He read: "Charles S. Halsey, The Palatial, New York: Your child is a girl. The mother is doing well. You would best return at once. There is a slight deformity. You must share this grief with the mother when she knows—"
Rawn dropped the message to the floor. Halsey's face looked so desperately old and sad that for one moment Rawn almost forgot his own grief. "You'd better go on home, Charley," he said. "Too bad—to get such news now! But isn't that just like a woman!"
CHAPTER VI
IN PROPER PERSON
I
John Rawn stood looking at the unceasing throng which surged confusedly through the corridors of the gilded hotel. Warmth, music, a Babel of voices, were all about. There approached a little group of laughing men coming from the carriage entrance, bound, no doubt, to a banquet hall somewhere under the capacious roof. One voice rose above the the others as the group advanced. There appeared, rapidly talking and gesticulating as he came, a ruddy-faced, stocky figure, with head close-cropped, jaw undershot, small eyes, fighting terrier make-up.
"I tell you, gentlemen, I'll compromise not in the least on this matter! It makes no difference what they do with the ticket or with me. There's only one way about these matters, and that's the right way! I care nothing whether this man be a rich man or a poor man. The only question is, whether he is right. If he is not right, he will never—I say to you, gentlemen—" this with close-shut jaw and fist hard smitten into palm—"I say to you, it makes no difference who he is or what he is, he'll never win through; and in the event you suffer from us—"
He passed on, gesticulating, talking. Men commented audibly, for there was no mistaking a man idealized by some, dreaded by others, scorned by none, anathematized by not a few. He was to address that night a meeting of independent politicians, so-called, here in the very house of individualistic power, and many old-line members of his party had their doubts, the fear of a new party being ever present in the politician's mind—the same fear professional politicians, Whig, Democrat, what-not, had of the new party formed before the Civil War at the command of a people then claiming self-government as their ancient right—as now they begin again to do, facing our third War of Independence.
"Going strong, isn't he?" commented one sardonically, within Rawn's hearing.
"That's all right, my friend," was the smiling answer of yet another. "Strong enough to make a lot of you hunt your holes yet. There's quite a few people in this little old country outside this island—and he'll—"