Impulse was the dominant strain in Selma Gordon's character--impulse
and frankness. But she was afraid of Victor Dorn as we all are afraid
of those we deeply respect--those whose respect is the mainstay of our
self-confidence. She was moving toward him to pour out the violence
that was raging in her on the subject of this flirtation of Jane
Hastings. The spectacle of a useless and insincere creature like that
trifling with her deity, and being permitted to trifle, was more than
she could endure. But Victor, dropping listlessly to his chair and
reaching for his pencil, was somehow a check upon her impetuousness.
She paused long enough to think the sobering second thought. To speak
would be both an impertinence and a folly. She owed it to the cause
and to her friend Victor to speak; but to speak at the wrong time and
in the wrong way would be worse than silence.
Said he: "I was finishing this when she came. I'll be done in a
minute. Please read what I've written and tell me what you think."
Selma took up the loose sheets of manuscript and stood reading his
inaugural of the new New Day. As she read she forgot the petty matter
that had so agitated her a moment before. This salutatory--this
address to the working class--this plan of a campaign to take Remsen
City out of the hands of its exploiters and despoilers and make it a
city fit for civilized residence and worthy of its population of
intelligent, progressive workingmen--this leading editorial for the
first number was Victor Dorn at his greatest and best. The man of
action with all the enthusiasm of a dreamer. The shrewd, practical
politician with the outlook of a statesman. How honest and impassioned
he was; yet how free from folly and cant. Several times as she read
Selma lifted her eyes to look at him in generous, worshipful
admiration. She would not have dared let him see; she would not have
dared speak the phrases of adoration of his genius that crowded to her
lips. How he would have laughed at her--he who thought about himself
as a personality not at all, but only as an instrument.
"Here's the rest of it," said he, throwing himself back in his chair
and relighting his pipe.
She finished a moment later, said as she laid the manuscript on the
table: "That's the best you've ever done."
"I think so," agreed he. "It seems to me I've got a new grip on
things. I needed a turn such as your friend Davy Hull gave me.
Nothing like rivalry to spur a man on. The old crowd was so
stupid--cunning, but stupid. But Hull injects a new element into the
struggle. To beat him we've got to use our best brains."
"We've got to attack him," said Selma. "After all, he is the enemy.
We can't let him disarm us by an act of justice."
"No, indeed," said Victor. "But we'll have to be careful. Here's what
I'm going to carry on the first page."
He held up a sheet of paper on which he had written with a view to
effective display the names of the four most offensive local
corporations with their contribution--$25,000 each--to the campaign
fund of the Citizens' Alliance. "Under it, in big type," proceeded he,
"we'll carry a line asking, 'Is the Citizens' Alliance fooling these
four corporations or is it fooling the people?' I think that will be
more effective than columns of attack."
"We ought to get that out on wall-bills and dodgers," suggested Selma,
"and deluge the town with it once or twice a week until election."
"Splendid!" exclaimed Victor. "I'll make a practical politician of you
yet."
Colman and Harbinger and Jocelyn and several others of the League
leaders came in one at a time, and the plan of campaign was developed
in detail. But the force they chiefly relied upon was the influence of
their twelve hundred men, their four or five thousand women and young
men and girls, talking every day and evening, each man or woman or
youth with those with whom he came into contact. This "army of
education" was disciplined, was educated, knew just what arguments to
use, had been cautioned against disputes, against arousing foolish
antagonisms. The League had nothing to conceal, no object to gain but
the government of Remsen City by and for its citizens--well paved, well
lighted, clean streets, sanitary houses, good and clean street car
service, honest gas, pure water, plenty of good schools--that first of
all. The "reform crowd"--the Citizens' Alliance--like every reform
party of the past, proposed to do practically the same things. But the
League met this with: "Why should we elect an upper class government to
do for us what we ought to do for ourselves? And how can they redeem
their promises when they are tied up in a hundred ways to the very
people who have been robbing and cheating us?"
