II

Now, what Laura, his wife, knew is not for us to say. She held her peace. Never a word of complaint, or taunt, or reproach, or of longing came to her lips. Never did she repine at the situation of life which held them for more than a dozen years after they were married—one of perpetual monotony, of narrow, iron-bound restraint. After some incredible, some miraculous way of womankind, she managed to make the ends meet, indeed even to overlap a trifle at each week-end. She smiled in the morning when he went away, smiled in the evening when he returned, and if meanwhile she did not smile again throughout all the day, at least she did her part. A great soul, this of Laura Rawn; but no greater than that of many another woman who does these things day after day until the time comes for the grave, wherein she lies down at last with equanimity and calm. Without unduly flattering the vanity, without overfeeding the egotism of her lord and master, at least Laura Rawn was wise enough to see he could not be much changed. Finding herself thus situated, she accepted her case and spent her time doing what could be done, not wasting it in seeking the impossible. He was her husband, that was all. She knew no better way of life than to accept that fact and make the most of it. Which is tragedy, if you please.

III

After the birth of Grace Rawn, their daughter, which occurred within the first year of their wedded life, Laura Rawn had something to interest her for the remainder of their days. Her horizon widened now immeasurably; indeed to the extent of giving her a world of her own wherein she could dwell apart quite comfortably; one in which her husband had no part. Simple and just in her way of thought, she accepted the truth that without married life, without her husband, this new world could not have been her own. Wherefore she credited him, and in her child, somewhat reverenced him. She was an old-fashioned wife.

As to the child herself, she grew steadily and normally into young girlhood, in time into young womanhood, not given to much display, reserved of judgment as well as of speech, ofttimes sullen in mood, yet withal a step or so higher than her mother on the ladder of feminine charm. She had a clean, good family rearing, and a good grammar school education. At about the time her father came to be a man of middle age, Grace fell into her place in the clerical machine of the railway office where he worked; for very naturally, being an American girl of small means, she took up shorthand, and was licensed to do violence. At home she joined her mother in regard and attention for the master of the house.

IV

Here, then, was simply a good, middle-class American family, offering for some years little to attract the attention of those who dwelt about them. The head of this family, as he attained additional solidity of figure, grew even heavier of brow, trod with even more stateliness about his appointed duties. It was a privilege for the other clerks who labored near him to see such calm, such dignity. On the street John Rawn asked no pardons if he brushed against his fellow-man. In his business life, in his conduct upon the street-car, at the restaurant table, anywhere, he helped himself as though of right, and regarded the rights or preferences of others not at all. The community cream, the individual butter, he accumulated unto himself unsmilingly, as once he had bananas in his youth. Broad hints, deprecating smiles, annoyed protests, all were lost upon him. At forty-seven years of age his salary was but one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. That showed only the lack of wisdom of others, not unfitness in himself. Had this been Greece, or Rome, or mediæval England, he would have shown them who was entitled to the throne! Indeed, he would show them that yet. He often told his wife and daughter as much.

Did we not know the genesis of Mr. Rawn, and did we not know full well the divine right of kings, we might call this rather a curious frame of mind for a man who dwelt in a small house with green blinds and a dingy back yard, for whose conjoint charms he paid but twenty dollars a month, on whose floors there was much efflorescence of art square, upon whose be-lambrequined mantels showed few works of art beyond a series of bisque shepherdesses and china dogs, on whose parlor table reclined a Dying Gaul, and on whose boudoir walls hung an engraving of the Rock of Ages. But John Rawn bided his time. He went on year after year, grave and dignified, perhaps one new cross wrinkle coming in his forehead with each Christmas, recorded by one more annual shepherdess upon the family mantel.

V

And yet all this time success was lying in ambush, as it sometimes does, ready to spring forth at the appointed hour. At about this time there occurred changes in the arrangement of the planets, the juxtaposition of the spheres, which meant great alteration in the affairs of John Rawn, of Kelly Row, who dwelt in a brick house six miles out from the railway office where he had worked for twenty-four years, and where he had risen in so brief a time all the way from forty to one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month.