II

The dance was even more tiresome than Jane had anticipated. There had

been little pleasure in outshining the easily outshone belles of Remsen

City. She had felt humiliated by having to divide the honors with a

brilliantly beautiful and scandalously audacious Chicago girl, a Yvonne

Hereford--whose style, in looks, in dress and in wit, was more

comfortable to the standard of the best young men of Remsen City--a

standard which Miss Hastings, cultivated by foreign travel and social

adventure, regarded as distinctly poor, not to say low. Miss

Hereford's audacities were especially offensive to Jane. Jane was

audacious herself, but she flattered herself that she had a delicate

sense of that baffling distinction between the audacity that is the

hall mark of the lady and the audacity that proclaims the not-lady.

For example, in such apparently trifling matters as the way of smoking

a cigarette, the way of crossing the legs or putting the elbows on the

table or using slang, Jane found a difference, abysmal though narrow,

between herself and Yvonne Hereford. "But then, her very name gives her

away," reflected Jane. "There'd surely be a frightfully cheap streak in

a mother who in this country would name her daughter Yvonne--or in a

girl who would name herself that."

However, Jane Hastings was not deeply annoyed either by the

shortcomings of Remsen City young men or by the rivalry of Miss

Hereford. Her dissatisfaction was personal--the feeling of futility,

of cheapness, in having dressed herself in her best and spent a whole

evening at such unworthy business. "Whatever I am or am not fit for,"

said she to herself, "I'm not for society--any kind of society. At

least I'm too much grown-up mentally for that." Her disdainful

thoughts about others were, on this occasion as almost always, merely a

mode of expressing her self-scorn.

As she was undressing she found in her party bag the dodger Hull had

got for her from Victor Dorn. She, sitting at her dressing table,

started to read it at once. But her attention soon wandered. "I'm not

in the mood," she said. "To-morrow." And she tossed it into the top

drawer. The fact was, the subject of politics interested her only when

some man in whom she was interested was talking it to her. In a

general way she understood things political, but like almost all women

and all but a few men she could fasten her attention only on things

directly and clearly and nearly related to her own interests. Politics

seemed to her to be not at all related to her--or, indeed, to anybody

but the men running for office. This dodger was politics, pure and

simple. A plea to workingmen to awaken to the fact that their STRIKES

were stupid and wasteful, that the way to get better pay and decent

hours of labor was by uniting, taking possession of the power that was

rightfully theirs and regulating their own affairs.

She resumed fixing her hair for the night. Her glance bent steadily

downward at one stage of this performance, rested unseeingly upon the

handbill folded printed side out and on top of the contents of the open

drawer. She happened to see two capital letters--S.G.--in a line by

themselves at the end of the print. She repeated them mechanically

several times--"S.G.--S.G.--S.G."--then her hands fell from her hair

upon the handbill. She settled herself to read in earnest.

"Selma Gordon," she said. "That's different."

She would have had some difficulty in explaining to herself why it was

"different." She read closely, concentratedly now. She tried to read

in an attitude of unfriendly criticism, but she could not. A dozen

lines, and the clear, earnest, honest sentences had taken hold of her.

How sensible the statements were, and how obviously true. Why, it

wasn't the writing of an "anarchistic crank" at all--on the contrary,

the writer was if anything more excusing toward the men who were giving

the drivers and motormen a dollar and ten cents a day for fourteen

hours' work--"fourteen hours!" cried Jane, her cheeks burning--yes,

Selma Gordon was more tolerant of the owners of the street car line

than Jane herself would have been.

When Jane had read, she gazed at the print with sad envy in her eyes.

"Selma Gordon can think--and she can write, too," said she half aloud.

"I want to know her--too."

That "too" was the first admission to herself of a curiously intense

desire to meet Victor Dorn.

"Oh, to be in earnest about something! To have a real interest! To

find something to do besides the nursery games disguised under new

forms for the grown-up yet never to be grown-up infants of the world.