There were to be issues of the New Day; there were to be posters and
dodgers, public meetings in halls, in squares, on street corners. But
the main reliance now as always was this educated "army of
education"--these six thousand missionaries, each one of them in
resolute earnest and bent upon converting his neighbors on either side,
and across the street as well. A large part of the time the leaders
could spare from making a living was spent in working at this army, in
teaching it new arguments or better ways of presenting old arguments,
in giving the enthusiasm, in talking with each individual soldier of it
and raising his standard of efficiency. Nor could the employers of
these soldiers of Victor Dorn's complain that they shirked their work
for politics. It was a fact that could not be denied that the members
of the Workingmen's League were far and away the best workers in Remsen
City, got the best pay, and earned it, drank less, took fewer days off
on account of sickness. One of the sneers of the Kelly-House gang was
that "those Dorn cranks think they are aristocrats, a little better
than us common, ordinary laboring men." And the sneer was not without
effect. The truth was, Dorn and his associates had not picked out the
best of the working class and drawn it into the League, but had made
those who joined the League better workers, better family men, better
citizens.
"We are saying that the working class ought to run things," Dorn said
again and again in his talks, public and private. "Then, we've got to
show the community that we're fit to run things. That is why the
League expels any man who shirks or is a drunkard or a crook or a bad
husband and father."
The great fight of the League--the fight that was keeping it from
power--was with the trades unions, which were run by secret agents of
the Kelly-House oligarchy. Kelly and the Republican party rather
favored "open shop" or "scab" labor--the right of an American to let
his labor to whom he pleased on what terms he pleased. The Kelly
orators waxed almost tearful as they contemplated the outrage of any
interference with the ancient liberty of the American citizen. Kelly
disguised as House was a hot union man. He loathed the "scab." He
jeered at the idea that a laborer ought to be at the mercy of the
powerful employer who could dictate his own terms, which the laborers
might not refuse under stress of hunger. Thus the larger part of the
"free" labor in Remsen City voted with Kelly--was bought by him at so
much a head. The only organization it had was under the Kelly district
captains. Union labor was almost solidly Democratic--except in
Presidential elections, when it usually divided on the tariff question.
Although almost all the Leaguers were members of the unions, Kelly and
House saw to it that they had no influence in union councils. That is,
until recently Kelly-House had been able to accomplish this. But they
were seeing the approaching end of their domination. The "army of
education" was proving too powerful for them. And they felt that at
the coming election the decline of their power would be
apparent--unless something drastic were done.
They had attempted it in the riot. The riot had been a fizzle--thanks
to the interposition of the personal ambition of the until then
despised "holy boy," David Hull. Kelly, the shrewd, at once saw the
mark of the man of force. He resolved that Hull should be elected. He
had intended simply to use him to elect Hugo Galland judge and to split
up the rest of the tickets in such a way that some Leaguers and some
reformers would get in, would be powerless, would bring discredit and
ridicule upon their parties. But Hull was a man who could be useful;
his cleverness in upsetting the plot against Dorn and turning all to
his advantage demonstrated that. Therefore, Hull should be elected and
passed up higher. It did not enter his calculations that Hull might
prove refractory, might really be all that he professed; he had talked
with Davy, and while he had underestimated his intelligence, he knew he
had not misjudged his character. He knew that it was as easy to "deal"
with the Hull stripe of honest, high minded men as it was difficult to
"deal" with the Victor Dorn stripe. Hull he called a "sensible
fellow"; Victor Dorn he called a crank. But--he respected Dorn, while
Hull he held in much such esteem as he held his cigar-holder and pocket
knife, or Tony Rivers and Joe House.
When Victor Dorn had first begun to educate and organize the people of
Remsen City, the boss industry was in its early form. That is, Kelly
and House were really rivals in the collecting of big campaign funds by
various forms of blackmail, in struggling for offices for themselves
and their followers, in levying upon vice and crime through the police.
