"A friend of mine, Wentworth," Victor went on, "has put it wonderfully
clearly. He said, 'Some day we shall realize that no man can be free
until all men are free.'"
"You HAVE helped me--in spite of your fierce refusal," laughed Jane.
"You are very impatient to go, aren't you? Well, since you won't stay
I'll walk with you--as far as the end of the shade."
She was slightly uneasy lest her overtures should be misunderstood. By
the time they reached the first long, sunny stretch of the road down to
town she was so afraid that those overtures would not be
"misunderstood" that she marched on beside him in the hot sun. She did
not leave him until they reached the corner of Pike avenue--and then it
was he that left her, for she could cudgel out no excuse for going
further in his direction. The only hold she had got upon him for a
future attempt was slight indeed--he had vaguely agreed to lend her
some books.
People who have nothing to do get rid of a great deal of time in trying
to make impressions and in speculating as to what impressions they have
made. Jane--hastening toward Martha's to get out of the sun which
could not but injure a complexion so delicately fine as hers--gave
herself up to this form of occupation. What did he think of her? Did
he really have as little sense of her physical charm as he seemed? No
woman could hope to be attractive to every man. Still--this man surely
must be at least not altogether insensible. "If he sends me those
books to-day--or tomorrow--or even next day," thought Jane, "it will be
a pretty sure sign that he was impressed--whether he knows it or not."
She had now definitely passed beyond the stage where she wondered at
herself--and reproached herself--for wishing to win a man of such
common origin and surroundings. She could not doubt Victor Dorn's
superiority. Such a man as that didn't need birth or wealth or even
fame. He simply WAS the man worth while--worth any woman's while. How
could Selma be associated so intimately with him without trying to get
him in love with her? Perhaps she had tried and had given up?
No--Selma was as strange in her way as he was in his way. What a
strange--original--INDIVIDUAL pair they were!
"But," concluded Jane, "he belongs with US. I must take him away from
all that. It will be interesting to do it--so interesting that I'll be
sorry when it's done, and I'll be looking about for something else to
do."
She was not without hope that the books would come that same evening.
But they did not. The next day passed, and the next, and still no
books. Apparently he had meant nothing by his remark, "I've some books
you'd be interested to read." Was his silence indifference, or was it
shyness? Probably she could only faintly appreciate the effect her
position, her surroundings produced in this man whose physical
surroundings had always been as poor as her mental surroundings--those
created by that marvelous mind of his--had been splendid.
She tried to draw out her father on the subject of the young man, with
a view to getting a hint as to whether he purposed doing anything
further. But old Hastings would not talk about it; he was still
debating, was looking at the matter from a standpoint where his
daughter's purely theoretical acumen could not help him to a decision.
Jane rather feared that where her father was evidently so doubtful he
would follow his invariable rule in doubtful cases.
On the fourth day, being still unable to think of anything but her
project for showing her prowess by conquering this man with no time for
women, she donned a severely plain walking costume and went to his
office.
At the threshold of the "Sanctum" she stopped short. Selma, pencil
poised over her block of copy paper and every indication of impatience,
albeit polite impatience, in her fascinating Cossack face, was talking
to--or, rather, listening to--David Hull. Like not a few young
men--and young women--brought up in circumstances that surround them
with people deferential for the sake of what there is, or may possibly
be, in it--Davy Hull had the habit of assuming that all the world was
as fond of listening to him as he was of listening to himself. So it
did not often occur to him to observe his audience for signs of a
willingness to end the conversation.
Selma, turning a little further in her nervousness, saw Jane and sprang
up with a radiant smile of welcome.
"I'm SO glad!" she cried, rushing toward her and kissing her. "I've
thought about you often, and wished I could find time to come to see
you."
Jane was suddenly as delighted as Selma. For Selma's burst of
friendliness, so genuine, so unaffected, in this life of blackness and
cold always had the effect of sun suddenly making summer out of a chill
autumnal day. Nor, curiously enough, was her delight lessened by Davy
Hull's blundering betrayal of himself. His color, his eccentric
twitchings of the lips and the hands would have let a far less astute
young woman than Jane Hastings into the secret of the reason for his
presence in that office when he had said he couldn't "afford" to go.
So guilty did he feel that he stammered out:
"I dropped in to see Dorn."
"You wished to see Victor?" exclaimed the guileless Selma. "Why didn't
you say so? I'd have told you at once that he was in Indianapolis and
wouldn't be back for two or three days."