And THAT kind of politics doesn't sound shallow and dull. There's

heart in it--and brains--real brains--not merely nasty little

self-seeking cunning." She took up the handbill again and read a

paragraph set in bolder type:

"The reason we of the working class are slaves is because we haven't

intelligence enough to be our own masters, let alone masters of anybody

else. The talk of equality, workingmen, is nonsense to flatter your

silly, ignorant vanity. We are not the equals of our masters. They

know more than we do, and naturally they use that knowledge to make us

work for them. So, even if you win in this strike or in all your

strikes, you will not much better yourselves. Because you are ignorant

and foolish, your masters will scheme around and take from you in some

other way what you have wrenched from them in the strike.

"Organize! Think! Learn! Then you will rise out of the dirt where

you wallow with your wives and your children. Don't blame your

masters; they don't enslave you. They don't keep you in slavery. Your

chains are of your own forging and only you can strike them off!"

Certainly no tenement house woman could be lazier, emptier of head,

more inane of life than her sister Martha. "She wouldn't even keep

clean if it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for her to do, and a

help at filling in her long idle day." Yet--Martha Galland had every

comfort and most of the luxuries, was as sheltered from all the

hardships as a hot-house flower. Then there was Hugo--to go no further

afield than the family. Had he ever done an honest hour's work in his

life? Could anyone have less brains than he? Yet Hugo was rich and

respected, was a director in big corporations, was a member of a

first-class law firm. "It isn't fair," thought the girl. "I've always

felt it. I see now why. It's a bad system of taking from the many for

the benefit of us few. And it's kept going by a few clever, strong men

like father. They work for themselves and their families and relatives

and for their class--and the rest of the people have to suffer."

She did not fall asleep for several hours, such was the tumult in her

aroused brain. The first thing the next morning she went down town,

bought copies of the New Day--for that week and for a few preceding

weeks--and retreated to her favorite nook in her father's grounds to

read and to think--and to plan. She searched the New Day in vain for

any of the wild, wandering things Davy and her father had told her

Victor Dorn was putting forth. The four pages of each number were

given over either to philosophical articles no more "anarchistic" than

Emerson's essays, not so much so as Carlyle's, or to plain accounts of

the current stealing by the politicians of Remsen City, of the squalor

and disease--danger in the tenements, of the outrages by the gas and

water and street car companies. There was much that was terrible, much

that was sad, much that was calculated to make an honest heart burn

with indignation against those who were cheerily sacrificing the whole

community to their desire for profits and dividends and graft, public

and private. But there was also a great deal of humor--of rather a

sardonic kind, but still seeing the fantastic side of this grand game

of swindle.

Two paragraphs made an especial impression on her:

"Remsen City is no worse--and no better--than other American cities.

It's typical. But we who live here needn't worry about the rest of the

country. The thing for us to do is to CLEAN UP AT HOME."

"We are more careful than any paper in this town about verifying every

statement we make, before we make it. If we should publish a single

statement about anyone that was false even in part we would be

suppressed. The judges, the bosses, the owners of the big

blood-sucking public service corporations, the whole ruling class, are

eager to put us out of existence. Don't forget this fact when you hear

the New Day called a lying, demagogical sheet."

With the paper beside her on the rustic bench, she fell to

dreaming--not of a brighter and better world, of a wiser and freer

race, but of Victor Dorn, the personality that had unaided become such

a power in Remsen City, the personality that sparkled and glowed in the

interesting pages of the New Day, that made its sentences read as if

they were spoken into your very ears by an earnest, honest voice

issuing from a fascinating, humor-loving, intensely human and natural

person before your very eyes. But it was not round Victor Dorn's brain

that her imagination played.

"After all," thought she, "Napoleon wasn't much over five feet. Most

of the big men have been little men. Of course, there were

Alexander--and Washington--and Lincoln, but--how silly to bother about

a few inches of height, more or less! And he wasn't really SHORT. Let

me see--how high did he come on Davy when Davy was standing near him?

Above his shoulder--and Davy's six feet two or three. He's at least as

tall as I am--anyhow, in my ordinary heels."

