forward with his brow on his
1. ft palm, his elbow on his knee. With his right
hand he drew her to him. She sank to the floor
at his knees. This was not the part she had re-
hearsed to herself. She had expected outcry, anger,
reproaches. She had told herself vhat she would
answer, how she would act. His rage would beat
itself out against her disdain. She would meet his
accusations with words from his own lips, making
Self the supreme end of life. But he uttered no
accusations. Not a reproach passed his lips. He
shook like one sobbing, but there was no sob.

"Tell me," he whispered hoarsely, "tell me,
Louie, were you what I thought you, when I mar-
ried you; or were you always .... this?"

And, with the cruelty of the infatuated woman,
she answered simply:

"I was what you thought me when you married
me, and I am what you think me now."

She felt the tremor of his hand in a sudden, tense
grip, and braced herself for the contest.

"And I . . . . have made .... you what you
are?" he asked.

And with the shamelessness that mistakes itself
for courage she answered simply:

"You have made me what I ami"

If he had broken out in a torrent of abuse. If he
had called her names that are the last insult to
womanhood, if he had caught her by the throat to

WARD REVISES HIS CREED 459

strangle her, if he had struck her and cast her from

ofZ J '°':\^ ^'^' '""Shed; but he did none
of these thmgs. He uttered no word, but he raised
both hands gazed questioningly and long into r

rhe?lot,dr^°""^^--^^-'^i^H;:j

c°:;^^„ .;.•:----:-„ didn't

realize?" Tu l ■ , '^°"'" VO"

realize . . . Then he broke down utterly sob
bing like a child on her shoulder ^'

_ Mrs Ward had not rehearsed a part for this It
- so with all of us. Rehearse weaver so wsel
the vitalities take us unawares ^'

she'^^LZtf "^ so, without speaking, he, broken,
pride The ' T-'^'k? '^' "''^''"S °^ her own
fh:'odor'^o^^r.^^^ ''■^^^ ■" ^''^ -'"'^-''^'''"^ out

"Why, Tom?" she whispered
He shook himself like a maimed lion trying to
rouse dead strength. ^^

"Then you never cared .... for me I

mean?" he asked. • ror me I

"No," but her answer was scarcely a whisper, and
she was weeping. f •> -"u

"^"'""o'ate yet. . .. Louie?"

th "ihe'fZld^ ''' '''''''' " """ ''^ -^'^^
"You want your freedom'"

"Yes," she said.
"Then you shall hav

■e it," he declared, "you shall

460

THE NEW DAWN

|i|

have your freedom I I have blighted life enough!

You shall have your freedom; but don't

throw it away on that base scoundrel! Take your
freedom; but I will never see your name dragged
in the gutter of the divorce court! You shall sue
me — sue me for anything you like ! I'll see the law-
yers about it! We'll arrange it at once! It doesn't
matter with a man, but with a woman it's different!

Don't you see she can't go into the gutter

without getting everything that makes her

worth while draggled so it's dead weight pulling
her down? Don't you see the very fearlessness of
her .... her ... . her love will come through that
gutter brazen as brass? You can't stand it! You'll

sue me!"

She had : ing up, drawing back, dazed as he
spoke. Not ctius had she dreamed. He, not she.
had been in the wrong at the first, and that wrong
of his she had used as a justification for all that she
did, never dreaming that the mote in his eye might
become the beam in her own.

"You mean," she began; but the floodgates of
her womanhood broke bounds and she fled hysteri-
cally, pursued by a horror of herself, by a loss of
trust in what she might do. Her maid had gone
out, and the apartments upstairs were deserted. She
locked the door. Hardly knowing what she did,
she began feverishly drawing out all the rare jewels,
the bric-a-brac, the costly gifts of her husband.
Then she hurriedly threw a few dresses into a small
trunk, and changed her gown for a traveling suit.

WARD KE^;sKs Ills cr,.:j:i) ,6,

Locking the jewels in the escritoire she st.ddenly re-
membered that some letters-letters from him who
was not her husband-should be destroyed" Zl

m,dn,ght when she was interrupted by a knock on
the door, and Ward's valet handed in an envelop
Inside, written m a shaky hand, were these words:

Dear Louie : Let us not do anvthing rash jnn't

Tom.

At first she had thought the note was from some
one else, and her trepidation increased.
_ Any answer, ma'm?" asked the valet.

that Mr^Wf 1 :T .'•' ^? '" '' ^>" ^'^'ht, and see

hat Mr. Ward takes h,s sleeping powders and that

the doctors come the first thing in the morning "

1 akmg a pencd, she wrote at the foot of the note :

It is too late The jewels are in the secret drawer
)f the desk. Please take them back. Please do not
try to trace me; and deliver the trunk when it Ts sent

This she placed in an envelope addressed to her
husband above the writing desk. Then, putting on
a heavy cloak, she passed silently down the side
stairs, and out. The melodrama of her f.,lly of
her self-pity, of her play-acting, had become too

Ji i

462

THE NEW DAWN

real for endurance. Unconsciously, like a pursued
thing, she was trying to run away from the burden
of consequences she had bound for her own back-
in a word, to run away from herself.

CHAPTER XXXI

BUT IT IS TOO LATE

Flight is not graceful. Neither is haste, par-
^cularly when a man swears and loses his temper.
1 he debonair Hebden seemed to be losing his gav
nonchalance, for his manner of bolting from the
back p.azza of the Ward mansion was not in a
style comporting with the character of a Don juan-
and now he was pounding over the gravel of the
parkway at a cra/.y gallop, clinching his teeth in ,n
ugly fashion each time the horse reared and plunged
to the stab of the spurs.

Of couibc, one must not blame Hebden That
■ s— you must not if you would sympathize with his
way of looking at things. H-; felt himself the vic-
tim of hostile circumstances— the victim of having
a gcn'.rous, sympathetic, impulsive nature, come in
contact with a "scheming fool of a woman." He
telt himself sorely used, somehow put on the wrong
side of things so that his conduct showed up in a
bad light. Was it his fault that women made fools
01 themselves over him? Was it his fault that
^vomen persisted in mistaking his little kindnesses
lor love making? Was it his fault that she had
463

464

THE NEW DAWN

!i S

used his friendship to widen the estrangement be-
tween herself and her husband?

Of course, he had made vows. What man had
not, under the impulse of an unscrupulous woman's
fascinations? She had trapped him into saying all
thc^se "fool things." He remembered shifted
glances when they had been alone together, for no
other purpose than "to trick him into making a fool
of himself." Wasn't it to his credit that he had
wanted to drop the thing when Ward was ill? It
had been on her account in the first place that he
had wanted to leave and avert gossip. Manifestly,
Mr. Dorval Hcbden was a badly used, innocent
man. He was not at all after the pattern of the
ordinary villain. He did not lick his lips with gusto
over his acts. He patted himself on the back for
not being worse.

To be sure, there were some unpleasant mem-
ories, particularly of what Ward had overheard.
What Ward had overheard would be harder for
Mr. Dorval Hebden to forget than some other
things that had slipped into oblivion, ^ou see,
Mr. Dorval Hebden's conscience was chiefly ex-
ternal — what others thought and knew; but, then,
he had been so innocent of wrong intentions in the
beginning and so penitent of bad results in the end
that the good intentions at the beginning and the
repentance at the end surely atoned for any little
mistakes in his experiments of how to get the great-
est amount of happiness out of life. For men and
women like Hebden the case might almost be

BUT IT IS TOO LATi: 465

worked out mathematically. Given go.ul intentions
at one end, good repentance at the other end, you
get the subtracteil remainder of a good fellow who
has been a little indiscreet, or the angel ..f the self-
sorry sort, who may also have been inaiscreet.

But Ilebden did not reason in this cold wav
He rode like a madman with his thoughts a whirl-
wmd of rage, and niortificaiion, and revenge. How
dare S/,e bring this humiliation on //,>„.^ How dare
She expose ///„, to possible vengeance? And he
who but a few months before had exhausted lovers'
vows, who had sworn by the holiest of names that,
If she would but free herself, eternity would be too
short to contain their happiness— now hated her for
listening to those vows, now called down on her
all the curses, all the insults, all the reproaches all
the accusations, that could be hurled against wom-
anhood. Then through the tumult of his passion
flashed a thought born of his own suspicion— had
she, the jealous Jezebel," turned Madeline against
him, befooled him with her silence all the while she
had been pushing Madeline out of his life?

Though he would have humbled himself in the
dust to drag Made! 'e Connor down for all the in-
sults of his humiliation, the thought that Mrs. Ward
whose reputation hung on his breath, could have
brought that degradation at the girl's hands upon
him added a sense of baffled helplessness. He had
ridden without noting where he went till the cold sea-
tog struck his face in a misty min; and he remem-
bered the scream that had emerged from that mist

466

THE Ni:\V D.\\\"S

lik 1 voice from the past, thf last time he had been
on this sea-road. Then, as now, he thought with a
curse her influence had unmanned hini, car ;.;d him
off his feet, brought him face to face with ..s'v spec-
ters of the recrudescent beast in man. Was it his
fault that .vomen liked "their fool dreams of an
ideal love" ? Then, he had laughed at those dreams.
Now, he cursed them. Then, they had been a joke.
Now, they somehow silhouetted his own conduct in
sharp, dark, dear outlines. Was that the reason he
hated her? Hate her he did, with all the power in
his being, in exact proportion to her inP.jence over
him. He had meant not to go one hair's breadth
beyond what ■ safe. Hebdcn was essentially one
of the safe smners. However heavily the conse-
quence of his acts might fall on others, he always
took good care to keep on the safe side of conse-
quences for himself. It is a question whether the
safe sinner or the convict with the shaven head de-
serve the more respect.

The hard-ridden horse gradually slackened pace
to a walk, and came to a stand in the drifting fog
beside the moaning sea. The reins had dropped
from the man's hand. Far back, where they had
watched the sunset past the piazza portiere, were
the gathering clouds o'' storm. Between the sea and
the gathering storm the man felt like an atom be-
tween two eternities. His thoughts recurred to half
whispered traditions of his ancestors, legends of
family traits that flowed through the sap of the
family tree and had caused the lopping of a branch

BUT IT IS TOO LATI. 467

here and there. Wa, the curse of the family blood

t-":Jitie: ;';;r:;^•^r"r"r-
^lthetran..ittcd^i;iJ;;ti:;^-i;;^^

he future, to which he. in turn, would trattthi

;«::"•- -'^. he transcend handi;:;?? 1v ' Lr;

Hebdenrhl""^^" 'V""'^^ ^"at question T:
Mebden s habits were formed. To-dav wa, thl

"jlV '"Tt^'- '^^""^^ '''^ vices I-rances
tn.1, he petted them, and excused them and res S

""-' He fe t hmiself an atom between two eter-
ke the ch,p tossed by the tide there, between
and the storm. He was the victim of his
i"ns, ns the sea was of the wind. With an
^ spur, mto the horse and headed back
Ihe beast stumbled and reared with
ig scream; and the scream brought back
reproach un.lcr the iron hoofs, the face
■'K. upturned eyes, pleading for the hope
•out n d.-kness, a face like a ghost

'imsel

nitic

the S'.

own I

oath

to th

a whin:
that .''acd
with strc,
that was t
clutching ou:

"Damn yoi
between set tt
from a seconu

'le juicKsands.

ri(. ulering brute !" he ground

rk fhat lifted the horse

•"' 1 he rode through the

468

TMK nl:vv d vvn

i I

darkening mist w.th a sort of terror upon him,
craniiiR forward, inud-splashcd from head to heel,
with his jaw hard set. As the rain slashed slant-
wise against lis face, hot, Mistering tears- vjch as
no Don Juan would ever dare to shed in a 1 aok —
coursed down both checks. .\nd, of course, the
g • debonair Hcbdens — whom we know, whom we
have heard joke over the feat of having wrecked
a life or two, cast down to dishonor a name or
two— never flinch before the grim reality of their
deeds 1 Of c urse, though possessed of lachrymal
glands, such en never weep and beg for pity when
the consciousness of guilt lies heavy and will not
lighten for all the self-excusings cowardice can con-
jure upl Of course not for two hours later saw
Mr. Dorval Hebden du ing his vnlet for pack-
ing so slowly, and damnin^- the cook that the supper
had grown cold, and damning the butler for not
returning quicker with that ticket up to a moose-
hunting country in Quebec, where Mr. Dorval Heb-
den had suddenly decided to go.

"Mind you buy the ticket in your own name!"
he had called as the butler went out.
Then he laughed to himself.
"If the servants talk, she will think that I have
gone to see Madeline," he thought.

