In fact, he was barely past sixty, was at an age at which city men of
the modern style count themselves young and even entertain--not without
reason--hope of being desired of women for other than purely practical
reasons. He was born on a farm--was born with an aversion to physical
exertion as profound as was his passion for mental exertion. We never
shall know how much of its progress the world owes to the physically
lazy, mentally tireless men. Those are they who, to save themselves
physical exertion, have devised all manner of schemes and machines to
save labor. And, at bottom, what is progress but man's success in his
effort to free himself from manual labor--to get everything for himself
by the labor of other men and animals and of machines? Naturally his
boyhood of toil on the farm did not lessen Martin Hastings' innate
horror of "real work." He was not twenty when he dropped tools never
to take them up again. He was shoeing a horse in the heat of the cool
side of the barn on a frightful August day. Suddenly he threw down the
hammer and said loudly: "A man that works is a damn fool. I'll never
work again." And he never did.
As soon as he could get together the money--and it was not long after
he set about making others work for him--he bought a buggy, a kind of
phaeton, and a safe horse. Thenceforth he never walked a step that
could be driven. The result of thirty-five years of this life, so
unnatural to an animal that is designed by Nature for walking and is
punished for not doing so--the result of a lifetime of this folly was a
body shrivelled to a lean brown husk, legs incredibly meagre and so
tottery that they scarcely could bear him about. His head--large and
finely shaped--seemed so out of proportion that he looked at a glance
senile. But no one who had business dealings with him suspected him of
senility or any degree of weakness. He spoke in a thin dry voice,
shrouded in sardonic humor.
"I don't care for lunch," said Jane, dropping to a chair near the side
of the table opposite her father. "I had breakfast too late. Besides,
I've got to look out for my figure. There's a tendency to fat in our
family."
The old man chuckled. "Me, for instance," said he.
"Martha, for instance," replied Jane. Martha was her one
sister--married and ten years older than she and spaciously matronly.
"Wasn't that Davy Hull you were talking to, down in the woods?"
inquired her father.
Jane laughed. "You see everything," said she.
"I didn't see much when I saw him," said her father.
Jane was hugely amused. Her father watched her laughter--the dazzling
display of fine teeth--with delighted eyes. "You've got mighty good
teeth, Jenny," observed he. "Take care of 'em. You'll never know what
misery is till you've got no teeth--or next to none." He looked
disgustedly into his bowl. "Crackers and milk!" grunted he. "No teeth
and no digestion. The only pleasure a man of my age can have left is
eating, and I'm cheated out of that."
"So, you wouldn't approve of my marrying Davy?" said the girl.
Her father grunted--chuckled. "I didn't say that. Does he want to
marry you?"
"I didn't say that," retorted Jane. "He's an unattached young man--and
I, being merely a woman, have got to look out for a husband."
Martin looked gloomy. "There's no hurry," said he. "You've been away
six years. Seems to me you might stay at home a while."
"Oh, I'd bring him here, popsy I've no intention of leaving you. You
were in an awful state, when I came home. That mustn't ever happen
again. And as you won't live with Martha and Hugo--why, I've got to be
the victim."
"Yes--it's up to you, Miss, to take care of me in my declining
years.... You can marry Davy--if you want to. Davy--or anybody. I
trust to your good sense."
"If I don't like him, I can get rid of him," said the girl.
Her father smiled indulgently. "That's A LEETLE too up-to-date for an
old man like me," observed he. "The world's moving fast nowadays.
It's got a long ways from where it was when your ma and I were young."
"Do you think Davy Hull will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard
from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a
generation before--of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its
repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and
attractive--how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about
the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career in politics,"
she explained.
The old man munched and smacked for full a minute before he said,
"Well, he can make a pretty good speech. Yes--I reckon he could be
taken in hand and pushed. He's got a lot of fool college-bred ideas
about reforming things. But he'd soon drop them, if he got into the
practical swing. As soon as he had a taste of success, he'd stop being
finicky. Just now, he's one of those nice, pure chaps who stand off
and tell how things ought to be done. But he'd get over that."
Jane smiled peculiarly--half to herself. "Yes--I think he would. In
fact, I'm sure he would." She looked at her father. "Do you think he
amounts to as much as Victor Dorn?" she asked, innocently.