She was attracted by both the personalities she discovered in the

little journal. She believed she could tell them apart. About some of

the articles, the shorter ones, she was doubtful. But in those of any

length she could feel that difference which enables one to distinguish

the piano touch of a player in another room--whether it is male or

female. Presently she was searching for an excuse for scraping

acquaintance with this pair of pariahs--pariahs so far as her world was

concerned. And soon she found it. The New Day was taking

subscriptions for a fund to send sick children and their mothers to the

country for a vacation from the dirt and heat of the tenements--for

Remsen City, proud though it was and boastful of its prosperity, housed

most of its inhabitants in slums--though of course that low sort of

people oughtn't really to be counted--except for purposes of swelling

census figures--and to do all the rough and dirty work necessary to

keep civilization going.

She would subscribe to this worthy charity--and would take her

subscription, herself. Settled--easily and well settled. She did not

involve herself, or commit herself in any way. Besides, those who

might find out and might think she had overstepped the bounds would

excuse her on the ground that she had not been back at home long and

did not realize what she was doing.

What should she wear?

Her instinct was for an elaborate toilet--a descent in state--or such

state as the extremely limited resources of Martin Hastings' stables

would permit. The traps he had ordered for her had not yet come; she

had been glad to accept David Hull's offer of a lift the night before.

Still, without a carriage or a motor she could make quite an impression

with a Paris walking dress and hat, properly supported by fashionable

accessories of the toilet.

Good sense and good taste forbade these promptings of nature. No, she

would dress most simply--in her very plainest things--taking care to

maintain all her advantages of face and figure. If she overwhelmed

Dorn and Miss Gordon, she would defeat her own purpose--would not

become acquainted with them.

In the end she rejected both courses and decided for the riding

costume. The reason she gave for this decision--the reason she gave

herself--was that the riding costume would invest the call with an air

of accident, of impulse. The real reason.

It may be that some feminine reader can guess why she chose the most

startling, the most gracefully becoming, the most artlessly physical

apparel in her wardrobe.

She said nothing to her father at lunch about her plans. Why should

she speak of them? He might oppose; also, she might change her mind.

After lunch she set out on her usual ride, galloping away into the

hills--but she had put twenty-five dollars in bills in her trousers

pocket. She rode until she felt that her color was at its best, and

then she made for town--a swift, direct ride, her heart beating high as

if she were upon a most daring and fateful adventure. And, as a matter

of fact, never in her life had she done anything that so intensely

interested her. She felt that she was for the first time slackening

rein upon those unconventional instincts, of unknown strength and

purpose, which had been making her restless with their vague stirrings.

"How silly of me!" she thought. "I'm doing a commonplace, rather

common thing--and I'm trying to make it seem a daring, romantic

adventure. I MUST be hard up for excitement!"

Toward the middle of the afternoon she dropped from her horse before

the office of the New Day and gave a boy the bridle. "I'll be back in a

minute," she explained. It was a two-story frame building, dingy and

in disrepair. On the street floor was a grocery. Access to the New

Day was by a rickety stairway. As she ascended this, making a great

noise on its unsteady boards with her boots, she began to feel cheap

and foolish. She recalled what Hull had said in the carriage. "No

doubt," replied she, "I'd feel much the same way if I were going to see

Jesus Christ--a carpenter's son, sitting in some hovel, talking with

his friends the fishermen and camel drivers--not to speak of the women."

The New Day occupied two small rooms--an editorial work room, and a

printing work room behind it. Jane Hastings, in the doorway at the

head of the stairs, was seeing all there was to see. In the editorial

room were two tables--kitchen tables, littered with papers and

journals, as was the floor, also. At the table directly opposite the

door no one was sitting--"Victor Dorn's desk," Jane decided. At the

table by the open window sat a girl, bent over her writing. Jane saw

that the figure was below, probably much below, the medium height for

woman, that it was slight and strong, that it was clad in a simple,

clean gray linen dress. The girl's black hair, drawn into a plain but

distinctly graceful knot, was of that dense and wavy thickness which is

a characteristic and a beauty of the Hebrew race. The skin at the nape

of her neck, on her hands, on her arms bare to the elbows was of a

beautiful dead-white--the skin that so admirably compliments dead-black

hair.