And he laughed again, both at his own acumen
and the cringing terror of the servants before his
displeasure. So successfully had Mr. Dorval Heb-
den frightened the servants that they neglected to
tell him there had called over the telephone a lady's

BUT IT IS TOO LATE 469

voice, which they .-,!! rccoRni.cd nmonR thcm.clvc,
— .t was the voKc of one to whom Mr. Ilcbdcn',
pnvate numhcr had hcc„ ^ivcn. When the but
ha.I called hack that Mr. Ilebden wa, .caving that
vc>y n.Kht to hunt moose i. Quebec, the telephone
ad run, off quickly. ,V,idni«ht found Mr. l]„ a
Hebdcn bo..rd,nK the Xe„ X. -k express for Mon-
trcpl. and thankmg Heaven with more zest than
reverence th.at h,- had the Pullman entirely to him
self, cv-ept for one party in deep mourninR, who
sec-med to have taken both staterooms for them-

"I say, porter, know if there are any steamer,
bound from Montreal for Europe to-morrow?"

t-an t say, sah! Don't think so. sah ! Waz ■■'
wantm to go t' Europe that way?"

Hebden gave the colored man a five dollar bill.
No, but Ive a friend, Holloway, railway man.
wanted me to wire him a passage across! He's
Been up m the moose country!"

The porter looked at f^ebden•s luinting gear
done up .n leather casing, and ventured the remark
that whde there wern't no reg'lar lines sailin' from
Canaday ports to-morrow, there ":uz a nice line of
slow freighters."

"Freighters— good Lord!" interrupted Hebden
with sudden solicitation for his friend Holloway
but these fears subsided upon the porter's assurances'
that the freighters, though slow— to which, frien.l
Holloway, it seems, had no objection— had cxc-llent
accommodation for a few passengers.

470

THE NEW DAWN

"Then, I wish you'd wire for me at the next sta-
tion — best cabin, you know — room to himself —
give the name HoUoway — passage to Europe 1
Here's the telegraph money," and Hebden increased
the porter's wealth by another five.

On reaching Montreal, Mr. Dorval Hebden evi-
dently became solicitous about friend HoUoway
going aboard the freighter; for, instead of pro-
ceeding to the moose hunt, he hoisted his shooting
traps to the top of a rickety French cab, and rattled
away down hill to the freighter's wharf. And that
evening, as the freighter slowed up opposite the
eerie heights of gray old Quebec for the pilot to go
ashore, there came up on deck, not friend HoUo-
way, but Mr. Dorval Hebden himself, outward
bound on the steamer.

The half dozen passengers and a few of the
:hip hands stood aft watching the church spires,
the gray ramparts, the sunlit windows of the hilled
city fade over the water. Hebden drew a sigh of
relief, and lighted a cigar. He felt like a prisoner
who has been acquitted by some fluke of justice,
and has resolved to build up a better future on
that acquittal. The purser addressed him pleas-
antly, calling him Mr. HoUoway.

"Not HoUoway; Hebden," he corrected, offering
the purser a cigar. "I dare say the telegram got
the names mixed!"

He turned, sauntering along the narrow passage
between the deck house and railing, feeling none of
that disquiet with which Nemesis is supposed to

BUT IT IS TOO LATE „,

best of :!,"";'■ u '''' ''''''■ ^^' teaches u the

t»^:^°'wfrr.^%^r;et^:rr ''^^°-^
^He «n,er pHnts an. hr?L:\:v;::: -^^''t^^^

and scars of reality become obliterated. The slate
swped clear. We n,ay begin anew. Held „ e

itrS^or^^fttiLrb^^^^"':---'-

with . strong, .ooi\ttrt"L'Zract'e7S
have struck fire in noble resolutions. Wh heTfhe
■nfluence of his past in the fiber of his cha c e

iTTnftL7;Ttr^^

sidfofSl ^P'""''. °^ the templed hi]ls on each

betve n Gr. "'"' ''""■ ^^'^'""'>- •"= didn't
Delieve ,n God, except as an attenuated Divinity too

completely hidden by the phenomena of Z e "

oo remotely distant behind the phenomena o'na^

this God the Great First Cause"; but to-niffht
with the calm of the hills around him lite a c't
dral peace, and the river flowing to meet it t.

the lar!"^ '" °^f'"''' '° '-"'^^'"^ l^ws-and
the stars swinging through an infinity of worlds in
obedience to other resistless laws, Hebden som
how did not reason about the Great First Cau«

472 THE NEW DAWN

He felt God. He felt his spirit enmeshed in the
animal frame yearn out toward that other Great
Spirit, behind the eternal frame of things, behind
the laws. It was like the feeling of a child for an
absent parent.

The tide came swinging up the river with a lap
against the freighter's keel, and Hebden fell to won-
dering about the Power that swung that tide around
the globe in obedience to yet other laws. He won-
dered—quite quizzically and impersonally, of
course; the man of Hebden's mould always keeps
his speculations impersonal enough not to have bear-
ing on his own deeds— he wondered whether that
Power swinging the tide round the globe might
not swing a tide of another sort in human life. He
looked back on his recent past as if it had been
another man's life, wondering that life could be
shaken and overthrown by the mad passions of de-
sire, and remorse, and fear, and fate. So com-
pletely did the peace of the night take possession
of him, so completely did the feeling of security
still the mad-dogs in the cellars of his nature, that he
asked himself if such mad-dogs were not, after all,
hallucinations? And did regret tinge his thoughts?
Not a shadow. Because the mad-dogs were quies-
cent here, on the broad river flowing seaward among
the templed hills, he felt all the more certain that the
fault lay in the circumstances that aroused the mad-
dogs, not in himself. If he had had a taste for lit-
erature, he might have expended his pensive emo-
tions in verse. Men whose wives have died of their

BUT IT IS TOO LATE 473

brutality have written beautiful sonnets on the de-
ZTJ r " ,""= '"'P'"''°"^ °^ ^-J' moods and
t'hoSt """^ "" ''^ ''■"' ^°^ 'l^^ ''-"^y of
Instead of making verse, Hebden puffed a cigar

"d hf deck'T^" "? '"' '"'"^ ^"-- 'he rZg
and the deck house m a pensive mood, which he

m.stook for repentance. A wind sprang up astern

ere ^ST;?""^^""'"^'' ^"^ "'w en Tun"
tered farther forward to escape the breeze. Sud-
den y before he eould turn or cdlect his senses a
veded form ,n deep mourning stood directly acr;ss

he passageway The cigar tumbled from h
teeth. The veil had hfted, and there looked out
wth a strange light-a serpent sulphur light tht;
was hke a mocking gleam from darkness-the face

ch?en to seT^" '" ''' ""^''^ '''' '' -""^ ''-^
"Y-o-u?" he stammered, his eyes filling with ef-
f^=mmae tears of rage. ^Tou J.re to ho'u nd after
v^e? It ,s not enough to trap a man, you must drag
h.m down to your level? If you had no respect fof
yourself, you m.ght have had for me! Dare to
speak to -e and I'll brand you from the ship's gal
ley to the pilot house!" ^ *'

"Do," she answered quickly in a low, grating
vo.ce. "Do; and I'll add to their inforn.ation fact!
of^your past that will brand you with the irons of

They faced each other in silence with gleaming
eyes, these two who had exchanged vows too great

474

THE NEW DAWN

1 'li

for eternity to contain, faced each other with a hate
that branded deeper than any iron could mark,
faced each other, seeinR nothing but the havoc each
had wrought, faced each other stripped of all the
pretense with which they had decked the god of
clay to conceal its feet before they had knelt down
to worship it, faced each other and knew the lie

of all that pretense

"Damn you!" he muttered with a venom of hate.
A quick, fierce ;nolion, and he had struck the hand
which he had caressed, and kissed, and fondled, and
called the anchor of his hopes.

Mrs. Ward iV.\ not speak. She did not cry out.
She heard his footsteps receding angrily along the
deck. For the first time in her life, she saw her own
career stripped of pretense, of fine words, of self-
pity, of play-acting. Leaning her head on both
arms above the railing, she wept with the despair
of utter hopelessness. If the Angel of Pity had been
there it might have shocked the Pharisees by whis-
pering that this, the hour of her greatest degrada-
tion, of her lowest abasement, of her self-disdain,
of her boundless self-loathing, was the • .emest
hour in her life; for it emptied her of St... The
glorification of a sublimed ego had passed out of her
life forever.

Downstairs, Mr. Dorval Hebden cursed, and
raved, and raged, and asked himself how much she
knew. If he had been badly used before, what was
he now, when he felt sure that Madeline had told
Mrs. Ward, and that there was a conspiracy against

BUT IT IS TOO LATE 475

himself ? That is it! There is always a conspiracy

he rest of that long, tedious voyage he was a viru
lent woman-hater. And he was'too v rde t y a
s,ck to appear on deck, which no Don Juan e'r was
in the stones of ea" derplvpi-c »!,„ \
u 1 ^^ "cteivers, tnoijT-h some ha 10

\ •■

CHAPTER XXXII

THE DAWN

The fishing schooners rocked to the lazy wash
of the river tide. Madeline shut her sketch book,
bunched pillows beneath her shoulders at the bow,
where she sat, and lay back to watch the warm, mid-
day sun among the purple shadows of the hills.
Here, the clouds had stretched a floating argosy of
fleece across the slope of painted forests. There,
the yellow autumn light smote through a gap of the
mountains like shafted beams from the throne of
God. And the white-sailed schooners brooded over
the river, wings at poise.

There is something in Indian sumn r that re-
sembles a beautiful old age. The sowi.ig is past;
so is the reaping. The frosts have come, painting
a glory of russet fields and crimsoned woods, like
the sorrows of life that have etched age with the
lines we love; but over the mellowed peace of a
garnered past lies an afterglow, a renewed youth.
It is as if the seal of "well-done" were nlaced on
the year, on the finished life; as if life night be
lived so that the end would be better t'.ian the be-
ginning; and Madeline gave herself v to the reve-
rie of the day as she would have to music or poetry.
476

THE DAWN .„

477

I'ves gracious of goodness anHth; u "'"°''

■ess discordane thL the"slL"k ^'^VorSrVo^rS'

rn d, ,, ,„„^,_ ^^, ^^^ priestfraft slavery a s'fet

^2:z:stz :Ltr '-'' -^ ''-^"

has slk ' ' ""''' '^^" "/'- "^e struggler
norweallh '^' T''"' "'"^ge-where neither fame

sr,te:treTha:rLtr?or --'^

fame was af^rr.T "'' '" '^' ^ity-where

To Be Thir. "'' •"'" ^"e content

To Do „ '.'"'•' T' '"'•'* '" ^ ^^''" endeavor

ness IS strength, but in quiet confidence " '
smiled whej

heard the story of one sweet

nun

I ti

478

THE NEW DAWN

who always turned the picture of her saint's face
to the wall when her prayers were not answered.
It had not been so long since she, herself, wanted to
turn her mental picture of God to the wall, because
her hopes returned to her empty.

She had sought out a quiet retreat in the con-
vent. At first, she did nothing but rest. She spent
long days of utter solitude in the shady pine woods.
Even in "a priest-ridden country," you see, there
are advantages over a civilization-ridden country.
She could not have had such safe solitude within a
hundred miles of the centers of civilization — the
cities. Solitude in civilization must always keep
within ear-shot of a policeman; or else we read of
the college student thrown from his horse with "a
smashed skull," the girl botanist found dead at the
foot of a cliff, where she has mysteriously fallen.
The real death is never told, for civilization has a
squeamish stomach, and the ruffian of civilization
has only to keep near enough a policeman — near
enough to obliterate murder with a bribe — and guilt
is safer under the protection of civilization with
the squeamish stomach than out in the wilds, where
primitive instincts act swiftly without leave of senti-
mentalists and legal quirks.

And then came hazy autumn days, when the con-
vent fisherman took Mndeline out in his schooner;
sunny, lazy hours, lounging under a shifting sail
with the old tar droning endless yarns. It was
about this time that Madeline began to realize that
she was resting not only in the pine woods, not

THE DAWN ,„

h./Zh*" '' u ^'^ ''"'^^•^"'y ''«=""« Love. She
had been crushed when she broke the laws Now
she was blessed in the keeping of them At al^l'

rddi'hHrr^''-."" '^'^^''' herbuotc
back in .fl*]^' ''" "P^'^'^y f°^ >v°'-k surged
back .n such floods that out of sheer relief frorn
idleness she took to sketching the fisher folk sZ
of these sketches she sent to the art editor, PerkTs
who placed them in a Fifth Avenue window To
her amazement, demands came for more w^k thl^
she could do. And Madeline smiled half cynLllv
when she had needed work, none could be found:

ti:'\Trr^ '• '-"^^ ^^-^ than 'he : fd

do but, as she knew very well, this was only an-
other instance of natural laws. Before she h?^
been working against nature; and the who 'e n ver
was agamst her. Now, she worked with natur
and the universe worked with her

It was like a new light, this view of Law a, Love

h'alfd K:f •• '"^'"'^ °f - attenuated ditinlty
half doubted, .t seemed to bring God down a pal^-

day life, a God of laws in which she lived and
moved and had being; laws tending to one gr.at
end-Love. She did not believe ifss in God be
cause she beheved more in Law. No longer would

48(.