The old man dropped a half raised spoonful of milk and crackers into
the bowl with a splash. "Dorn--he's a scoundrel!" he exclaimed,
shaking with passion. "I'm going to have that dirty little paper of
his stopped and him put out of town. Impudent puppy!--foul-mouthed
demagogue! I'll SHOW him!"
"Why, he doesn't amount to anything, father," remonstrated the girl.
"He's nothing but a common working man--isn't he?"
"That's all he is--the hound!" replied Martin Hastings. A look of
cruelty, of tenacious cruelty, had come into his face. It would have
startled a stranger. But his daughter had often seen it; and it did
not disturb her, as it had never appeared for anything that in any way
touched her life. "I've let him hang on here too long," went on the
old man, to himself rather than to her. "First thing I know he'll be
dangerous."
"If he's worth while I should think you'd hire him," remarked Jane
shrewdly.
"I wouldn't have such a scoundrel in my employ," cried her father.
"Oh, maybe," pursued the daughter, "maybe you couldn't hire him."
"Of course I could," scoffed Hastings. "Anybody can be hired."
"I don't believe it," said the girl bluntly.
"One way or another," declared the old man. "That Dorn boy isn't worth
the price he'd want."
"What price would he want?" asked Jane.
"How should I know?" retorted her father angrily.
"You've tried to hire him--haven't you?" persisted she.
The father concentrated on his crackers and milk. Presently he said:
"What did that fool Hull boy say about Dorn to you?"
"He doesn't like him," replied Jane. "He seems to be jealous of
him--and opposed to his political views."
"Dorn's views ain't politics. They're--theft and murder and
highfalutin nonsense," said Hastings, not unconscious of his feeble
anti-climax.
"All the same, he--or rather, his mother--ought to have got damages
from the railway," said the girl. And there was a sudden and startling
shift in her expression--to a tenacity as formidable as her father's
own, but a quiet and secret tenacity.
Old Hastings wiped his mouth and began fussing uncomfortably with a
cigar.
"I don't blame him for getting bitter and turning against society,"
continued she. "I'd have done the same thing--and so would you."
Hastings lit the cigar. "They wanted ten thousand dollars," he said,
almost apologetically. "Why, they never saw ten thousand cents they
could call their own."
"But they lost their bread-winner, father," pleaded the girl. "And
there were young children to bring up and educate. Oh, I hate to think
that--that we had anything to do with such a wrong."
"It wasn't a wrong, Jen--as I used to tell your ma," said the old man,
much agitated and shrill of voice. "It was just the course of
business. The law was with our company."
Jane said nothing. She simply gazed steadily at her father. He
avoided her glance.
"I don't want to hear no more about it," he burst out with abrupt
violence. "Not another word!"
"Father, I want it settled--and settled right," said the girl. "I ask
it as a favor. Don't do it as a matter of business, but as a matter of
sentiment."
He shifted uneasily, debating. When he spoke he was even more
explosive than before. "Not a cent! Not a red! Give that whelp money
to run his crazy paper on? Not your father, while he keeps his mind."
"But--mightn't that quiet him?" pleaded she. "What's the use of having
war when you can have peace? You've always laughed at people who let
their prejudices stand in the way of their interests. You've always
laughed at how silly and stupid and costly enmities and revenges are.
Now's your chance to illustrate, popsy." And she smiled charmingly at
him.
He was greatly softened by her manner--and by the wisdom of what she
said--a wisdom in which, as in a mirror, he recognized with pleasure
her strong resemblance to himself. "That wouldn't be a bad idea, Jen,"
said he after reflection, "IF I could get a guarantee."
"But why not do it generously?" urged the girl. "Generosity inspires
generosity. You'll make him ashamed of himself."
With a cynical smile on his shrivelled face the old man slowly shook
his big head that made him look as top-heavy as a newborn baby. "That
isn't as smart, child, as what you said before. It's in them things
that the difference between theory and practice shows. He'd take the
money and laugh at me. No, I'll try to get a guarantee." He nodded
and chuckled. "Yes, that was a good idea of yours, Jen."
"But--isn't it just possible that he is a man with--with principles of
a certain kind?" suggested she.
"Of course, he THINKS so," said Hastings. "They all do. But you don't
suppose a man of any sense at all could really care about and respect
working class people?--ignorant, ungrateful fools. _I_ know 'em.