In these ways they made the money, the lion's share of which naturally
fell to them as leaders, as organizers of plunder. But that stage had
now passed in Remsen City as it had passed elsewhere, and the boss
industry had taken a form far more difficult to combat. Kelly and
House no longer especially cared whether Republican party or Democratic
won. Their business--their source of revenue--had ceased to be through
carrying elections, had become a matter of skill in keeping the people
more or less evenly divided between the two "regular" parties, with an
occasional fake third party to discourage and bring into contempt
reform movers and to make the people say, "Well, bad as they are, at
least the regulars aren't addle-headed, damn fools doing nothing except
to make business bad." Both Kelly and House were supported and
enriched by the corporations and by big public contracting companies
and by real estate deals. Kelly still appropriated a large part of the
"campaign fund." House, in addition, took a share of the money raised
by the police from dives. But these sums were but a small part of
their income, were merely pin money for their wives and children.
Yet--at heart and in all sincerity Kelly was an ardent Republican and
House was a ferocious Democrat. If you had asked either what
Republican and Democrat meant he would have been as vague and
unsatisfactory in his reply as would have been any of his followers
bearing torch and oilcloth cape in political processions, with no hope
of gain--beyond the exquisite pleasure of making a shouting ass of
himself in the most public manner. But for all that, Kelly was a
Republican and House a Democrat. It is not a strange, though it is a
profoundly mysterious, phenomenon, that of the priest who arranges the
trick mechanism of the god, yet being a devout believer, ready to die
for his "faith."
Difficult though the task was of showing the average Remsen City man
that Republican and Democrat, Kelly and House, were one and the same
thing, and that thing a blood-sucking, blood-heavy leech upon his
veins--difficult though this task was, Victor Dorn knew that he had
about accomplished it, when David Hull appeared. A new personality; a
plausible personality, deceptive because self-deceiving--yet not so
thoroughly self-deceived that it was in danger of hindering its own
ambition. David Hull--just the kind of respectable, popular figurehead
and cloak the desperate Kelly-House conspiracy needed.
How far had the "army of education" prepared the people for seeing
through this clever new fraud upon them? Victor Dorn could not judge.
He hoped for the best; he was prepared for the worst.
The better to think out the various problems of the new situation,
complicated by his apparent debt of gratitude to Davy, Victor went
forth into the woods very early the next morning. He wandered far, but
ten o'clock found him walking in the path in the strip of woods near
the high road along the upper side of the park. And when Jane Hastings
appeared, he was standing looking in the direction from which she would
have to come. It was significant of her state of mind that she had
given small attention to her dress that morning. Nor was she looking
her best in expression or in color. Her eyes and her skin suggested an
almost sleepless night.
He did not advance. She came rapidly as if eager to get over that
embarrassing space in which each could see the other, yet neither could
speak without raising the voice. When she was near she said:
"You think you owe something to Davy Hull for what he did?"
"The people think so," said he. "And that's the important thing."
"Well--you owe him nothing," pursued she.
"Nothing that would interfere with the cause," replied he. "And that
would be true, no matter what he had done."
"I mean he did nothing for you," she explained. "I forgot to tell you
yesterday. The whole thing was simply a move to further his ambition.
I happened to be there when he talked with father and enlisted him."
Victor laughed. "It was your father who put it through. I might have
known!"
"At first I tried to interpose. Then--I stopped." She stood before
him with eyes down. "It came to me that for my own sake it would be
better that you should lose this fall. It seemed to me that if you won
you would be farther out of my reach." She paused, went steadily on:
"It was a bad feeling I had that you must not get anything except with
my help. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," said he cheerfully. "You are your father's own daughter."
"I love power," said she. "And so do you. Only, being a woman, I'd
stoop to things to get it, that a man--at least your sort of man--would
scorn. Do you despise me for that? You oughtn't to. And you will
teach me better. You can make of me what you please, as I told you
yesterday. I only half meant it then. Now--it's true, through and
through."
Victor glanced round, saw near at hand the bench he was seeking. "Let's
sit down here," said he. "I'm rather tired. I slept little and I've
been walking all morning. And you look tired, also."