THK NKVV DAWN

she turn the face of her God to the wall in unbe-
lief; no longer lay the burden of blame for life's
monstrous wrongs at God's feet; no Icmgcr face
such wrongs with the blasphemy that reproaches
God or the submission which is a worse blasphemy.
It was on the Law-BreaKcr, not the I,aw-Mak;r, that
she now cast blame; and the belief created a sort
of fierce passion for goodness, for right; an un-
shunnable obligation of goodness militant, goodness
stronger than evil, goodness that smites down wrong
with the zeal of the fiery prophets— not because of
hatred for the sinner, but of jusiice to the suf-
ferer.

In a word, Madeline Connor, dieamer, idealist,
artist, thinking to catch the form of the beautiful
on her canvas and to ignore the ugly, gave up her
dreams fDr facts, set herself to making ideals real,
learned that the highest art of all is not the art
that creates a picture, but the art that creates a life,
better life, life that can become an ideal for human-
ity. She knew, now, how much higher had been the
aims of Truesdale — indifferent to her art, working
with the rude implements of the marketplace, weav-
ing no fine-spun words rounc^ the battle stress of the
dusty con.monplace — for his art had not been a
beautiful picture, but a battle against the Great-
Blond-Beast-Spirit-of-the-Age, a battle for the soul
of the new humanity, a victory to mark one more
mile-post in the progress of the human race from
animal to man. And she knew, too, when all Law
trended to Love, and all Love to God, that, in this

THI-; D WN

481

"f his nn chanijing fan-
'"K f"-"'" --ow. and, at the
-upt >>n fo t|,. grave. .\|I
I af ctcd .Icty which has
the tend of stagnatior
.'i'f If. ;ill goodness passed
(• cKiness hccinK- for her
■^h noked ( jt on life
■' 'he t<v,, saw a hattle

but to a Venus M
cies — desire to i.iy,
end of .; wasted lifi
that idle scntimenr:
diluted modern eh..
lireeds a poisonous
"ut of Madeline's i
a flame, a fierce p.i »,on,
and, like Vard „ his yoi

field; but the battle
over that battlefic'

"f"r , irht,n.,tP„,vcr. And

fhcr bnK.,Jc<i, not the Spirit

*>pirit of Supreme

"'ivcnt tower overlook-

fitian Hills. In the

in a veil over the

of Supreme Selfish -ess. in
Selflessness — the pirit ..|
Her bedroom v, as in rnr
ing the St. Lawrence an, ,
mc ning when she rose ,1.,
river -in,} fK ' '" * ^'^" °^" the

;hengn.ro,eofLwo^istb;:;ilr;xr

hddhood prayers She listened to ti .natin chime •

ship to thT C . 'L^' ^""^'' ""' '" "■"'•'""» wor-

IVuesdale. l( I 1"" '^"''- ''" '""= '^"^^ "^

!Zu ' *^'"^'"S means running all round

others personality with an impudenf pryi.^of

nes'sherlrt ■''"!• ""^ ""'"' """ ="' ^^ hazi-
ness, her dehght m Inmg, her joy i„ the glory of

482

THi; m:\v dawn

world's beauty, her adoration of God, who was
Love, went out to Truesdale like incense. She did
not think cf him; she lived in the atmosphere of
her love for him. When the convent chimes rang
out their cadences, and her thoughts were wrapt
away in the ecstasy of devotion that music or death
or love sometimes brings, she did not enter the
church with the other worshippers, but, up in the
pine woods, or down on the heaving dock, or out
in the old fishern an's schooner, she heard the tide
of that divine music which rolls to an eternal sea;
and her wordless longing was that this, too, might
be shared with him wh()»e human love had taught
her the glory of life.

In the morning she remembered that other morn-
ing when his eyes had given themselves to hers in
one irrevocable revelation as the cab clip-clopped
down Fifth Avenue; anc , in the evening, she lived
over another - -eiiii.g when they two had walked
the snowed hillside above the city lights, and she-
as well as Truesdale — had received sudden revela-
tion of what life's purpose was. And yet these two
seldom exchanged letters. They had not exchanged
a single kiss. They barely knew the touch of each
other's hands.

Indeed, if one had seen Madeline's comme ts on
the margins of books at this time, they woul have
seemed to justify Hebden's bitter thoughts that "she-
was a shrew," "a bit of hard marble that should
be pulverized," and much more that a refined gen-
tlem.an of Mr. Hebden's debonair graces is per-

Tin-: DAWN

<83

story in which the D,vrh , ''.»'',\^" ^"'''"K =• love
red in the ac 'nd n^ 7?V^' •''"'' '''^' •'""'"'^

apoplectic vl:w^:;!^':J;:f'7V''^ "7 "''''

that way. The storv «.. "^ ""' ''^'''' '"

convulsive yn., tom^ ^f 17, ""''"''"' '^""' '^'^

-etc .wo wordsZ-sSfva::' ;'"""«' ^""-
Xt;-t£~r

lost her o;n ou « t'o ?h;r' " "°"l^ "'^'^

Within the court of love, let silence reign.
About the door, dark satyr-faces leer
Envy and lust and .'.ate press close to'hear
Loves music, and .nterprct that sueet st;ain

484

THE NEW DAWN

If vice still mask beneath a virtuous cloak,
Using love's language as a bait to thought-
Let love speak clear in deeds, and so revoke
The power of evil by fair semblance wrought-
If deeds alone speak love, vice is undone-
Vice must turn virtue e'er good fruit be won.

And then she fell to dreaming with the languor-
ous river tide sheen as silver in the noonday sun.
The schooner rocked and swayed and bumped
against the laving docks. Madeline gathered up
her pillows, clambered from the schooner ashore,
and walked absendy out the full length of an old
breakwater pier, where she again ensconced herself
among the pillows in the sun. A consciousness, a
nearness, a rapture, a sense of Love's presence swept
over her in such floods that she fancied she felt as
seeds pushing up through dark of earth to meet sun
rays must feel— as if those rays were the call of
God's voice, the fiat of new life. What did she
dream? There was no ear to hear; so she told it to
her sketch book, writing swiftly without the erasure
of a single word, as if the rhythm of the sun's rays
beating into earth, the rhythm of earth swinging
through space in answer to the pulsations of the
sun, echoed to the rhythm of her own being, pulsing
like the beat of dancer's feet to the rhythm of a
Universe Love. She could no more have expressed
her emotions in anything but rhythm just now than
prehistoric races could have expressed their emo-
tions in anything but dances. Mere words could

THE DAWN

485

not express the pulse of soul to that divine music of
a Universe Love. Verse had the beat of? Lb
in .ts measure; so she wrote in verse:

If you are all I dream of you
And I but half you hope of me-
Then then, dear love, life is too short,
Too brief, by far, eternity-

Our love outsounds the utmost bounds
Ut this poor earth's felicity

* • »

• * •

If you are all I dream of you.
And I but half you hope of me—
I gather grace to gain the more
And pray that I n,ay worthier be-
To love like thine I pour the wine
Of my heart's offering back to thee'

* * * »

If you are all I dream of you
And I but half you hope of me—
Dear heart, such love comes forth from God,
lis dowered with immortality!
Love! Lend us wings to leave low things,
10 make this dream reality!

A Shadow fell across the sicetch-book. At first

he thought It was one of the river steamers whh

sheered close ashore at this point; but the shadovv

ther^'n^ "d ''' '""''' "" '"' ^^ ''"^ ^
th.r h r ?'"' "°' " '^'^°'^- The thoughts

tha had yearned out to meet kindred thoughts the
soul that had pulsed to the heat of a Universe Love^
the highest hopes that she had ever dared to drLm

h !

486

THE NEW PAWN

stood face to face, silent, awed with their reality
in such a sun-bathed effulgence of glory as earth
must have known on the first breaking of light.
"I have just come in on the stage," said Trues-

dale.

She slapped her sketch-book shut as if caught m
crime. They did not remember till long afterward
that each had forgotten to shake hands.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF

EvERvoNE knows the rest of Ward's scheme for

Zd thr"; '^°" '^""''""^^ °^ shareholders
found themselves m possession of stock not wor^h
the value of the paper on which it was engross d

after he first payment, there were no dividends '

Dot, ■ r? u""'/"""'""' P'^''^^^' °f human nature
Dogs hck the hand that beats them. So do men
There wa, very small shrinkage of the adulaTon
grovel,^g o,„, Ward's feet, fie represenlt ^

Power So '"""'''^ ^!"''°"^- "^ «Present,..d
lower. Some natures will always worship that
Tnmty, though there was a dumb wonder ly he
stock venture had not turned out the , me for the
shar. .olders as for Ward. The reason 11?
P>e. They held the wrong end o! TZZ ^"of"

tirw TJTu"' '°' ^ great-deal-of-some!
thmg— Ward had the something. They had th.
nothmg. There were a few compla.nt . tst n
bankruptcy courts, then in legislatures; but tie
ban..ruptcy proceedings collapsed in a compromise
so wonderfully vague that no one knew what
meant; and the legislators bade the losers profit by
487

488

THE NEW DAWN

experience — the only profit from this deal for the
public.

The striice was another matter. The elemental
sensations have a primordial fashion of casting oft
the vestments of convention. Get a man cold or
hungry enough, and he is as indifferent to the
preacher as to the police magistrate. As winter ap-
proached, there arose what Dillon had forewarned
and Ward derided — a vague but unmistakable voice,
the sentiment of the people, which said without any
mincing of words — profits or no profits, the public
must have cheaper fuel; cheaper living. Sentiment
is chiefly commerciable at election time. The legis-
lators gave more heed to this voice than that of the
shareholders. All sorts of communications passed
between Ward and the government. Ward held
out like iron. The strikers held out like iron; and
the price of fuel and food went up till the poor
were smashing up window sashes and door casings
in the tenements for firewood.

The voice of the people became a little louder,
the voice of the editors a little more ambiguously
bold, the voice of the government more urgent.
Ward donated ten thousand more tons of coal to
the poor, which the newspapers again exaggerated
into a hundred thousand; and, when price touched
top notch. Ward sold all the worthless waste of the
coal dumps.

Whether Ward took in the significance of what
the strike meant, or whether his mind had been so
long accustomed to the egoist's point of view that

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 4S,

tell H-. I . *" — "^ vvoul-l be hard f<i

Brute Force as h?h T^ "'"^^/ ^° ^'" '^'''"-' "^
-^^;HeCre^.^l-— ^■-^-
-t of the sSf Wh""' T'' ''^''' ^-^f-
:villbechaH;n:dth:r "^ytL? llf" ''^
.s a chance of charity and .oo^^l" ..^td tr
non b.rds of mankind will flock. Neith r W ' j
nor McGee had counted on this Each h.Zh u

k >«.^fEll

490

THE NEW DAWN

was the rabble th ;t spat in his face; and that there
could b no such thing as the corruption of law at
the pons if there were no rabble to be corrupted.
The weak-brained had a rare chance for the no-
toriety of melodrama. Anarchy lifted up her voice,
and — shrieked. Conservatism grew hysterical. Hun-
gry folk of the gritless order drank carbolic acid in
street cars, or blew their brains out on city squares.
To these disorders neithe,- Ward nor McGee paid
more heed than a locomotive with full steam up does
to toads on the track. People who justify them-
selves usually need it. Neither Ward nor McGee
felt that he needed it. Each had one aim — to Win
— to Win by Force! Each believed that he was
playing his game according to great economic laws
underlying life. Neither purposed letting milk-and-
water, wish-washy sentiment interfere with those
laws. When the clergy began giving advice, it was
like advising gladiators to let go. Either would let
go, if the other would quit first. "Bloodless war" —
the clergy called it; but it was not deathless. Every-
where the death rate increased among the poor.
Then the death rate began to creep up among the
workers, who were out of work, and the hospitals,
where fuel was scarce, and the slums, where high
freights caused high priced food. It was in vain
that pulpit and press looked to history for guidance
in such a dilemma. There was no guidance from
the past, only a finger of warning from the chroni-
cles of some of the old democracies : when the rich
and poor got each other in grapples in those days,

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 49,
;t^was the n,an with the sword who stopped the

everrt'^deHn'th '''""". '^*""" ^""'^ ''"'^ -hat
tell m! '• W V J' '"""""^ " ^°'"8-l'd like you to
III \ u-'^ d«='"='nded of Dillon one ni/ht as

^rco:^/jr' '-'' ''-^ ^'-^^"^^

"Doesn't every tradesman in the land hire heln at
he lowest possible price, and sell goods at the hLJ
est possible price? Isn't that what I am doinLr
The old ,„,„,, y.„^^j ^^^^ apoplec icallv

he as o,es I That's going to open' the dolr fo a"
tha^il" '"«^-«°^""'nent interference, and all

roared WrrnT'- ""f Government be damned."
roared Ward funously. "What business would the
government have to interfere between my wife and

satisZH H ' •'""'r °' "^^«? '' the maid i n't
satisfied, she quits: that's all! No one compels tie

Vm"it7Th'''\"'^' I^ the wages don-rS 1
em quit! They have no more business to compel

pe themTo''^".';^'r "^^" '''" ' ''^^ *° --
pel tnem to work for lower wages!"