Didn't I come from among 'em? Ain't I dealt with 'em all my life? No,
that there guy Dorn's simply trying to get up, and is using them to
step up on. I did the same thing, only I did it in a decent,
law-abiding way. I didn't want to tear down those that was up. I
wanted to go up and join 'em. And I did."
And his eyes glistened fondly and proudly as he gazed at his daughter.
She represented the climax of his rising--she, the lady born and bred,
in her beautiful clothes, with her lovely, delicate charms. Yes, he
had indeed "come up," and there before him was the superb tangible
evidence of it.
Jane had the strongest belief in her father's worldly wisdom. At the
same time, from what David Hull said she had got an impression of a
something different from the ordinary human being in this queer Victor
Dorn. "You'd better move slowly," she said to her father. "There's no
hurry, and you might be mistaken in him."
"Plenty of time," asserted her father. "There's never any need to
hurry about giving up money." Then, with one of those uncanny flashes
of intuition for which he, who was never caught napping, was famous, he
said to her sharply: "You keep your hands off, miss."
She was thrown into confusion--and her embarrassment enraged her
against herself. "What could _I_ do?" she retorted with a brave
attempt at indifference.
"Well--keep your hands off, miss," said the old man. "No female
meddling in business. I'll stand for most anything, but not for that."
Jane was now all eagerness for dropping the subject. She wished no
further prying of that shrewd mind into her secret thoughts. "It's
hardly likely I'd meddle where I know nothing about the circumstances,"
said she. "Will you drive me down to Martha's?"
This request was made solely to change the subject, to shift her father
to his favorite topic for family conversation--his daughter Martha,
Mrs. Hugo Galland, her weakness for fashionable pastimes, her incessant
hints and naggings at her father about his dowdy dress, his vulgar
mannerisms of speech and of conduct, especially at table. Jane had not
the remotest intention of letting her father drive her to Mrs.
Galland's, or anywhere, in the melancholy old phaeton-buggy, behind the
fat old nag whose coat was as shabby as the coat of the master or as
the top and the side curtains of the sorrowful vehicle it drew along at
caterpillar pace.
When her father was ready to depart for his office in the Hastings
Block--the most imposing office building in Remsen City, Jane announced
a change of mind.
"I'll ride, instead," said she. "I need the exercise, and the day
isn't too warm."
"All right," said Martin Hastings grumpily. He soon got enough of
anyone's company, even of his favorite daughter's. Through years of
habit he liked to jog about alone, revolving in his mind his business
affairs--counting in fancy his big bundles of securities, one by one,
calculating their returns past, present and prospective--reviewing the
various enterprises in which he was dominant factor, working out
schemes for getting more profit here, for paying less wages there, for
tightening his grip upon this enterprise, for dumping his associates in
that, for escaping with all the valuable assets from another. His
appearance, as he and his nag dozed along the highroad, was as
deceptive as that of a hive of bees on a hot day--no signs of life
except a few sleepy workers crawling languidly in and out at the low,
broad crack-door, yet within myriads toiling like mad.
Jane went up to dress. She had brought an Italian maid with her from
Florence, and a mass of baggage that had given the station loungers at
Remsen City something to talk about, when there was a dearth of new
subjects, for the rest of their lives. She had transformed her own
suite in the second story of the big old house into an appearance of
the quarters of a twentieth century woman of wealth and leisure. In
the sitting room were books in four languages; on the walls were
tasteful reproductions of her favorite old masters. The excellence of
her education was attested not by the books and pictures but by the
absence of those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac
where--with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their houses
because they can think of nothing else to fill in the gaps.
Many of Jane's ways made Sister Martha uneasy. For Martha, while
admitting that Jane through superior opportunity ought to know, could
not believe that the "right sort" of people on the other side had
thrown over all her beloved formalities and were conducting themselves
distressingly like tenement-house people. For instance, Martha could
not approve Jane's habit of smoking cigarettes--a habit which, by one
of those curious freaks of character, enormously pleased her father.
But--except in one matter--Martha entirely approved Jane's style of
dress. She hastened to pronounce it "just too elegant" and repeated
that phrase until Jane, tried beyond endurance, warned her that the
word elegant was not used seriously by people of the "right sort" and
that its use was regarded as one of those small but subtle signs of the
loathsome "middle class."