Jane straightway felt still better. The disgusting mystery of the
books that did not come was now cleared up. Secure in the certainty of
Selma's indifference to Davy she proceeded to punish him. "What a
stupid you are, Davy!" she cried mockingly. "The instant I saw your
face I knew you were here to flirt with Miss Gordon."
"Oh, no, Miss Hastings," protested Selma with quaint intensity of
seriousness, "I assure you he was not flirting. He was telling me
about the reform movement he and his friends are organizing."
"That is his way of flirting," said Jane. "Every animal has its own
way--and an elephant's way is different from a mosquito's."
Selma was eyeing Hull dubiously. It was bad enough for him to have
taken her time in a well-meaning attempt to enlighten her as to a new
phase of local politics; to take her time, to waste it, in
flirting--that was too exasperating!
"Miss Hastings has a sense of humor that runs riot at times," said Hull.
"You can't save yourself, Davy," mocked Jane. "Come along. Miss Gordon
has no time for either of us."
"I do want YOU to stay," she said to Jane. "But, unfortunately, with
Victor away----" She looked disconsolately at the half-finished page
of copy.
"I came only to snatch Davy away," said Jane.
"Next thing we know, he'll be one of Mr. Dorn's lieutenants."
Thus Jane escaped without having to betray why she had come. In the
street she kept up her raillery. "And a WORKING girl, Davy! What would
our friends say! And you who are always boasting of your
fastidiousness! Flirting with a girl who--I've seen her three times,
and each time she has had on exactly the same plain, cheap little
dress."
There was a nastiness, a vulgarity in this that was as unworthy of Jane
as are all the unlovely emotions of us who are always sweet and refined
when we are our true selves--but have a bad habit of only too often not
being what we flatter ourselves is our true selves. Jane was growing
angry as she, away from Selma, resumed her normal place in the world
and her normal point of view. Davy Hull belonged to her; he had no
right to be hanging about another, anyway--especially an attractive
woman. Her anger was not lessened by Davy's retort. Said he:
"Her dress may have been the same. But her face wasn't--and her mind
wasn't. Those things are more difficult to change than a dress."
She was so angry that she did not take warning from this reminder that
Davy was by no means merely a tedious retailer of stale commonplaces.
She said with fine irony--and with no show of anger: "It is always a
shock to a lady to realize how coarse men are--how they don't
discriminate."
Davy laughed. "Women get their rank from men," said he coolly.
"In themselves they have none. That's the philosophy of the
peculiarity you've noted."
This truth, so galling to a lady, silenced Jane, made her bite her lips
with rage. "I beg your pardon," she finally said. "I didn't realize
that you were in love with Selma."
"Yes, I am in love with her," was Davy's astounding reply. "She's the
noblest and simplest creature I've ever met."
"You don't mean you want to marry her!" exclaimed Jane, so amazed that
she for the moment lost sight of her own personal interest in this
affair.
Davy looked at her sadly, and a little contemptuously.
"What a poor opinion at bottom you women--your sort of women--have of
woman," said he.
"What a poor opinion of men you mean," retorted she. "After a little
experience of them a girl--even a girl--learns that they are incapable
of any emotion that isn't gross."
"Don't be so ladylike, Jane," said Hull.
Miss Hastings was recovering control of herself. She took a new tack.
"You haven't asked her yet?"
"Hardly. This is the second time I've seen her. I suspected that she
was the woman for me the moment I saw her. To-day I confirmed my idea.
She is all that I thought--and more. And, Jane, I know that you
appreciate her, too."
Jane now saw that Davy was being thus abruptly and speedily confiding
because he had decided it was the best way out of his entanglement with
her. Behind his coolness she could see an uneasy watchfulness--the
fear that she might try to hold him. Up boiled her rage--the higher
because she knew that if there were any possible way of holding Davy,
she would take it--not because she wished to, or would, marry him, but
because she had put her mark upon him. But this new rage was of the
kind a clever woman has small difficulty in dissembling.
"Indeed I do appreciate her, Davy," said she sweetly. "And I hope you
will be happy with her."
"You think I can get her?" said he, fatuously eager. "You think she
likes me? I've been rather hoping that because it seized me so
suddenly and so powerfully it must have seized her, too. I think often
things occur that way."
"In novels," said Jane, pleasantly judicial. "But in real life about
the hardest thing to do is for a man to make a woman care for
him--really care for him."
"Well, no matter how hard I have to try----"
"Of course," pursued Miss Hastings, ignoring his interruption, "when a
man who has wealth and position asks a woman who hasn't to marry him,
she usually accepts--unless he happens to be downright repulsive, or
she happens to be deeply and hopefully in love with another man."
Davy winced satisfactorily. "Do you suspect," he presently asked,
"that she's in love with Victor Dorn?"
