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12 The TWILIGHT of OPPORTUNITY ICHARDSON Sanderson closed his ma hogany desk and drew a long breath as he heard the bolt fall quietly into place. There was a finality about its half-aud ible click that soothed and satisfied him. He stood for fully a minute, his hand still resting on the polished wood; his eyes traveling far, far over the smoky parapets that glistened underneath his office window, to the blue belt of hills that grazed the sky-line beyond the limits of the huge city. It had come at last—the day for which he had toiled and waited so long. The last paper had been signed; the last check had been endorsed. His business was sold—converted first into cash and then into gilt-edge bonds. In his hand, as he rose and walked to the window, he held a package of engraved paper which, with sundry like packages in his box at the bank, made him a millionaire. They had been hard, perilous years, from the be ginnings of that business until now. He had risen early and gone to bed late. He had thought it nothing to miss one and two meals a day. He had schemed and planned and hoped and feared—de nying himself, neglecting his friends and even his family—that he might enjoy this good hour. And the hour had come. It was no dream or fig ment of his fancy. It was solid truth. Richard San derson, millionaire, had come into his own. As he stood at the window, which was raised to admit the late summer breeze, he followed with his mind the wide track which his eyes mapped out along the bluish hills; and thence to a larger zone that embraced all Nature—all the mountains and oceans and little boiling towns, the planets and stel lar systems. His mind, emancipated as by a single blow from the self-wrought fetters of routine, leapt suddenly out of the narrow circle in which it had been so long confined, and paused just this side of madness. The recoil was swift, and scarcely less violent. A blank numbness overcame him. Was it really true? and was the long battle actually over? Was he indeed free—free to do as he pleased, think as he pleased, write and talk as he pleased, without fear of the Wolf, without counsel of Bull and Bear? He turned, somewhat unsteadily, and took his hat and stick from their accustomed place. At the door he halted. Conway had not handed in his re port. Then he laughed confusedly. There was no re port. Conway was hereafter chargeable to his new employers. Poor, honest Conway! How faithful he was; how sure and capable—never lacking in re source ; yet always with the still, sad smile of a man whose heart is slowly dying within him for want of a genial atmosphere. Sanderson’s ride home, after a short visit to the safe deposit vault, was purely automatic. He had done the same thing in the same way at the same hour for so many years, that it was no longer an act of conscious volition. He hailed the proper car, got off at the proper crossing, and walked to the proper house, without any effort of will or inter ruption of his chain of thought. Not until he was well within his own living-room, and his wife had seated him by the coolest window, and made his iced tea for him with her own hands, did he realize that he was not only home at last, but home to stay. It was his wife who broke the silence. “Is ev erything all arranged, now?” she inquired. “Yes,” he answered, “it is all settled. I bought the last batch of bonds to-day.” (She leaned forward eagerly. “And you won’t have to go back to work?” “I’m not even going back to the office. Conway will have my desk sent out here.” Her hand sought his with an old instinctive move ment that had some how fallen into disuse of late years. Their eyes met; his tired, but content; hers, wide open and illumined with a large tenderness. “I am so glad,” she murmured; and then, after a moment, “because now you cun rest, and study, wrjfe," . . . , s _ CHAPTER I. The Golden Age for March 22,1906. B William Hurd Hillyer “Yes,” he repeated, as if he hardly grasped the full meaning of her words, “yes, I can write. 1 can write.” “And be with meand the children,” she added, softly. He flung his arms about her with a sudden im pulse. “Yes, my darling,” he whispered, “my faith ful sweetheart wife, the bright days have come! No more worry and hurry; no more daily, deadly grind! I am free, Esther. Now at last I can truly live!” “I shall expect great things of you, Richard. And when your book is published, and you are famous, I shall be even more proud of you than I am now.” He kissed the hand which she had placed in his. “You have always understood me, Esther. And you have always rated me higher than I deserved. I only pray that from henceforth I may not fall so far short!” The desk arrived the next day. Sanderson had it earned up to his study—otherwise called his “den.” This was a small room adjoining the library, which occupied the entire front of the second floor. Dur ing ten years of increasing prosperity, the master of the house had gathered a well-selected library of several thousand volumes, which reposed in per fect order along the weathered-oak shelves; their rest unbroken by any touch more rude than the housemaid’s feather-duster. Here, Sanderson thought, as he stood in the doorway of his study, were treasures inexhaustible. Here he would pass the greater part of his time, in company with the noblest minds of the ages. Here he would read, and learn, and think; and at yonder desk he would write. Mechanically he turned to the desk and opened it. The first thing that met his eye was a letter from a friend of his out in Montana offering him a third interest in a somewhat unpromising mine for a ridiculously small sum. He remembered, with an illogical thrill, an item in the morning paper stating that this very mine had developed a rich pay streak and that the stock was soaring