The one thing in Jane's dress that Martha disapproved--or, rather,
shied at--was her riding suit. This was an extremely noisy plaid man's
suit--for Jane rode astride. Martha could not deny that Jane looked
"simply stunning" when seated on her horse and dressed in that garb
with her long slim feet and graceful calves encased in a pair of riding
boots that looked as if they must have cost "something fierce." But
was it really "ladylike"? Hadn't Jane made a mistake and adopted a
costume worn only by the fashionables among the demi-mondaines of whom
Martha had read and had heard such dreadful, delightful stories?
It was the lively plaid that Miss Hastings now clad herself in. She
loved that suit. Not only did it give her figure a superb opportunity
but also it brought out new beauties in her contour and coloring. And
her head was so well shaped and her hair grew so thickly about brow and
ears and nape of neck that it looked full as well plaited and done
close as when it was framing her face and half concealing, half
revealing her charming ears in waves of changeable auburn. After a
lingering--and pardonably pleased--look at herself in a long mirror,
she descended, mounted and rode slowly down toward town.
The old Galland homestead was at the western end of town--in a quarter
that had become almost poor. But it was so dignified and its grounds
were so extensive that it suggested a manor house with the humble homes
of the lord's dependents clustering about it for shelter. To reach it
Jane had to ride through two filthy streets lined with factories. As
she rode she glanced at the windows, where could be seen in dusty air
girls and boys busy at furiously driven machines--machines that
compelled their human slaves to strain every nerve in the monotonous
task of keeping them occupied. Many of the girls and boys paused long
enough for a glance at the figure of the man-clad girl on the big horse.
Jane, happy in the pleasant sunshine, in her beauty and health and fine
raiment and secure and luxurious position in the world, gave a thought
of pity to these imprisoned young people. "How lucky I am," she
thought, "not to have been born like that. Of course, we all have our
falls now and then. But while they always strike on the hard ground,
I've got a feather bed to fall on."
When she reached Martha's and was ushered into the cool upstairs
sitting room, in somehow ghastly contrast to the hot rooms where the
young working people sweated and strained, the subject persisted in its
hold on her thoughts. There was Martha, in comfortable, corsetless
expansiveness--an ideal illustration of the worthless idler fattening
in purposelessness. She was engaged with all her energies in preparing
for the ball Hugo Galland's sister, Mrs. Bertrand, was giving at the
assembly rooms that night.
"I've been hard at it for several days now," said she. "I think at
last I see daylight. But I want your opinion."
Jane gazed absently at the dress and accompanying articles that had
been assembled with so much labor. "All right," said she. "You'll look
fine and dandy."
Martha twitched. "Jane, dear--don't say that--don't use such an
expression. I know it's your way of joking. But lots of people would
think you didn't know any better."
"Let 'em think," said Jane. "I say and do as I please."
Martha sighed. Here was one member of her family who could be a
credit, who could make people forget the unquestionably common origin
of the Hastingses and of the Morleys. Yet this member was always
breaking out into something mortifying, something reminiscent of the
farm and of the livery stable--for the deceased Mrs. Hastings had been
daughter of a livery stable keeper--in fact, had caught Martin Hastings
by the way she rode her father's horses at a sale at a county fair.
Said Martha:
"You haven't really looked at my clothes, Jane. Why DID you go back to
calling yourself Jane?"
"Because it's my name," replied her sister.
"I know that. But you hated it and changed it to Jeanne, which is so
much prettier."
"I don't think so any more," replied Miss Hastings. "My taste has
improved. Don't be so horribly middle class, Martha--ashamed of
everything simple and natural."
"You think you know it all--don't you?--just because you've lived
abroad," said Martha peevishly.
"On the contrary, I don't know one-tenth as much as I thought I did,
when I came back from Wellesley with a diploma."
"Do you like my costume?" inquired Martha, eying her finery with the
fond yet dubious expression of the woman who likes her own taste but is
not sure about its being good taste.
"What a lazy, worthless pair we are!" exclaimed Jane, hitting her boot
leg a tremendous rap with her little cane.
Martha startled. "Good God--Jane--what is it?" she cried.