"Tell you what. Dillon; this talk of govern-

-Side'ttr' ''r- ''''''' '"'' government'mean?
rfle 7 . ' f °^' "^"""Sh to hold the whip han-
dle, doesn t .t?-And side that's strong enough to

492

THE NEW DAWN

I f

hold the whip handle deserves to hold it — doesn't
it? — Are you going to hand the government of this
country over to a lot of incompetent jackasses with
no thought aboxe Iheir belts? I guess I know what
that means, Dillon : that was my father, about as
competent to say how a country should be gov-
erned as a — well — we'll not say! Who is fit to be
the government — I'd like to know — but the men
who have proved their fitness by creating the biggest
interesti in the country?"

"That's all right — that's all right," blinked the
colonel, feeling himself in deep water, "but, as I've
told yoiv Ward, I don't care one damn who is the
government, or how the country is governed.
Neither does the average man! I'm not out for
glory, and Europe, and that sort of thing! This
proposition as I work it out is — which side is going
to knuckle under?"

"The weak side, of course ! The weak side sur-
renders first! The strong side wins out every time;
and that's right! Way some of these fools talk,
you'd think the earth ought to be given as a Christ-
mas present to all the lazy lubbers who haven't
gumption enough to get up and quit being slugs on
the under side of the board; you'd think that men
who haven't sense enough to manage to feed their
own children should be allowed to manage the
country! That's why I say it is right when the
strong side wins out! That's why if the government
pokes its nose in this afiair, I'll sec that the govern-
ment changes the stripe of its colors — the govern-

nu; CREED CONFRONTS n SELF 493
-n-uhas no ,„„rc right to side with labor than with

-;:^rp:::^ist:".^^hS---pii

gentleman, feding not onlv tlJthl "''^

»:="^;l;-[-,;r;„-;::;-;f,- ^

\ou .m-an to bring in non-union " '

n n 1 f"''"' ''"' '^°=''' ^^here is the kick Colo

consider the outside " "« '» end.-- If wc

Lor?"lt''' f,'''""-"V°"''«"^"='--'^' Good

«r„ ,h„„„„d <„ b, i„ „„ ,^ „ P "'y; The

iccttnosemt. oming in to-night?"

The secretary glided softly into the office ca
ressing his beard abstractedly. '

"Not only the local militia ' I telpnh,.„ A .u
governor to have the State troops .-ady'r"'^'^ "*^

494

THE NEW DAWN

f 'ii

Colonel Dillon rose from his chair, buttoning hii
coat.

"It's only a quarter to ten, Colonel! Going so
early?"

"I . . . . have an appointment with a man I I
wish we were well out of it, Ward ! There will be
the deuce to pay if you bring those foreigners in
here! What if they join the World Workers, as
McGee boasts? We've scored right up to this strike
business! It's the strike knocked the bottom out
of the market and scared the investors off! We
might have doubled proceeds if it hadn't been for
this strike! Good Lord, the pool could have fed
out lines to the market for another year if it hadn't
been for this strike! Elevator running yet? It is
.... eh? McGee boy running it? Relative of
that firebrand, who's played the mischief ....
isn't he? I wish we were out of this thing, Ward!"
He stood buttoning hij gloves. "Anyway, you can
count on me to back you up when you have things
settled," and the director took his portly person off
with a vast waddling of loose flesh through Saun-
ders' office.

"Count on him .... when things are settled
.... when the figi."- has been won without a smell
of hot shot round his red nose? That's your safe
always: preaches you a sermon if you

fail, sings a te deum if you succeed!
doesn't seem at par to-night, Saunders."
Mr. Saunders faintly smiled.

Courage

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 495

nf'ih-'"^ T/' t T/"'"*' "' '^°"'* '""= »»•« look
of things, Mr. Ward."

Th. trouble with the Great Blond Beast is, when
■t .s a man. ,t thinks. Ward had had his own
thoughts of th„ servile tool ir, the per,on of the
secretary ever since he saw Saunders at the trial,
and qu.ckly guessed that Kipp's salary had not been
sen to Feru. Tools were necessary to Tom Ward,
tools that cut; but he took good care to hold the
hand es of such tools. If the government were to
.nterfere, ,t would be a, well to have a grip of iron
on the handle of this particular tool. A man may
ha e you, or want to drain your purse or your blood,
buff he can only do it by hanging himself, he is
not hkely to try. That was why Ward always made
a pomt of puttmg dangerous people at his mercy.
He put them there, and kept them there.

Don't like the look of what?" he asked sharply.
Do you mean the corpse of that fool engineer?
Neither do I l,ke the look of that, Saunders; and
1 like his salary charged up to your credit less I"

i he hand caressing Saunders' beard dropped like
lead. 1 he ferret eyes opene' wide, like a thine
cornered too suddenly for crs . He moistened his
lips twice.

By this time the president was looking at him, and
the look suggested another line of thought.
_^ "I understood," answered the secretary thickly
that I was not to involve the company ..."
that, in fact, you preferred this case should not be
reported to you?"

496

THE NEW DAWN

"But did you understand you were to appropriate
a dead man's salary?" demanded Ward harshly.

Saunders drew up as if an impending blow had
been averted.

Then the president didn't know? It was the
money that was causing trouble.

The secretary's thoughts raced in the leaps of a
pursued weasel, and his eyes closed to the customary,
furtive slit.

"I understood I was to draw on the contingency

fund," he explained. "And and

the company had to pay the widow ofifl"

For a moment Ward sat perfectly, stonily still,
his eyes opening and concentrating . the secretary's
closed and shifted. There was silentt, broken only
by the even, measured ticking of the office clock.

Then the chimrs of the city square rang out

one two three, and Ward had

bounced to his feet with an ejaculation that was
wordless.

"So that is it?" he exclaimed ferociously.

Four five six I The

measured strokes beat not half so loudly as the sec-
retary's heart. There was a pounding in his temples
that dulled thought, a stab like vampire teeth at the
base of his brain, a strange, parching fever in the
roof of his mouth; still he stood there, dejected,
waiting, soft and furtive in his steal'! as a cat.

"By God, sir, now .... I uniiwistand," thun-
dered Ward, seizing both sides of the desk so that
the wood creaked.

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 497

^.^'K'" nine t^nl

chimes. • • icni ra„g ^^^^

vanced till he wa, against the J,', '^.J^ ^l^;';' -'"
-ng over hi,,, „„,„,,, „;„^,^^ ':;:;;;7"^' ^°-

'h-the.anwas\,ea;.\\';'tf;rth-HV
h^-dheen found?. " " "^^ '^e hody

was dead out in the river'" "'" y"u k ...

Saunders looked up. He would have spc „ ■,.
hs tongue uttered no sound; and he saw' "
the presuienfs eyes that was not a look o sid.steo

S::^H:n:h::e;;;rw::^.:;-^^^^

-n his bloodless, upturned f.:t e^ d t3

^r;:^^::u:r/t:'-— 4rt

A tremulous groan escaped from the yellow lips

And that's what McGee meant? . That ^'

why he could have torn the lying Jezebel to pL

for perjury? .... That is why he went fi'hi "

opposite the pool, which you had filled up'"

498

THE NEW DAWN

M I''

■::|-

n I

O- V up on your feet! — It is always weak tools like
/uu spoke 1 e wheels of things "

The sei .etary's teeth were chattering, but he lied
ti- 'he ena, or rather — he accomplished a more no-
table feat. He told the truth and lied in the same
words.

"I," with a long pause, "I gave no orders to fill
the shaft! The foreman filled it without orders
while I was changing my suit! It was a terrible
mistake. I know no more of Kipp's death than you
do "

"And I know too much," harshly interrupted the
president. "And I'll know more when I see Mc-
Gee! Make a note of that! I'll see McGeel If
you are guilty, you'll sign a contract for a hotter
place than this office .... I'll see that McGee
boy, and

As if conjured from the floor, Budd McGee burst
through the felt door panting, white-faced, a picture
of terror.

"The soldiers are comin'," he gasped, "and
there's a mob — in the street — below."

For an instant there was no sound but the ticking
of the clock. Then something rolling in the dis-
tance set the air palpitating.

"Double-bolt the front door," ordered the presi-
dent. "Swing the iron gate, boy" And he switched
out the electric light, leaving the office in darkness.

It was like an ominous growl, long, low, oncom-
ing, a storm rising at sea, the far r-u-s-h of a mighty

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 499

wind that set earth and air palpitating, the swift beat
of an army of marching feet.

"Those men are running!" observed the presi-

turned peremptorily.

'■Saunders, telephone the governor to send the

State troops at once! And Saunders

you needn't chatter all your teeth down yo rihroai
at once! We're perfectly safe here!" ^ "' "''°"*

i he secretary vanished in the dark of the hall

I^Tt'"' ""■"'■''^ ^""'^ '° the window, standing

■n the shadow of the casement. It was lik th w nj

o nsmg storm at first-a deep, full diapason. Then

him to a scream, then the voices 'of h'uman

Zntl' : ■ ■ •.""'P='"t ravenous . .

bloodthirsty, settmg the hollow between the high
buddmgs atremble with a cry .... , hideous crJ

tliroated, . . . shnekmg for its prey: the Great
Blond Bea ., gone mad-the spirit of t'he Mob ! '
A thnll ran round Ward's scalp. He felt a curi-
ous t,ng ,ng, stmging back and forward to his Lge -
t.ps, but It was not fear. It was a fascination hvD
nofc and frenzied-the Spirit of the Mob gon^ mad
down there-the Spirit, mad in his own blooS wi h
a drunkenness of Destruction, hurling men our of
themselves out of civilization, mad with only one
desire and that a Conflagration ! Power '
thought that he knew what Power was— 1

owcr? He had
r was— One-Man

500

THE NEW DAWN

Power! But there was Ten-Million-Man Power,
power enough to blow up the universe with pent
force 1 Death? What did this mad-beast Thing
care for death? It was a ghoul to send death laugh-
ter echoing down to the corridors of eternity I

It came to him, standing alone in the darkness
.... this power .... was .... the People,
... the American People, . . . outraged, . .
balked of Justice, .... baffled of Rights, . .
bursting off all bonds of Justice and Right, . . .
about to do what he had been doing all his life
trample Justice and Right under its feet!

In the most impersonal way, as though he were
watching a pantomime .... a horrible pantomime
of Men reeling back to the Beast — he realized that

they the frenzied People the

myriad-throated, maniacal Thing .... seeking its
prey .... ravenous to glut lust of hunger and
vengeance in blood — were seeking Him . . . .
Tom Ward .... the Unit, that had thought to
dominate the Mass !

Then a voice quivering with a palsy of terror was
sputtering incoherently in the dark.

"They are at every door! What will we do?
. . . All the fire escapes lead down to the street!
The State troops are coming, but the track's been
pulled up to keep out the foreigners ! They are
shouting .... names !"

The secretary was weeping in great wrenching
sobs from the pit of his craven stomach. His man-
hood, held together by the flimsiest hypocrisy, now

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 501

-'as, stripped niedrl^r'i; £r""',f '°^'""-
quaking Terror! "^^^ ^^^^ ^as a

wl'rd°''.S:;S'^'°" '^"r --^'J'" O'-dered
is to get ou of ?he h ."r" Tf ''"^- ^^e thing

-•n fact before t "^^ " '^"' '''°^ '" "P

^Lc oerore the music heains ' VVhv =1, > r j

.-spec *el;„,XX:: „?«??,'■' "=

snalce's blood man ,L. '"'^ "and off— have you

Stand back, sirrUfo^^re^rTr'/^"^"' •

hunger, down there, Saunders-h ,n ^"'"'"' ''

Strange, as the mob h ! P ^" ^"""^ '"ad!"