skyward at a rate that passed all precedent. “I should have bought that,” he muttered, spreading the letter out on the tray. “That is, I would have bought it if I had been going to stay in business.” All the papers relating to the current affairs of the factory had been turned over to the new owners. There were left only a few packages of personal letters recently received, and his private account books. One of these last he now opened: and noted with silent satisfaction the fresh entries, in pale ink not yet darkened by age, recording the sale of the factory and the conversion of the purchase money into gilt-edged securities. Then he took from a nearby shelf a small bottle of red ink and found a clean pen. He seated himself at the desk, with the book out before him, and poised the becrimsoned pen above the page for some seconds before writ ing anything. At length, after a preliminary series of gyratdons, he wrote, below the last entry: “July 30th. Retired from business this day. Will travel abroad and engage in literary work.” Underneath this he drew a double red line. The study was very quiet. Its thousand cubic feet of silence were unbroken by any sound harsher than the twittering of sparrows in the eaves and the occasional faint rhythm of a passing vehicle. Athwart the open door of the library slanted a streak of sunlight, as if to bar the way. Beyond, ranged in solemn rows one above the other, were Shakespeare in brown, Dickens in olive-green. Bal zac in rich maroon. Sanderson rose from his desk, and stood with his hands in his pockets, peering absently at those pregnant shelves. Something in the atmosphere that hung about them stirred with in him vague hungerings that had long lain as dead. Vividly there flashed before him a certain April morning in the world’s yesterday, when he had climbed a hill—that same great, sloping hill— tbw was but b&d on tbe bigbeot boub (IN TWO PH-RTS) der and looked out at the clouds and flat circle of earth. Then it was that the Sense of Brother hood first came to him. He watched the blue smoke up-curling from the chimneys of a farm-house; the slow, peaceful crawl of a hay-wagon along the road; the minute horse-insect that worked its way back and forth over the arable. Far off among the pines he heard the confident yell of a locomotive, followed by the faint but distinct rattle of heavy cars and the whine of brakes. All the dreams of his dreamy childhood, all the fancies and ideals and longings that his life had ever held, crowded in upon him as one supreme impulsion. Gradually, almost tang ibly, he felt himself lifted out of himself and placed as it were upon the summit of another and loftier hill, of which this was but the temporal counterpart. Then, more plain than spoken words, came the Mes sage. Through all the twenty years that had passed since that day, lie had kept the Message in his heart, ready to give it to mankind—when he should have opportunity. It was a healing Message, full of strength and power and comfort to those who toil in the world’s galleys—a new and noble Message that would have circled the globe and smoothed out many of its sad furrows. But he did not utter it then, when it first came to him, because he lacked the full equipment of language. He must first study his mother tongue, that his words might be keen and swift, and that he might say so clearly that those who heard could not do otherwise than listen and understand. He did not utter it later, because during his last year at college a friend in the tech nical department had perfected what seemed to be a very valuable invention, and Sanderson had invest ed his modest patrimony in exploiting the same. This was the first of a series of business ventures, all more or less fortunate, culminating at length in the large establishment which he had just disposed of. There was a fascination about doing things— real, touchable things—that irresistibly caught and held him. All his thoughts, his energies, his very dreams, became focussed upon the so-called “prac tical” objects. And because, especially after his mar riage, money seemed to be the most practical thing in the world, his aim slowly shifted until it pointed to that same dollar mark which lured and deceived his fellows At first this aim was unconscious, and Sanderson persuaded himself that he was in busi ness simply for his daily bread. Even when his for tune rose beyond thtf average of physical and per sonal need, and his motive became self-confessed, he still cherished the theory that his pursuit of money was tentative and experimental—a mere preparation for his life-work, which was to be the complete publication of his Message. He resolved that as soon as he could realize a quarter of a million dollars, he would invest all in safe securities and de vote himself entirely to this larger calling. The fig ure was afterwards raised to five hundred thousand —to a full million. And there his natural decision of character asserted itself and, as we have seen, he made the long contemplated change. So Richard Sanderson, millionaire and forty years old, stood irresolute before his book shelves, not knowing which volume to choose—like a schoolboy at a confectioner’s. It had been so long since he had tasted one of those literary morsels that he could not remember which were bitter and which were sweet. Just for no reason in the world, he chose a volume of poems by Matthew Arnold. Almost the first stanza which caught his eye was the following: “Thoughts light, like dreams, my spirit’s sky, But they will not remain. They light me once—they hurry by And never come again.” The verses did not please him. He shut the book and put it back on the shelf. He took down one volume after another, but none of them interested him. Then he walked the floor for ft Jong time—a habit of his when (Concluded on page,)