"Perhaps," said Jane reflectively. "Probably. But I'd not feel
discouraged by that if I were you."
"Dorn's a rather attractive chap in some ways."
Davy's manner was so superior that Jane almost laughed in his face.
What fools men were. If Victor Dorn had position, weren't surrounded
by his unquestionably, hopelessly common family, weren't deliberately
keeping himself common--was there a woman in the world who wouldn't
choose him without a second thought being necessary, in preference to a
Davy Hull? How few men there were who could reasonably hope to hold
their women against all comers.
Victor Dorn might possibly be of those few. But Davy Hull--the idea
was ridiculous. All his advantages--height, looks, money,
position--were excellent qualities in a show piece; but they weren't
the qualities that make a woman want to live her life with a man, that
make her hope he will be able to give her the emotions woman-nature
craves beyond anything.
"He is very attractive," said Jane, "and I've small doubt that Selma
Gordon is infatuated with him. But--I shouldn't let that worry me if I
were you." She paused to enjoy his anxiety, then proceeded: "She is a
level-headed girl. The girls of the working class--the intelligent
ones--have had the silly sentimentalities knocked out of them by
experience. So, when you ask her to marry you, she will accept."
"What a low opinion you have of her!" exclaimed Davy. "What a low view
you take of life!"--most inconsistent of him, since he was himself more
than half convinced that Jane's observations were not far from the
truth.
"Women are sensible," said Jane tranquilly. "They appreciate that
they've got to get a man to support them. Don't forget, my dear Davy,
that marriage is a woman's career."
"You lived abroad too long," said Hull bitterly.
"I've lived at home and abroad long enough and intelligently enough not
to think stupid hypocrisies, even if I do sometimes imitate other
people and SAY them."
"I am sure that Selma Gordon would no more think of marrying me for any
other reason but love--would no more think of it than--than YOU would!"
"No more," was Jane's unruffled reply. "But just as much. I didn't
absolutely refuse you, when you asked me the other day, partly because
I saw no other way of stopping your tiresome talk--and your
unattractive way of trying to lay hands on me. I DETEST being handled."
Davy was looking so uncomfortable that he attracted the attention of
the people they were passing in wide, shady Lincoln Avenue.
"But my principal reason," continued Jane, mercilessly amiable and
candid, "was that I didn't know but that you might prove to be about
the best I could get, as a means to realizing my ambition." She looked
laughingly at the unhappy young man. "You didn't think I was in love
with you, did you, Davy dear?" Then, while the confusion following this
blow was at its height, she added: "You'll remember one of your chief
arguments for my accepting you was ambition. You didn't think it low
then--did you?"
Hull was one of the dry-skinned people. But if he had been sweating
profusely he would have looked and would have been less wretched than
burning up in the smothered heat of his misery.
They were nearing Martha's gates. Jane said: "Yes, Davy, you've got a
good chance. And as soon as she gets used to our way of living, she'll
make you a good wife." She laughed gayly.
"She'll not be quite so pretty when she settles down and takes on
flesh. I wonder how she'll look in fine clothes and jewels."
She measured Hull's stature with a critical eye. "She's only about
half as tall as you. How funny you'll look together!" With sudden
soberness and sweetness, "But, seriously, David, I'm proud of your
courage in taking a girl for herself regardless of her surroundings.
So few men would be willing to face the ridicule and the criticism, and
all the social difficulties." She nodded encouragingly. "Go in and
win! You can count on my friendship--for I'm in love with her myself."
She left him standing dazedly, looking up and down the street as if it
were some strange and pine-beset highway in a foreign land.
After taking a few steps she returned to the gates and called him: "I
forgot to ask do you want me to regard what you've told me as
confidential? I was thinking of telling Martha and Hugo, and it
occurred to me that you might not like it."
"Please don't say anything about it," said he with panicky eagerness.
"You see--nothing's settled yet."
"Oh, she'll accept you."
"But I haven't even asked her," pleaded Hull.
"Oh--all right--as you please."
When she was safely within doors she dropped to a chair and burst out
laughing. It was part of Jane's passion for the sense of triumph over
the male sex to felt that she had made a "perfect jumping jack of a
fool" of David Hull. "And I rather think," said she to herself, "that
he'll soon be back where he belongs." This with a glance at the tall
heels of the slippers on the good-looking feet she was thrusting out
for her own inspection. "How absurd for him to imagine he could do
anything unconventional. Is there any coward anywhere so cowardly as
an American conventional man? No wonder I hate to think of marrying
one of them. But--I suppose I'll have to do it some day. What's a
woman to do? She's GOT to marry."