502

THE NEW DAWN

man might gain the whole world and lose his soul 1
— Theft in the gross, and theft in the small: what
was the difference? — Against Justice, against Pity,
against Right — he had written .... Zero!
Against Justice, against Pity, against Right — the
Mad-Beast Voice screamed, shrieked its . . .
Zero! — Force, the victory of Brute Strength, the
conquest of Might: that had been his creed ! There,
then, was his creed, myriad-throated, let loose, gone
mad in the Mob! — Law — he had laughed at law!
There, then, was lawlessness let loose!— What was
to bind this behemoth of turb'd riot, this Stalliing
Darkness? What to restrain it from avenging Un-
punished Wrong, Naked Want, Anxious Fright? —
He had cast restraint to the winds; so had the
Mob! — he had espoused Force! — There, then, was
Force unleashed!

"You have broken down law," the clock ticked
out to eternity. "You have defied every bond that
binds man to man, that keeps man from becoming
dowti respect of government with a bribe ! How do
you like it? — You have pilfered from the many, and
crushed the weak, and corrupted justice, and broken
down respect of government with a bribe ! How do
you like it when the many come to Icot you with vio-
lence; when you are the weak; when the justice you
have corrupted cannot defend you; when the virtue
of government violated by a bribe becomes — Lynch
;,aw? — There are your deeds: eat the fruits! You
brewed the hemlock: drink it!

"The she-dogs of Hell and of Hate— are let

*^H:r

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 503
loose I Who unleashed them?_The Great BInn I

hool- ,h 7 "n," ''"" y""^ measure o la -

scneme of existence . . . Ward' \Vh

h^ve your little plans shpped a cog?"' ' ' '

He heard the ticking of the clock, just as we miv
no -ce the perfume of a flower in a dea h chan^rr'
un onsaously ; ana ,t gave hin, a curious feeling of a'
fr. iT T ^'"'"^"''ty- luite Alone, utterly cut
from all bonds, utterly beyond earth and the co"
quests o earth wending darkly through Etern y
... .always. Alone; and unconsciously h. began
breath.ng very heavily and fast .... like f!'
s ndcen. Humanity had been to him a ThiniVb!

i^r.-.-.-anJ^Ib^tr^^"^--^-;-
hzation go.ng down under the multitudinous fm'of
the Great B end Beait j u ■

L- ,„ , . . , I '" '^^^^^ and he knew that

he and h,s kmd, more than the mob whom they de
spised, had caused its overthrow.

In the street, McGee, the labor delegate, was
strugghnf between the mob and the iron doors of

504

THE NEW DAWN

w I

the Great Consolidated. Those in front were
pushed by those behind, and those behind crowded
forward by newcomers, pressing, with a brute disre-
gard to gain a place where they could st% trampling,
shoving aside, adding their voice to <-he shout that
shook the streets. Men grabbed the men in front
by the shoulders, and with a leap either threw those
in front under their feet or wedged a place in the
solid mass of mad humanity.

McGee's herculean form loomed like a gladiator's
from the front steps. When he had finished speak-
ing and struck the mob back with the baton of a
policeman, who had fallen, there was a solid wave
backward of the throngs; but when he turned to the
door they were on him again so closely that he could
barely free his arms.

"Cattle," he muttered between his teeth. Then
hf wheeled on them with a shout — "Keep back —
fellows! What would you do? Will it help your
families to be shot down like dogs? Why do you
act like cattle rushing on the shambles? Don't you
know the troops are coming? Who is that fellow
pushing? Knock him down, somebody? He's no
union man I He's a blackguard making riot for
loot "

But he might as well have spoken to a tidal wave.
The flood waters had come through the dikes he
had broken dc-.vn, and he could no longer hold them
back. There were screams, jeers, laughter, rallying
hoots, with the long, low, ominous undertone like

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF jo,

McGee ■•■■"""■ "'"'"eo in," .|,.„„j

called McGee.' ''"'^ '^ """ '^°'"P^"y promises,"

-h-u,k;--c:;:-£;:'S^';^"ffo- that- Too

cine I" ° *"'^"' own medi-

. „ ^^'^'I' assemble asa'm In ffi^

,7°' '•••• Rot!" roared the voices

• •,; ■ wll lose everything we have now

goods ! VVe ve had enough rant "
from ,1,. hinge, " '' ''" """ "" "' i'""

•' J^hey'll get enough of that," muttered
Puttn^ h,s root on the inmost bar If

o..k door till the timbers rattled.

McGee.
the iron
kicking i

5o6 THE NEW DAWN

"Give it to 'em, McGeel Ram her inl Why
don't you fire her? ... "

McGee's coat had caught on an iron spiice as he
slipped down wedged between the iron gate and
the oak doors, and the cloth ripped to his neck. His
hat was gone. His eyes were on fire. The veins
stood out knotted on his neck like ropes, and blood
from the cut of a stone hurled amiss streaked one
side of his face.

"Look out for the troops behind," he warned
with one look back, and he shook the oak door with
all his strength.

The false alarm drew the mob back for the frac-
tion of a second. In that second the oak door
jarred. Then an opening the width of a slit re-
vealed a boy's face peering out.

"Let me in, Budd?" Then, in a whisper: "I
can save the president," and he had thrust his foot
in the opening, and stretched one hand inside on the
padlocked chain.

The boy had opened the door. McGee's big
form was inside. A wild yell came from the mob,
swelling, multiplying, rolling in waves through the
canyoned street. Then all was shut off, for Budd
had slammed the door, snacking lock and bolt be-
fore anyone could jump over the gate.

It was then that Ward and Saunders had noticed
the roar subside to a low rumble. McGee sent the
elevator cage up with a bounce, Budd bounding on
the big man's heels as he threw his weight with a

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 507

pounding rap against the lighted door of the gen-
eral offices. I he glass quivered under his blow
Other door," cried the boy.
And the labor leader dashed into the secretary's
office with a resounding slam of that door. It was
then that Saunders had clasped the knees of the ores-
.dent, who was so intent on the mob outside that he
d.d not hear the noise in the office. Misled by the
light, McGee had plunged through the general
offices. No one was there. Then he caught a
gl.mpse of the dark door ^^■ith the felt dummy He
Hung both door and dummy wide, pushing one door
back, the other forward, and planting his feet firmly
to keep the two doors open.

In the sudden glare two dark figures were sil-
houetted m the half light of the open window

The two men in the window suddenly beheld a
form in the open doorway, wild-eyed, with blood on
his face and hands, clothes torn almost from his
body, and a weapon in one hand. Then the thunder
ot an upheavmg volcano burst from the street in
one shrill, singing scream.

The light had revealed the men in the window to
the mob. McGee stood dazed, for a rifle shot had
npped the air, and something snarling flung against
the labor leader's chest, a weasel on the breast of
an eagle. Craft pinioned to Force! Both doors
slammed shut with a sudden darkness. Sn„n^»,c
I locked in t

grapple of hate.

other's arms, a death

Each had thought the shot aimed at himself

508

THi: m:\v dawn

!i'

^1 Hi

whereas it was tired by a fanatic in the mob at the
exact moment that the light revealed the figures in
the window. There was a scuffling through the
dark across the carpet. The president started for-
ward, but stumbled. When he regained his feet
two figures were crushing backward over the win-
dow sill: the labor delegate plainly trying to hurl
free of the secretary, the vanquished secretary drag-
ging his enemy with him.

It needs but a spark to blow up a mine, but a
spark to alight the conflagration of the Mob; and
the chance shot of the crack-brained fanatic was that
spark. A detonating crash, one belch of death, a
sudden tottering of the great building, and the live
flames leaped to mid-heaven like a monster rocket.
The Great Consolidated had been blown up. The
building was on fire.

In the glare that lighted sky and streets, the up-
turned gaze of the terror-frenzied mob saw some-
thing in the likeness of two struggling men totter
above the windowsill; then there shot through the
darkness .... down .... down .... down,
what struck the pavement ten stories below !

There was a panic scattering. Sky and street
were wrapped in flame. Fire gongs clanged. No
one thought of that other figure in the window, no
one but a child, who clung to the man's arm in the
sooty, smoky dark.

"The elevators are afire, sir! Come up the next
stair. Mister Ward — come quick — there's a fire es-
cape, sir!"

THE CREED COVFROVTS ITSELF ,o.

Crawl un.leJrsr.kr'H';^:""'-'!-^ h^" "P-'
in a hot breath Th K ■ 'P''"'' ''"'^ '"^ked

j.i-a.„.e::L; iixttr^;-:

had the Creed of rh,. 'if- . ^- ^^'i="

stooping to a :I.ea . L; Z Lt "■"" ^'"^'r"
of na^iess parental ft:^,^^'^ ^S::;^^^"'^
realized until afterward when h. 1 . ''"

man grasped the child in his arms and Sh .
over the flame cleared four stairs a a sfep nd fl '

ir:l^r«rfestf""-"^^^^^^'^"-"

The iron railing led past a window, where smoke
rolled out ,n clouds. Pushing from the wall, cTng!

5IO

THK Nl W DAWN

inK to the iron guard, Ward paused before the new
danger. Ilamcs shot through the smoke, throwing
his figure in clear relief against the high wall. Some
one below saw him, and there was a roar of amaiie-
mcnt, followed by a terrible hush.

The mob that would have torn him to pieces and
thrown his body to the dogs of the street but half
an hour ago— recognized, not Ward, the president
of the Gren Consolidated, who had conspired to
conquer the world and master labor, but a Man, a
Man in terrible peril of instant death, coolly car-
rying over his shoulder the unconscious form of a
child. Before dashing through the flame that bil-
lowed from this window above the tire escape, they
saw him pause to wrap his own coat round the boy
as a shield— then he had thrown the boy face down
across his left shoulder, and, clinging to the parapet
of the building with his right hand, he bent and
crawled beneath the shooting flames of the wmdow.
Some one in the crowd cried out that the iron
railing of the fire escape was red hot— didn't peo-
ple see?— that was why the man couldn't hang on to
it Who was the man, anyway? Anyone know who
this man was? Was it McGce? Who were the
men that had fallen from the window r.s the bomb
exploded? Fire gongs were clanging. Policemen
beat the crowds back. All through the Great Con-
solidated glass was going off like pistol shots and
there was a roar that funneled the canyon of the
narrow street into a tornado of red flame.

Suddenly the man was seen again— a black speck

eck

THI- CRFFD CONFRONTS ITSKI.Fsn

crawling agninst the parapet— still holding the hoy.
The man paused, tore the coat from the senseless
form of the boy, and flung it to the street below—
It was in lianie. The crowd saw him next wrap-
ping his own vest round the child— then he disap-
peared in the dark.— Who in all creation was the
man? He was a hero, whoc\cr he wa- . . there
he was again three floors below, down— hanging to
the pa' apet— where the explosion had blown the
iron steps away from the wall ... a shout ... a
cheer ... a multitudinous cry of exultation broke
from the crowds below before they had recognized
the president. — Women cried and clasped each other
— men felt sudden lumps in their throats . . . there
he hung to the parapet, while firemen were raising
the Ijook ladders in feverish haste- then a falling
cornice sent the spectators back In a cloud of sparks
and smoke .... when they looked again the man
was handing the boy's body down to the firemen
strung on the ladder. When he reached the ladder
himself, the spectators went frantic — they shouted
. . . they tossed . . . their caps . . . they cried
"well done," and clapped their hands ... but the
man was seen to stumble on the ladder as if he had
grown faint — firemen were on each side of him,
helping him down .... the shout broke into
fierce, hysterical exultation .... Then suddenly
. . . quieted .... Some one shouted . . . "By
the Lord . . . it's Ward . . . it's Ward himself
. . . it's W^ard risked himself to save the kid's life
... the kid was the elevator boy . . . McGee's

. inK>!scr^

SI2

THE NEW DAWN

nephew." . . . There was a terrible silence . . .
men and women went emotionally to pieces and wept
and didn't know why ... At the foot of the ladder
Ward swayed and fell heavily in a man's arms. It
was Truesdale come up with his motor.

Policemen cleared the crowds back behind the
ropes and would have cleared a way back through
the streets for the car, but Ward was seen to wave
them off as the firemen lifted him to the big
limousine. He raised his head — they were waving
the ambulance forward for the boy. Ward signaled
the firemen holding the boy. The spectators saw
the child laid in the car beside the president. Where
was the Mob, many-headed, riotous, bloodthirsty,
that but a moment before would have torn him to
pieces? A way opened before the car. The onlook-
ers could see that his face was scarred and gashed.
He held his handkerchief to a cut. Not a hand was
raised to threaten or strike as the motor glided
through the open way. But a moment before the
Mob had been bent on murder. Now it was no
longer a Mob — it was humanity touched to its
depths.

As the car wheeled up the park driveway. Ward
turned heavily and looked back. There was a lurid
glare, but it no longer seemed incense from a World
of Work to a God of Traffic. It was a holocaust
to the Spirit of the Mob.