Before disturbing this busy writer Jane glanced round. There was

nothing to detain her in the view of the busy printing plant in the

room beyond. But on the walls of the room before her were four

pictures--lithographs, cheap, not framed, held in place by a tack at

each corner. There was Washington--then Lincoln--then a copy of

Leonardo's Jesus in the Last Supper fresco--and a fourth face, bearded,

powerful, imperious, yet wonderfully kind and good humored--a face she

did not know. Pointing her riding stick at it she said:

"And who is that?"

With a quick but not in the least a startled movement the girl at the

table straightened her form, turned in her chair, saying, as she did

so, without having seen the pointing stick:

"That is Marx--Karl Marx."

Jane was so astonished by the face she was now seeing--the face of the

girl--that she did not hear the reply. The girl's hair and skin had

reminded her of what Martha had told her about the Jewish, or

half-Jewish, origin of Selma Gordon. Thus, she assumed that she would

see a frankly Jewish face. Instead, the face looking at her from

beneath the wealth of thick black hair, carelessly parted near the

centre, was Russian--was Cossack--strange and primeval, intense, dark,

as superbly alive as one of those exuberant tropical flowers that seem

to cry out the mad joy of life. Only, those flowers suggest the

evanescent, the flame burning so fiercely that it must soon burn out,

while this Russian girl declared that life was eternal. You could not

think of her as sick, as old, as anything but young and vigorous and

vivid, as full of energy as a healthy baby that kicks its dresses into

rags and wears out the strength of its strapping nurse. Her nose was

as straight as Jane's own particularly fine example of nose. Her dark

gray eyes, beneath long, slender, coal black lines of brow, were

brimming with life and with fun. She had a wide, frank, scarlet mouth;

her teeth were small and sharp and regular, and of the strong and

healthy shade of white. She had a very small, but a very resolute

chin. With another quick, free movement she stood up. She was indeed

small, but formed in proportion. She seemed out of harmony with her

linen dress. She looked as if she ought to be careening on the steppes

in some romantic, half-savage costume. Jane's first and instant

thought was, "There's not another like her in the whole world. She's

the only living specimen of her kind."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Jane. "But you ARE healthy."

The smile took full advantage of the opportunity to broaden into a

laugh. A most flattering expression of frank, childlike admiration

came into the dark gray eyes. "You're not sickly, yourself," replied

Selma. Jane was disappointed that the voice was not untamed Cossack,

but was musically civilized.

"Yes, but I don't flaunt it as you do," rejoined Jane. "You'd make

anyone who was the least bit off, furious."

Selma, still with the child-like expression, but now one of curiosity,

was examining Jane's masculine riding dress. "What a sensible suit!"

she cried, delightedly. "I'd wear something like that all the time, if

I dared."

"Dared?" said Jane. "You don't look like the frightened sort."

"Not on account of myself," explained Selma. "On account of the cause.

You see, we are fighting for a new idea. So, we have to be careful not

to offend people's prejudices about ideas not so important. If we went

in for everything that's sensible, we'd be regarded as cranks. One

thing at a time."

Jane's glance shifted to the fourth picture. "Didn't you say that

was--Karl Marx?"

"Yes."

"He wrote a book on political economy. I tried to read it at college.

But I couldn't. It was too heavy for me. He was a Socialist--wasn't

he?--the founder of Socialism?"

"A great deal more than that," replied Selma. "He was the most

important man for human liberty that ever lived--except perhaps one."

And she looked at Leonardo's "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

"Marx was a--a Hebrew--wasn't he?"

Selma's eyes danced, and Jane felt that she was laughing at her

hesitation and choice of the softer word. Selma said:

"Yes--he was a Jew. Both were Jews."

"Both?" inquired Jane, puzzled.

"Marx and Jesus," explained Selma.