So pleased with herself was she that she behaved with unusual
forbearance toward Martha whose conduct of late had been most trying.
Not Martha's sometimes peevish, sometimes plaintive criticisms of her;
these she did not mind. But Martha's way of ordering her own life.
Jane, moving about in the world with a good mind eager to improve, had
got a horror of a woman's going to pieces--and that was what Martha was
doing.
"I'm losing my looks rapidly," was her constant complaint. As she had
just passed thirty there was, in Jane's opinion, not the smallest
excuse for this. The remedy, the preventive, was obvious--diet and
exercise. But Martha, being lazy and self-indulgent and not
imaginative enough to foresee to what a pass a few years more of
lounging and stuffing would bring her, regarded exercise as unladylike
and dieting as unhealthful. She would not weaken her system by taking
less than was demanded by "nature's infallible guide, the healthy
appetite." She would not give up the venerable and aristocratic
tradition that a lady should ever be reposeful.
"Another year or so," warned Jane, "and you'll be as steatopygous as
the bride of a Hottentot chief."
"What does steat--that word mean?" said Martha suspiciously.
"Look in the dictionary," said Jane. "Its synonyms aren't used by
refined people."
"I knew it was something insulting," said Martha with an injured sniff.
The only concessions Martha would make to the latter-day craze of women
for youthfulness were buying a foolish chin-strap of a beauty quack and
consulting him as to whether, if her hair continued to gray, she would
better take to peroxide or to henna.
Jane had come down that day with a severe lecture on fat and wrinkles
laid out in her mind for energetic delivery to the fast-seeding Martha.
She put off the lecture and allowed the time to be used by Martha in
telling Jane what were her (Jane's) strongest and less strong--not
weaker but less strong, points of physical charm.
It was cool and beautiful in the shade of the big gardens behind the
old Galland house. Jane, listening to Martha's honest and just
compliments and to the faint murmurs of the city's dusty, sweaty toil,
had a delicious sense of the superiority of her lot--a feeling that
somehow there must be something in the theory of rightfully superior
and inferior classes--that in taking what she had not earned she was
not robbing those who had earned it, as her reason so often asserted,
but was being supported by the toil of others for high purposes of
aesthetic beauty. Anyhow, why heat one's self wrestling with these
problems?
When she was sure that Victor Dorn must have returned she called him on
the telephone. "Can't you come out to see me to-night?" said she.
"I've something important--something YOU'LL think important--to consult
you about." She felt a refusal forming at the other end of the wire
and hastened to add: "You must know I'd not ask this if I weren't
certain you would be glad you came."
"Why not drop in here when you're down town?" suggested Victor.
She wondered why she did not hang up the receiver and forget him.
But she did not. She murmured, "In due time I'll punish you for this,
sir," and said to him: "There are reasons why it's impossible for me
to go there just now. And you know I can't meet you in a saloon or on
a street corner."
"I'm not so sure of that," laughed he. "Let me see. I'm very busy.
But I could come for half an hour this afternoon."
She had planned an evening session, being well aware of the favorable
qualities of air and light after the matter-of-fact sun has withdrawn
his last rays. But she promptly decided to accept what offered. "At
three?"
"At four," replied he.
"You haven't forgotten those books?"
"Books? Oh, yes--yes, I remember. I'll bring them."
"Thank you so much," said she sweetly. "Good-by."
And at four she was waiting for him on the front veranda in a house
dress that was--well, it was not quite the proper costume for such an
occasion, but no one else was to see, and he didn't know about that
sort of thing--and the gown gave her charms their best possible
exposure except evening dress, which was out of the question. She had
not long to wait. One of the clocks within hearing had struck and
another was just beginning to strike when she saw him coming toward the
house. She furtively watched him, admiring his walk without quite
knowing why. You may perhaps know the walk that was Victor's--a steady
forward advance of the whole body held firmly, almost rigidly--the walk
of a man leading another to the scaffold, or of a man being led there
in conscious innocence, or of a man ready to go wherever his purposes
may order--ready to go without any heroics or fuss of any kind, but
simply in the course of the day's business. When a man walks like
that, he is worth observing--and it is well to think twice before
obstructing his way.
That steady, inevitable advance gave Jane Hastings an absurd feeling of
nervousness. She had an impulse to fly, as from some oncoming danger.
Yet what was coming, in fact? A clever young man of the working class,
dressed in garments of the kind his class dressed in on Sunday, and
plebeianly carrying a bundle under his arm.
"Our clock says you are three seconds late," cried she, laughing and
extending her hand in a friendly, equal way that would have immensely
flattered almost any man of her own class. "But another protests that
you are one second early."