"It looked as if furies were unchained for a mo-
ment or two there, Truesdale," said Ward, holding
the boy carefully.

THE CREED CONFRONTS ITSELF 513

noIZ'^"^"' '°';\S^T''^ f'^^k. What he saw was
no the v.s,on of Labor and Capital in heroic con-
test of Strength .n the Armageddon of McGee's
dreams It was the hght of a conflagration glitter-
-ng on the bayonets and helmets of the State troops

1 say, I rue, m the interest of „f

(he almost said humanity) "common sense,' would
you mmd gomg back and telling those fool troops
not to fire on the .... crowd?"

Labor and Capital had come to the long-threat-

thetr'' ;■ ^"' ''"^ '"* ^'™P^= was-bayonets,
the la t sounds-a measured tramp, a roll of drums,

emelVf '° T'' ^^^ '^^" °" ^'--''ack had
emerged from chaos to restore order and levy
tnbute for h,s serv.ces. Ward sighed heavily and
sank down m his own thoughts.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE ARMAGEDDON

He sat down on the breakwater beam above her,
throwing his hat to the pier.

"Good! — Yju are looliing better!" he exclaimed.
"Is it fresh air or fame? I hear about y^ar pictures
of rural life everywnere. I saw some in a window
on Fifth Avenue; but, do you know, when I went in
to buy them, they bad been sold weeks before?"

She had been surreptitiously shoving her sketch
book under a pillow.

"I didn't know," she answered absently. "You
must remember I am out of the world. There are
neither critics nor price lists here! We do things
here from the joy of living. Perhaps it's neither
fresh air nor fame. Perhaps it is happiness! But
you — you have grown very — grave in these market-
place battles of yours. I hear you are coming out
conqueror. Conquerors should be jubilant "

"When they haven't sacrificed too much for vic-
tory," he interposed.

They did not speak for a moment. She felt,
rather than saw, the shadow on his face. It was
tinged, not with regret, but renunciation. An invisi-
ble but impassable barrier seemed suddenly be-
S14

THE ARMAGEDDON j,^

tween them. All that she had hoped of him he had
more than proved; and yet she felt the reserved
force of the man, the hidden mof -es of character,
to be far greater than what she knew. It gave a
sense of masterful power, of quick, sharp decision,
of straightforward, unswerving purpose. She could

wS J'T ^'''' '*"' •"'" ^^^ '^' P'^ymate of her
childhood days, whose will she dominated and
swayed to lightest fancies. A new strength seemed
to have come out of the battle that had hardened
and stiffened his manhood. She was half afraid of
this new force with its unknown depths, and yet she
was perfectly conscious that, if life accomplished
nothing more, ,t had been worth while for just this-
the exquisite happiness of having been known, and
loved and understood by him. He drew a long
breath, half laugh, half sigh.

"Well, whatever comes, Madeline, it's good for a
person to find a niche, and fill it, and fit it! You
have found yours. Your success proves that! I
suppose a person who aims high must have mo-
ments when distrust of those aims comes; when
despair must be as deep in the other direction ! It's
all right for us halfway-ups, sitting on the fence, to
sit jeering when the aim drops, cheering when the
aim goes up; but I dare say we don't know anything
about those times when you high-fliers look plumb
down where you might drop if you happened to
lose courage! It's all right to preach pretty max-
ims about hard work, and perseverance, and time
opening the way! There are thousands that have

5i6

THE NEW DAWN

been practicing that line of virtues all their lives just
to find themselves wornout old stagers stamped fail-
ure at the end ! How is a person to know whether
he has the stuff in him till he tries? And you've got
to take big risks when you try! Those who aim
high have to fly unhandicapped, turn their backs
on the past for good and all, sacrifice everything
without being dead sure they can win anything! We
marketplace fellows get a lien on the future before
we give out our money, take collateral securities be-
fore we stake the venture; but you artist people
haven't any backing but your own courage ! If your
inspiration turns Out to have been inflation — why—
you've wasted life without anything to show for it
but the spectacle of courage making a shy at the
moon! Most of us haven't the grit for that sort of

thing "

Madeline laughed.

"And when we succeed we are so far below what
we aimed that to us it's failure ! And when we fail

we've at least had the zest of trying "

"Yes, I know, what men call 'the fun of the
fight' whether you win or lose; but do you know I
didn't like to think about your losing? 1 was so
jealous of your not succeeding enough to justify the
attempt that I used to doubt the wisdon- of a woman
trying anything outside the old lines! I think that's
at the bottom of half men's jealousy toward wom-
an's efforts. We don't mind seeing a man making
a donkey of himself by thinking he is a roaring lion
when he is only a braying jackass; but wt do hate

THE ARMAGEDDON jiy

to see a woman play that part! I knew you could
not play the poseur at art— that's one of the things
gave me hope— you were so dashed unconscious of
your aims being high that you just nigged along at
work; out, now that you have disproved my fears
you'il forgive the confession that I used to be deadly
afraid all your youth would slip past in useless ef-
fort; that you'd only gather apples of ashes!"

"And do you think that any toiler ever lived with-
out having the same fear at times?" she asked
^ "But you were right! I was wrong/' he went on.
1 knew that in my sou! of souls all along; but I
knew It better when I saw the people on Fifth Ave-
nue looking at your pictures. Why, one old demi-
rep, of a sewer digger pulled up before the win-
dow grinning with glee. 'Purty near hear them
waters tinklin' in that picture,' he said. 'Purty
near fancy you woz a boy back fishin' on the farm
creek, eh?' I felt as if your picture had given that
old soul a sun bath, Madeline ! I could have shaken
the old beggar by the hand. I began to see how
your gifts belonged to the whole world, not to me

;_ ■ ■_ well ?" Truesdale paused

"while one had a perfect right to love you, it was

quite another thing to come asking "and

Truesdale broke off abruptly.

And Madeline Connor's world suddenly began to
whirl. She looked up to see his face white with com-
pressed emotion. What was it brought the question
to her lips?

"Why did you come?" she said.

St8

THE NEW DAWN

Truesdale knotted his hands very tight round one
knee. That soft tremulo in her voice like the low,
golden notes of a trill — half blending sound and si-
lence, sense and soul — sent a sudden, electric thrill
all round Truesdale's scalp, and down his back, and
out to his finger tips. It was a sense of intoxication
to the music of beauty that one sometimes feels
when orchestral melody fades to a throbbing silence.
It is the sort of music one can hear over and over
in imagination. Truesdale tried to persuade him-
self that it was the tone of her voice which brought
that unwarned thrill.

She had turned to him with her face resting on
her hand, her elbow on the breakwater beam.
Truesdale looked past her hair, not trusting his eyes
from the steamer ploughing the river; but you can-
not very well gaze past an object on a level with
your eyes without being conscious of its presence,
of its form, of its color, particularly if that color
consists of hair gold-shot in sunlight, and eyes with
pupils dilated almost to the edge of the iris, and
hectic spots flushing and waning to each breath.
Truesdale was conscious that the eyes were waiting
for him to answer the question, which was still
tingling its awkward iteration — "Why did you
come?"

"I've been asking myself that question all the way
down," he said. "When I took the train ....
when I took the train

"Yes?" said Madeline.

"I imagined that I was coming to let you know

THE ARMAGEDDON 5,9

necklace, if you needed to sell it ."

"Who did you say he was, True?"

Tr'uSe "^""^ *"'' "'*""' ""'"*'°"'='''" an'wered

"When you took the train, you thought you were

coming about the rubies?"

"But when I reached the stage. I made up my

TJuh' '" »^f' ^f bfcoming famous might not wish
to sell her necklace?"

Madeline's look never left his face. What did
he see? What was she studying? What was she
rymg to dec,de?_SiIence now, and silence forever I

K .;• TV/ ^°' " P'°"'^ ""'"'"^ '° ^°'""= °"t from
behind the barriers of its reserve. Without— says
Scripture-are dogs, and the Kingdom is safest in
our hearts Should she risk the leap to bring that
other into her kingdom? For an instant her whole
existence seemed to hang at poise like a climber
daring a leap across the abyss to reach new heights
Strange how, at that moment, sight and sound
etched themselves on memory forever: the quiet
nuns pacing the convent garden up on the hillside,
reading their sa.,ed books, the quiet nuns of the
cloistered existence, without risk, without fear, gra-
cious of goodness, ignorant of life as children 1 The
voice of the river, swift flowing, hastening to the
u ,, ^'°"^' °^ *^ children from the convent
school I The white-winged, quivering sails where
Jishermen were carrying returns from the year's
catch back to some hamlet home I Everything find-

j30

THE NEW DAWN

ing its aim, hastening to that end; and her own life
at poise I She knew life would never be just the
same to her after that instant. She knew the glory
of life would either become ineffably brighter, or
fade to the light of common day. And then, be-
fore she knew it, her voice was saying in a low,
timid tone that she scarcely recognized as her own:

"And tho' she might not wish to sell the necklace,
you came on — True?"

And the manner of her saying it somehow con-
veyed to him that she was inexpressibly glad he had
come.

Truesdale got hold of himself again.

"I thought that I'd like to see you before you
went back to the world, you know! You used to
belong to us all! Now, you belong to the world

"To the world," repeated Madeline.

"And soon a chorus of people will be singing the
same thing — what you have done for them! I
wanted to tell you what you had done for me before
the tune got old to your ears, Madeline?"

He was watching the long trail of lace fret left
by the river steamer, and such a stillness of sun-
bathed glory lay on the sleeping hills as lighted the
world on that first dawn of day.

"You will help hundreds just as you have helped
me," he declared. "I don't suppose I was either
better or worse than other men when I came back
from Europe to begin life ! It's the spirit of the age,
Madeline : get happiness, and Devil take the hinder-

THE ARMAGEDDON 52,

most! It's the false god of the times: never mind
the grapes; press out the wine, tho' the wine be
blood; it may not be comfortable for the grape;
all the worse for the grape; that's what grapes arc
for! Get Happiness! Get Wealth that conduces
to Happiness 1 Get Dividends that make Wealth !
Get big returns that make Dividends! Get 'em,
tho' you put the public in the wine press, and the
laborer, and the buyer, and the seller, and the in-
vestor! Get 'em fair or square, crooked or clean!
The Only Good is Success— the Only Evil Failure !
Put your scruples in your pocket along with the

profits and get ... . there! That was

lire! I was so dead sure that the good were only
good because it made them happier to be good than
bad, so dead sure that the good were only good as
a sort of mollycoddle to their own failure— that the
word 'Good* did not not mean much for me, Made-
line! You remember that first day in the studio?
You could have had me for the lifting of your hand,
and you knew it; and you didn't lift your hand; and
I thought that I had the most of things that would
mean Happiness for a woman ! At first I thought
there was some other man ! Then I found there
wasn't; and I'm afraid that I cussed your art pretty
soundly! I hadn't any patience with your dreams
and ideals; but I couldn't get away from the memory
of you and what you stood for! I couldn't make
you out. I only knew that you stood for something
the very opposite of the Spirit of the Age; that you
didn't care a cuss for Self; and that you weren't

522

THE NEW DAWN

piously resigned to enemies too strong for you I You
didn't submit to wrong and call it resignation to
Godl You wouldn't kowtow to the Devil, and side
with the winner to save your own skin! I knew all
this, and yet I had scarcely known of you for three
years I I was right, wasn't I?"

Madeline listened, waiting.

"I knew when I bucked against the Great Con-
solidated the world would call me a fool! I was
risking a certain fortune for pretty nearly certain
ruin! I was risking all chance of winning you!
And yet, somehow — I can't explain it — when I
thought of you, I couldn't do anything else than what
I have done! You made me walk up to the
scratch, and do what was right, o- try to find out
what was right by bumping facts into myself! The
thoughts of you somehow made me understand that
life won't pan out unless it's founded on something
deeper than Self!"

Madeline sat silent, thinking, listening, entranced
in reverie. Then his life in the thick of battle had
pulsed to the rhythm of her own. His help in her
life had been an echo of her help in his.

"Is that all?" she asked presently. And again
that low, mellow tremor, blending sound and si-
lence, sense and soul, throbbed like chords echoing
back the music of another soul.

"All?" he repeated. "Isn't it enough? Isn't it
about the whole difference between a hog and a mor-
tal, the Great-Blond-Beast and a man? That's what
I meant when I said you gave my life Purpose!

THE ARMAGEDDON 523

That'i what I mean when I lay you will give many
lives Purpoie; that I must not put myself between
you and that end; that your life must not be di-
verted from using your gifts "

But Madeline stopped him with an impatient
gesture.