"On the way here I passed a lot of factories," pursued Jane. "Why
should those people have to work like--like the devil, while we sit
about planning ball dresses?"
Martha settled back comfortably. "I feel so sorry for those poor
people," said she, absently sympathetic.
"But why?" demanded Jane. "WHY? Why should we be allowed to idle
while they have to slave? What have we done--what are we doing--to
entitle us to ease? What have they done to condemn them to pain and
toil?"
"You know very well, Jane, that we represent the finer side of life."
"Slop!" ejaculated Jane.
"For pity's sake, don't let's talk politics," wailed Martha. "I know
nothing about politics. I haven't any brains for that sort of thing."
"Is that politics?" inquired Jane. "I thought politics meant whether
the Democrats or the Republicans or the reformers were to get the
offices and the chance to steal."
"Everything's politics, nowadays," said Martha, comparing the color of
the material of her dress with the color of her fat white arm. "As
Hugo says, that Victor Dorn is dragging everything into politics--even
our private business of how we make and spend our own money."
Jane sat down abruptly. "Victor Dorn," she said in a strange voice.
"WHO is Victor Dorn? WHAT is Victor Dorn? It seems that I can hear of
nothing but Victor Dorn to-day."
"He's too low to talk about," said Martha, amiable and absent.
"Why?"
"Politics," replied Martha. "Really, he is horrid, Jane."
"To look at?"
"No--not to look at. He's handsome in a way. Not at all common
looking. You might take him for a gentleman, if you didn't know.
Still--he always dresses peculiarly--always wears soft hats. I think
soft hats are SO vulgar--don't you?"
"How hopelessly middle-class you are, Martha," mocked Jane.
"Hugo would as soon think of going in the street in a--in a--I don't
know what."
"Hugo is the finest flower of American gentleman. That is, he's the
quintessence of everything that's nice--and 'nasty.' I wish I were
married to him for a week. I love Hugo, but he gives me the creeps."
She rose and tramped restlessly about the room. "You both give me the
creeps. Everything conventional gives me the creeps. If I'm not
careful I'll dress myself in a long shirt, let down my hair and run
wild."
"What nonsense you do talk," said Martha composedly.
Jane sat down abruptly. "So I do!" she said. "I'm as poor a creature
as you at bottom. I simply like to beat against the bars of my cage to
make myself think I'm a wild, free bird by nature. If you opened the
door, I'd not fly out, but would hop meekly back to my perch and fall
to smoothing my feathers.... Tell me some more about Victor Dorn."
"I told you he isn't fit to talk about," said Martha. "Do you know,
they say now that he is carrying on with that shameless, brazen thing
who writes for his paper, that Selma Gordon?"
"Selma Gordon," echoed Jane. Her brows came down in a gesture
reminiscent of her father, and there was a disagreeable expression
about her mouth and in her light brown eyes. "Who's Selma Gordon?"
"She makes speeches--and writes articles against rich people--and--oh,
she's horrid."
"Pretty?"
"No--a scrawny, black thing. The men--some of them--say she's got a
kind of uncanny fascination. Some even insist that she's beautiful."
Martha laughed. "Beautiful! How could a woman with black hair and a
dark skin and no flesh on her bones be beautiful?"
"It has been known to happen," said Jane curtly. "Is she one of THE
Gordons?"
"Mercy, no!" cried Martha Galland. "She simply took the name of
Gordon--that is, her father did. He was a Russian peasant--a Jew. And
he fell in love with a girl who was of noble family--a princess, I
think."
"Princess doesn't mean much in Russia," said Jane sourly.
"Anyhow, they ran away to this country. And he worked in the rolling
mill here--and they both died--and Selma became a factory girl--and
then took to writing for the New Day--that's Victor Dorn's paper, you
know."
"How romantic," said Jane sarcastically. "And now Victor Dorn's in
love with her?"
"I didn't say that," replied Martha, with a scandal-smile.
Jane Hastings went to the window and gazed out into the garden. Martha
resumed her habitual warm day existence--sat rocking gently and fanning
herself and looking leisurely about the room. Presently she said:
"Jane, why don't you marry Davy Hull?"
No answer.
"He's got an independent income--so there's no question of his marrying
for money. And there isn't any family anywhere that's better than
his--mighty few as good. And he's DEAD in love with you, Jen."