"I'm one of those fools who waste their time and their nerves by being
punctual," said he.
He laid the books on the wicker sofa. But instead of sitting Jane
said: "We might be interrupted here. Come to the west veranda."
There she had him in a leafy solitude--he facing her as she posed in
fascinating grace in a big chair. He looked at her--not the look of a
man at a woman, but the look of a busy person at one who is about to
show cause for having asked for a portion of his valuable time. She
laughed--and laughter was her best gesture. "I can never talk to you if
you pose like that," said she. "Honestly now, is your time so
pricelessly precious?"
He echoed her laugh and settled himself more at his ease. "What did
you want of me?" he asked.
"I intend to try to get better hours and better wages for the street
car men," said she. "To do it, I must know just what is right--what I
can hope to get. General talk is foolish. If I go at father I must
have definite proposals to make, with reasons for them. I don't want
him to evade. I would have gotten my information elsewhere, but I
could think of no one but you who might not mislead me."
She had confidently expected that this carefully thought out scheme
would do the trick. He would admire her, would be interested, would be
drawn into a position where she could enlist him as a constant adviser.
He moved toward the edge of his chair as if about to rise. He said,
pleasantly enough but without a spark of enthusiasm:
"That's very nice of you, Miss Hastings. But I can't advise
you--beyond saying that if I were you, I shouldn't meddle."
She--that is, her vanity--was cut to the quick. "Oh!" said she with
irony, "I fancied you wished the laboring men to have a better sort of
life."
"Yes," said he. "But I'm not in favor of running hysterically about
with a foolish little atomizer in the great stable. You are talking
charity. I am working for justice. It will not really benefit the
working man for the company, at the urging of a sweet and lovely young
Lady Bountiful, to deign graciously to grant a little less slavery to
them. In fact, a well fed, well cared for slave is worse off than one
who's badly treated--worse off because farther from his freedom. The
only things that do our class any good, Miss Hastings, are the things
they COMPEL--compel by their increased intelligence and increased unity
and power. They get what they deserve. They won't deserve more until
they compel more. Gifts won't help--not even gifts from--" His
intensely blue eyes danced--"from such charming white hands so
beautifully manicured."
She rose with an angry toss of the head. "I didn't ask you here to
annoy me with impertinences about my finger nails."
He rose, at his ease, good-humored, ready to go. "Then you should have
worn gloves," said he carelessly, "for I've been able to think only of
your finger nails--and to wonder WHAT can be done with hands like that.
Thank you for a pleasant talk." He bowed and smiled. "Good-by.
Oh--Miss Gordon sent you her love."
"What IS the matter, Mr. Dorn?" cried the girl desperately. "I want
your friendship--your respect. CAN'T I get it? Am I utterly hopeless
in your eyes?"
A curious kind of color rose in his cheeks. His eyes regarded her with
a mysterious steadiness. "You want neither my respect nor my
friendship," said he. "You want to amuse yourself." He pointed at her
hands. "Those nails betray you." He shrugged his shoulders, laughed,
said as if to a child: "You are a nice girl, Jane Hastings. It's a
pity you weren't brought up to be of some use. But you weren't--and
it's too late."
Her eyes flashed, her bosom heaved. "WHY do I take these things from
you? WHY do I invite them?"
"Because you inherit your father's magnificent persistence--and you've
set your heart on the whim of making a fool of me--and you hate to give
up."
"You wrong me--indeed you do," cried she. "I want to learn--I want to
be of use in the world. I want to have some kind of a real life."
"Really?" mocked he good-humoredly.
"Really," said she with all her power of sweet earnestness.
"Then--cut your nails and go to work. And when you have become a
genuine laborer, you'll begin to try to improve not the condition of
others, but your own. The way to help workers is to abolish the idlers
who hang like a millstone about their necks. You can help only by
abolishing the one idler under your control."
She stood nearer him, very near him. She threw out her lovely arms in
a gesture of humility. "I will do whatever you say," she said.
They looked each into the other's eyes. The color fled from her face,
the blood poured into his--wave upon wave, until he was like a man who
has been set on fire by the furious heat of long years of equatorial
sun. He muttered, wheeled about and strode away--in resolute and
relentless flight. She dropped down where he had been sitting and hid
her face in her perfumed hands.
"I care for him," she moaned, "and he saw and he despises me! How COULD
I--how COULD I!"
Nevertheless, within a quarter of an hour she was in her dressing room,
standing at the table, eyes carefully avoiding her mirrored eyes--as
she cut her finger nails.