"Do you think that art is God's greatest gift in
life? she asked, with all the love, all the yearnings,
all the beauty of her dreams, palpitating in the low,
mellow tones like the throb of light to the sun.

"Madeline," he answered hurriedly, "i: you plead
agamst your art to me, I am lost!"

".iffainst my art?" she repeated, looking up in his
face. I am pleading for it! Do you know why

my art has succeeded? Because you have

given it Purpose I Art is not an end. True! It is
only a means «.o an end, like the language little chil-
dren learn so that they may express the spirit by
and by I I thought there was a higher Purpose in
life than art. True !— Something beautiful as the
Love of God, tender as the Love of Christ I"

"Madeline," he answered quickly, "can I be
strong against this? Do you realize what this
means, dear? Do you know what love is?"

She spoke slowly with breaks of sheer happiness
through her voice in little thrills that would not be
stilled, as though each word were a note of that
golden music flowing out to an eternal sea, throb-
bing to the rhythm of a Universal Love.

"Do I know what Love

is? You have taught me," she said.

5«4

THE NEW DAWN

The flute tremor of tone, the warmth of her
breath across his hand, the light that had come over
her face in a transfiguration — swept him from all
moorings of time and space b> ( i, the bounds of
common moods. He could noi speak. He could
ii.^» :Iiink. Life seemed to have broken in an efful-
gence of glory that overwhelmed the senses, that
snapped the bonds of humanity, that gave him the
Spirit of God without measure. He had no desire
for Time to move on. Time was Now I He lost
all consciousness of Where he was. Who he was.
What he was. He knew only a Presence, the Pres-
ence of that Universe Love underlying all Life.
Life was Love ! And Love was God I

"Why does my work succeed now?" she was ask-
ing. "Before I dreamed a dream and painted
dreams; but there came one whose love put my
dream to shame; whose life was the best picture
of all; who never sought my sympathy; who never
took me at my weakest point; who never talked
goodness, but lived it; who risked all for the sake
of right without thought of reward; who helped me
without letting me know that I was being helped!
Without any boasting or fine-spoken words, True,
this man went into the thick of the fight, and he
lived the dream that I had tried to paint t Oh, I
think God never showed me anything better than
that, True ! I do not think that I ever could have
known that God was Love, if I had not known that
man, True! When life seemed nothing but a wild
beast fight, slimed with the hypocrisy called civiliza-

THIi ARM,\(j1:DD()\ 52J

tion, when justice see.ncil a farce, and love a bait for
lust, and God asleep, this man came to me conceal-
ing his help, with a love that was silent as the I.ove
of God, tender as the I.ove of Christ! Could I do
anythinij but paint hcautiful pictiiies when I saw all
life through the light of his love; when my heart
sang a gloria to God all day for this gift of gifts-
when every thought I thought was his and every joy
I knew went out to him? I must not throw my
gifts away?" she laughed, low, tremulous, joyous
as the thrill of bird song. "And my greatest gift of
all IS the gift this man is going to throw away for
the sake of my art? Oh — i'rue?"

He could not answer. 1 le remembered how he
had watched the white fret of the steamer trail fade
to silver on the river. Then life seemed to break
the bounds of earth, of common moods, of common
words. No words that lips frame could express
that moment when all life, all the lives that had
preceded his life, all the universe, all the ends of
being suddenly merged into the transfi^aration of
this Love. It was the acme of all he had fought for,
all he had not dared to hope, all he had ever read
or dreamed of men's visions transporting beyond
the bounds of time and space. He felt as if he had
caught the skirts of L'ternity, of Immortality! He
could defy Death ! Love was deathless, and love
was his, transfiguring life with the Spirit of God.
There was no past, no present, no future— only
Love, eternal, without beginning and without end.
God wa'. Love. This was Life, Life unquenchable I

S»6

THE NEW DAWN

In Love had they found the Way, and the Truth,
and the Life.

And then, in a whisper, "Oh, Madeline, can we
live this every common day? Isn't it a dream?

And then, low, tremulous, joyous with little trills
and breaks of sheer happiness . . . "No more
common days. True : not a dream .... an awak-
ening!"

"Can we keep it this way always, always?"

And from her, " beautiful as the Love

of God, tender as the Love of Christ!"

And then, words breaking from his own lips, that
he had thought no man had ever uttered. And then
the silence too full of happiness for any words that
lips could frame.

And then, her breath across his hand whispering
. . . "Do you suppose they can see us from the
convent windows?"

Truesdale glanced round with a jerk.

"No," he said; "and, if they did, it would empty
their convent walls."

"Oh, True," and she was laughing, but he could
no more have touched her hand in his present mood,
or drawn her face to his, than he could have pro-
faned a temple.

The courier running down from the convent to
the breakwater saw nothing but two people idly
watching the white sails dip to the tide. The man
doffed his cap and handed Madeline a telegram that
had come in one day late on the noon stage. She

THE ARMAGEDDON

527

opened it, unsuspecting; for messages dail/ came
about her pictures. Then she sprang up with a
low cry, handing the yellow paper to Truesdale. To
him its meaning was deadly clear.

"Mrs. JFard on the outgoing freighter Labra-
dor. Spare no expense to intercept steamer. Presi-
dent JFard suddenly ill."

It was signed by Ward's physician.

Truesdale and Madeline did not speak what each
knew the other thought; and, if souls are damned
for lack of silence, no word of reproach passed the
lips of these two.

"They must have come by the New York express,
the very night I came, by Poston," said Truesdale.

"They?" she questioned.

"And President Ward has sent that himself,"
added Truesdale, and he told her of that last even-
ing at the Ward home.

"Oh, let us do something! Let us act at once!"
she urged.

"When does the freighter Labrador pass here?"
asked Truesdale, turning to the courier.

"She don' stop here ! It was her dat pass here
two hour ago !"

"Then it was the Labrador that passed as we
were watching?"

"Oui, madem'selle!"

They walked up the pier too stunned for words.

528

THE NEW DAWN

"Is there no telegraph on this side of the river?"
demanded Truesdalc desperately.

The habitant shook his head.

"How long would it take us to ride to the nearest
telegraph?"

The habitant shrugged hif shoulders.

"Six hour, mebbe — seven ! Mebbe horse go lame
—eight I"

"To think," said Madeline, "to think that we
have been standing at the very gates of Heaven
while she " but she could not finish.

They were opposite the chapel. Instinctively his
eyes questioned hers.

"Yes, let me go in alone," she said.

She did not sob and cry out after the passion of
her kind. She knelt at the altar wordless, wringing
her hands. Suddenly her grief was aware of some
one kneeling beside her and a hand closed over hers.
It was Truesdale.

Kneeling so, trembling, her grief loosened and
spent itself in a storm of tears.

"I have not prayed since I was a boy," he was
saying, "but I couldn't help following you in! I
never felt God so near! I couldn't help praying
that our love might be kept as beautiful and pure as
the Love of God "

"And as tender and human as the Love of
Christ," she added passionately.

And the light of a sudden comprehension was
about them in a flame. She did not withdraw her
hand. They gazed in each other's souls with an

THE ARMAGEDDON

529

uplift of splendor that would raise anJ illumine their
lives forever. Then in the dim light of the chapel,
awed as in an Immortal Presence, he took her n

his arms and their lips met.

Drawing her hand through his arm, he led ner
out to the sunlight.

They were married that night at the Protestant
Rectory, and entered the stage to return to the city
just as the vespertine chimes of the Catholic Chapel
began swinging and swelling through the valley in
runs, and rings, and Cii lences that echoed to the
purpling hills, to the silver river, to the tide of the
far sea.

What those vespertine chimes sang only Made-
line and Truesdale knew. There were no other pas-
sengers, and, as the stage drew up the hill, they
could hear the chant, faint and far, of the nuns
praising God. Then the stage rolled through the
gap, down to the shadow of another valley. The
night chill of frost and dark closed in round them.
She raised her face with some whisper, throwing hat
and veil and the rug he h,'d placed for her to the
empty seat across the pa i, age. The lift', tallow
candle below the roof under the driver's seat flick-
ered out with a jolt. He drew her into his arms,
and she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder,
wakening now and then to ask where she was, and
uttering little snatches of words, which made poor
Truesdale thank Heaven for the g'ft of life.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE GREAT FACT OF ALL CREEDS

Ward had a persistent fancy all night long after
sending his valet upstairs with the note for Mrs.
Ward that he heard her footsteps gliding through
the house coming to him. Again and again an im-
pulse possessed him to go to her, but he was re-
strained by the consciousness that these very mas-
terful impulses of all their wedded life had been
the yoke that had galled her into an assertion of
her own identity. He had never thought of it be-
fore, but he knew now that never for the fraction
of an instant from their wedding day had he con-
sidered her will, her desires, her happiness. He
had not even permitted her to join in his plans. He
had excluded her from them, and shut ' ^r out from
his own life hopes. He had regardec. her exactly
as he had regarded his yacht, or his house — a
tangible asset combining the qualities of value,
rarity, use, and beauty. If she had been another
type of woman content to play a semi-inanimate
part among the rest of the house furnishings, she
might have filled all Ward's expectations of a wife;
but it was precisely because she was not that type
of woman that Ward had chosen her for his wife.
530

GREAT FACT OF ALL CREEDS J31

He had wanted a possession of distinguished person-
ality, of individual character, of sufficient originality
to stand out from the common herd. He had won
it in his wife, and, by excluding her from his life,
had turned all the force of that individuality in on
itself, with the result that her egoism had become
as blindly dominant as his own. He saw that now
when it was too late.

Once, toward midnight, he thought that he heard
her door open, and he rose from his chair to meet
her halfway, but somewhere else in the dim-lighted
halls another door closed, and utter silence again
fell over the big house. Then the footfalls through
the silent halls seemed to become a ghost of memory
eliding through the past. All the fleet, forgotten
years came back before him, kaleidoscopic, unspeak-
ing, unaccusing, irrefutable witnesses; memory of
that breaking so violently from the old life of shift-
less poverty, of his wife riding through the woods
as a little girl planning her conquests, of the long,
hard years toiling in the dark unknown, of the first,
upward steps half doubtfully, of the first, glorious
intoxication of Success, of the widening outlook on
life each upward step gave him, of how he had
practically bought his wife to save her father, of the
final touching on that pinnacle of an almost Supreme
Power, when the whole world seemed to lie below
his feet, and then the riots like an earthquake or
conflagration overwhelming his kingdom 1 What
was the difference between the anarchy of those
riots and the revolt of his wife? The thoughts be-

532

THE NEW DAWN

came unendurable to Ward. "We have done the
same thing in different ways, she and I," he thnu'rht.
"We have defied everything for Self I We''.c mnde
the same mistake 1 We must pull out of this ....
out of this," he told himself, passing the dim halls,
drawn by an overmastering impulse up the stairs to
the landing toward his wife's room. He wanted to
tell her frankly how they had both made the same
mistake, and then, perhaps, .... He did not fin-
ish the thought, but in his heart half hoped they
might both agree to begin life again.

There was no response to his light rap on the
door of his wife's room. He turned the handle and
stepped in, to find the candles still burning above the
writing desk, the room empty, the little steamer
trunk drawn out from the wardrobe and apparently
packed. Something that Ward had never known
before suddenly gripped and paralyzed his powers —
a great fear. As if by instinct, he locked the door
to shut the world's prying out. Then he caught
sight of the note above the writing desk.

"I'll save her yet, in spite of herself," he said,
crunching the paper in his hand; and he gathered
up all the telltale jewels left piled on the desk, tossed
the bed as if it had been slept in, locked the door
to the maid's room, blew out the candles, and, going
downstairs, telephoned a morning paper that "Mrs.
Ward had left the city for a short visit."

When the maid inquired in the morning "How
long Mrs. Ward would be away," Ward's vnlet
conveyed the information that the carter, who had

GREAT FACT OF ALL CREEDS J33

come for the trunk, was to express it to Canada-
and the servants somehow received instructions,
without being told, to tell all inquirers that Mrs.
Ward had gone to visit Miss Connor on the St
Lavyrcncc. Thus he ;vould save her from herself
to the end.

Even when the coachman announced smilinelv
that Mr^Dorval HebJen had also gone to Canada,
It was offset by the valet's news that the yacht was
to be put m commission for the president to join
his wife at some northern port on the way to Eu-
rope. If some in the servants' hall smiled know-
ingly, their smiles were turned to speculation on
learmng that the valet had been sent to Budd Mc-
Oce in the hospital for the exact address of Miss
Connor in Quebec. That day, when the great spe-
oalist came to consult with the doctors about the
president's symptoms, the patient was found speak-
ing over the long-distance telephone with some tele-
graph office in Quebec.

/''^ stock lists exhibited a distinct flurry in the
U ard securities that day. It was acknowledged that
the financier was ill, but the newspapers, that were
pro-Ward, explained that Mrs. Ward's absence was
proof enough that the president was not seriously
ill. All the next day equipages rolled through the
park to the door, and cards of sympathy for the
great man lonely in his mansion gathered up in
pyramids on the hall tables. Telegrams of inquiry
poured in from premiers and monarchs. Daily bul-
letins were posted on the pillars of the Ward drive-

534

THE NEW DAWN

way, announcing the convalescence of the president;
but what puzzled the doctors was that the con-
valescence did not progress. It was arrested. The
patient neither responded nor sank. He seemed
simply waiting.

Three days after Madeline had received the tele-
gram, Truesdale was ushered into the Ward iibrarj*
to find the president lying back in an easy-chair. 1 he
sick man gave no sign except to motion the nurse
from the room. Then he looked sharply up.

"You have been with Miss Connor?" he said.
"Your marriage was in the morning paper. I wish
you great happiness."

Truesdale could only grasp the extended hand.

"Then it was too late, the telegram, I mean?"
Ward asked lightly.

"Yes, it was delayed on the stage, but I have ca-
bled the steamship company to let Mrs. Ward know
of your illness."

"And I have ordered the yacht across to be at
her services over there. She hadn't the least idea
that I was on the verge of a bust-up when she de-
cided to go away so suddenly. I intended to join
her witu the yacht."

There was silence; then Ward was asking casu-
ally:

"Is it knowi that she was unwise enough to go by
a freighter at this season?"

"It is not known what steamer she went by! I
understood that she was called so suddenly that her
luggage had to be sent afterward."

GREAT FACT OF ALL CKEEDS 53 j

The president gazed long at the fire.

"She was very fond of your wife, Truesdale?"

Somehow the remark had a pleading sound.

"Yes, one of those things we men don't under-
stand, that friendship between women ! They seem
to have more room in their lives for that sort of
thing than men have I I can't tell you how cut up
Madeline was to miss the steamer."

Both were speaking with constraint, each wonder-
ing what the other knew, bridging the abyss with
the commonplace.

"If I should kick off just now," resumed Ward
thoughtfully, "it might be unpleasant; unpleasant
for Louie, you know I Mrs. Ward's absence might
cause remark. As soon as I am well I'll join her
abroad. I am afraid I have let business monopolize
too much of life. True! I owe Louie these lost
years, and will do my best not to kick off too soon,
but I say. True," he laughed awkwardly, "if it hap-
pens that I have to cash my checks — discount the
last, big check ahead of time — can I depend on you
and Madeline to save Louie any nuisance of gossip,
sensational reports about her absence, you know? It
will be three weeks before word can reach I^ouie.
I understand that special steamer of hers makes a
twenty-one-day job of the herring pond — rather
slow if you wanted to get word to a woman that her
husband had taken passage to the other world! It's
all right for Louie — just the thing she needed, a
long, ocean voyage, tone her nerves up; but why
the deuce I had to go off the bat the minute Louie

536

THE NEW DAWN

sails for Europe I — well — I depend on you and
Madeline to sidetrack the gossip 1 By the way, I've
made a little provision for the youngster McGce
your wife used to help! Needn't be surprised, you
two, if I ask you to look after that, tool"

Not another word did Ward utter that might sug-
gest anything unusual about his wife's absence; and,
if a word spoken in season is good, the unseasonable
v.jrd left unspoken is better. They talked far into
the evening, of their past contest, of the farcical
justice of the age, of the ease with which public life
could be debauched, of the sharp, hard lines of bifur-
cation that were splitting the democracy of the nf-w
century into plebeian and patrician classes, of the
danger from such bifurcation to the future of the
human race, of the New Dawn if the two forces
could come together.

"Tell you what it is, True," exclaimed Ward vig-
orously; "you ^ried to swing the marketplace along
the lines of the Ten Commandments without any
force behind to make her gol I tried to swing the
force along without any regards to the great, big,
everlasting laws of right and wrong that underlie
the foundations of this old universe ! And we both
of us pretty nearly came a ripping smash 1 You
have got tt) have Power to be abli to do anything in
this life. Tf you don't control Power, Power will
control you; but you've got to have it founded on
the everlasting laws — call 'em Ten Commandments
or what you like — of Whoever made this old ball
in the first place, and set it spinning through space

(^Ri:at fact of all crelds 537

accordiMK to those law, I You've ^ot to have I'ower
to (ight the wolvc-s, or else turn wolf yourself, or
else he eaten up !

"Tell you what we need, True I It's a Jesus
Christ to put some ginger in the Ten Command-
ments; to teach us the curse of father to children
.snt the spite of a vengeful God, but the taint of
bad blood workmg out in the children; to trace back
the evil act to the evil thought; to show theft in
the gross ,s just as much theft as theft in the small!
You see, True, all this mighty learned talk
about things nowadays is just poking mud to make
believe the waters are deep! Your scientists talk
about transmitted inheritance, accumulated tenden-
cies, and that sort of thing being the impulses weVe
inherited through a billion years or so of evolution
from animal to man! But I'm hanged. True if I
see much difference, when you strip that of big
words, between transmitted impulses to act like a
hog and my poor mother's old-fashioned doctrine of
ongmal sin! When you get it all down to a solid,
rock-bottom basis of hard fact, science stripped of
Its big words, religion stripped of its theologies-
science and religion should be the same thing! At
one stage in the game I thought religion mush be-
cause It seemed to have so much tweedle-dums, and
hymn-singing, and God's-will-be-done to-sit-still-
and-do-nothing when there happened to be a par-
ticularly hard row to hoe ! I decided the Ten Com-
mandments were a crack job put up by cunning
priests to hold the people in tow! I thought I'd be

538

THE NEW DAWN

hanged if I let God himself say what I should or
should not do! I knew most of human laws had
been jobbed by shark lobbyists to fill their own pock-
ets, and I thought about the same of the Ten Com-
mandments — they were good for fellows to keep
who weren't >!trong enough to break 'em and defy
consequenri- , :

"But th;it\ whit<. ! naJe my mistake — I tell youl
I wasn't -.(..(.ntifii pn'mjhl 'Thou shalt not steal'
isn't t'lL riile ot a Ciod ■.\l!o's a martinet I 'Thou
shalt not Jtcal' isn l sa J to keep mc from doing
somi tiling I want to! It's a fact, a matter-of-fact
statement, jdst ns much as 'Thou shalt not put thy
hand in the fire without being burned!' Command-
ments aren't ^Iv n as orders! They're statements
of facts, the same as scientific laws; statKir :its of
the eternal order of things by which the Aiirl^hty-
Some-One runs His job! That's it, Tr.i and u m't
you forget it! I knew all this that •■^.■h> I iin.; . !
up against Lynch Law, when you ssv ■ I i;k v. iHi
your motor! That's the mistake Louiv nr.i.L' t-io.
you know! Only she dressed her excuse; if: i i/f>fi-
faluting nonsense about 'self-satisfaction, nnd Cvc
being above law,' 'and the gratification of impulses
being right because they spring from the soul, which
is a part of God.' I don't see much difference be-
tween Louie's reasoning and the modern gabblers,
who say 'commerce is too complicated' for the old-
fashioned limits! By Jove, True, I wish she were
here to-night! I think we could both see things
as we never did ueforel You know she realized

GREAT FACT OF ALL CREEDS S30

that I was off the track all along, but somehow ,1,.

couldn t make me s tl But I see it now

I see it now!

"You tried Goodness without I'owerl I tried
lower without (ioodnessl Won't go. True'
rou ve K"t to hitch the two up together tight, or
you I have a stinking mess of rotting ideals on your
hands, .,n<l I'll have Lynch Law! We've got to
h.tch cm together tight. Goodness and I'ower, to
keep our new <iemocracy from splitting on the old
Imcs of class hate! Seems to me if we can get that
combination— (Joodness and Power— it's bigirer
than the (ireat Consolidated ! It's a New Dawn for
humamty. It's better than hogging the whole earth
for half a dozen men! It will roll the human race
along a peg or twc to a \ew Humanity!

"Come again," he said, as True rose to leave
I hey say strong men die hard, and I'm too strong
to die without a vigorous kick! I'll fight 'em to the
end, the way those old Norse fellows used to sail
out on a bark when they were going to die and meet
It in storm! Come again, and we'll talk this new
combination over! I feel the way I did when I set
out from home long ago— as if I had got hold of a
great, big idea worth fighting for, as if half a dozen
men bound together with this Idea— fighting fel-
lows with lots of blood and brawn— might hoist the
race ahead by a century or two ! I feel as if I might
begin a new life with this idea, and don't forget "
he called, as True passed out, "don't you forget
you're a lucky devil to have such a wife!"

'wm

540

THE NEW DAWN

f I

True left the house with almost a liking for this
bandit of the marketplace, who aimed greatly and
succeeded greatly, independent of scruple or re-
straint, and who now seemed to be aiming the great-
est of all.

Before going to bed, Ward asked the nurse to
hand him an iron box, from which Le drew the
miniature of a child's face with long black curls,
a lock of hair framed in ebony and a broken string
of corals such as little girls used to wear. They
were childhood keepsakes of his wife. He placed
them under his pillow. Then he bade the nurse draw
her cot outside the door, for he knew that he could
sleep better alone in the room.

Twice during the night the doctor tiptoed up
from the library, and looked in hopefully at the
sleeping face.

"It's odd how such a splendid body doesn't re-
spond to the stimulants! It's against all science,"
said one physician, "but that sleep is natural!"

But so is Death natural, and against it no reme-
dies avail, for when the nurse looked in at four in
the morning the president was sitting up in bed with
hands clenched to the counterpane in the tensity of
their struggle. Like the Norse heroes, he had
fought to the end, and no one had witnessed his
defeat. The great Force was dead.

The doctors announced an elaborate diagnosis of
exactly what heart complications had caused Ward's
death. Sermons and editorials moralized on the

GREAT FACT OF ALL CREEDS 541

hiRh pressure of living which had cut down in his
pn.nc such a man of strength as Ward; but 1 think
A.adehne and Truesdale could have told the real
cause of h.s death in fewer and simpler words,
ihe deta.ls of the obsequies do not concern this

Zotr'"' " '''' ""^^^ ^''^ 'P'"' °f ^he time!
and one newspaper announced that forty billion dol-
la were at Ward's funeral in the person of the
pallbearers. Madeline and Truesdale followed the
remams to the yacht, which bore the body to a
niausoleum ,n those foreign countries which Ward
i'ad thought to conquer. Xcar his resting-place, it
was sported, Mrs. Ward had retired prosfrL witL

A society journal of the muck-rake species gave

2 account that was too guardedly nameless to be

.bclous and too thmly veiled for any concealment

f two runaway lovers escaping a husband's wrath

l'> seekmg refuge on a slow freighter, where they

pent a honeymoon of three weeks on mid-ocean

How lover-hke that honeymoon was we may guess-

but any goss.p the report may have caused about'

H,at ZT ''"^'" "'^ ^■■''"'P^'y disproved by
that gentleman at once coming back to America
where he frequented club life as before. The ad-

m^' 'u" "P"'"' "PP"'-'"^ in this particular
weekly was that ,ts name was generally a guarantee
of untruth. Only people who wante'd to be e"
cred,ted what ,ts columns reported. About that scar
of a ut above h.s eyes Hebden vaguely referred to

544

THE NEW DAWN

To be sure, when Mr. Dorval Hebden was onc(
twitted in the club regarding a hurried trip to thi
moose grounds of Quebec, he assumed a smile thai
might be taken for either consciousness of his
prowess, or indulgent regret over past folly; bul
when it was noticed that his air suddenly changed
on hearing that Mrs. Ward had inherited the whole
of her husband's enormous fortune except hand-
some bequests to Budd McGee and Mrs. Jack
Truesdale, some of the clubmen expressed very
frank opinions about Mr. Dorval Hebden, which it
is not pleasant for a gentleman to overhear.

"I could respect him if he were even a manly,
decent blackguard," a voice had said, and Mr. Dor-
' al Hebden passed out of the club with sensations.
He was always so very sympathetic, so very con-
siderate, so very comprehending without being told
—was Mr. Dorval Hebden, and that quality con-
tmued to give him great favor in women's eyes.

As for Truesdale, he gave his wife two wedding
gifts: the necklace which the ruby crank had suc-
ceeded in buying, and the check which the ruby
crank had paid for the jewels.

THE END

was once
rip to the
smile that
is of his
folly; but
r changed
the whole
:pt hand-
Irs. Jack
ised very
, which it
ir.

a manly,
Mr. Dor-
snsations.
I'ery con-
eing told
ility con-
eyes,
wedding
had suc-
the ruby

iatttiii«««i«MMH»