"After yesterday afternoon I couldn't sleep," said she.
When they were seated he looked at her with an expression that seemed
to say: "I have thrown open the windows of my soul. Throw open yours;
and let us look at each other as we are, and speak of things as they
are." She suddenly flung herself against his breast and as he clasped
her she said:
"No--no! Let's not reason coldly about things, Victor. Let's
feel--let's LIVE!"
It was several minutes--and not until they had kissed many
times--before he regained enough self-control to say: "This simply
will not do, Jane. How can we discuss things calmly? You sit
there"--he pushed her gently to one end of the bench--"and I'll sit at
this end. Now!"
"I love you, Victor! With your arms round me I am happy--and SO
strong!"
"With my arms round you I'm happy, I'll admit," said he. "But--oh, so
weak! I have the sense that I am doing wrong--that we are both doing
wrong."
"Why? Aren't you free?"
"No, I am not free. As I've told you, I belong to a cause--to a
career."
"But I won't hinder you there. I'll help you."
"Why go over that again? You know better--I know better." Abruptly,
"Your father--what time does he get home for dinner?"
"He didn't go down town to-day," replied Jane. "He's not well--not at
all well."
Victor looked baffled. "I was about to propose that we go straight to
him."
If he had been looking at Jane, he might have seen the fleeting flash
of an expression that betrayed that she had suspected the object of his
inquiry.
"You will not go with me to your father?"
"Not when he is ill," said she. "If we told him, it might kill him.
He has ambitions--what he regards as ambitions--for me. He admires
you, but--he doesn't admire your ideas."
"Then," said Victor, following his own train of thought, "we must fight
this out between ourselves. I was hoping I'd have your father to help
me. I'm sure, as soon as you faced him with me, you'd realize that
your feeling about me is largely a delusion."
"And you?" said Jane softly. "Your feeling about me--the feeling that
made you kiss me--was that delusion?"
"It was--just what you saw," replied he, "and nothing more. The idea of
marrying you--of living my life with you doesn't attract me in the
least. I can't see you as my wife." He looked at her impatiently.
"Have you no imagination? Can't you see that you could not change, and
become what you'd have to be if you lived with me?"
"You can make of me what you please," repeated she with loving
obstinacy.
"That is not sincere!" cried he. "You may think it is, but it isn't.
Look at me, Jane."
"I haven't been doing anything else since we met," laughed she.
"That's better," said he. "Let's not be solemn. Solemnity is pose,
and when people are posing they get nowhere. You say I can make of you
what I please. Do you mean that you are willing to become a woman of
my class--to be that all your life--to bring up your children in that
way--to give up your fashionable friends--and maid--and carriages--and
Paris clothes--to be a woman who would not make my associates and their
families uncomfortable and shy?"
She was silent. She tried to speak, but lifting her eyes before she
began her glance encountered his and her words died upon her lips.
"You know you did not mean that," pursued he. "Now, I'll tell you what
you did mean. You meant that after you and I were married--or
engaged--perhaps you did not intend to go quite so far as marriage just
yet."
The color crept into her averted face.
"Look at me!" he commanded laughingly.
With an effort she forced her eyes to meet his.
"Now--smile, Jane!"
His smile was contagious. The curve of her lips changed; her eyes
gleamed.
"Am I not reading your thoughts?" said he.
"You are very clever, Victor," admitted she.
"Good. We are getting on. You believed that, once we were engaged, I
would gradually begin to yield, to come round to your way of thinking.
You had planned for me a career something like Davy Hull's--only freer
and bolder. I would become a member of your class, but would pose as a
representative of the class I had personally abandoned. Am I right?"
"Go on, Victor," she said.
"That's about all. Now, there are just two objections to your plan.
The first is, it wouldn't work. My associates would be 'on to' me in a
very short time. They are shrewd, practical, practically educated
men--not at all the sort that follow Davy Hull or are wearing Kelly's
and House's nose rings. In a few months I'd find myself a leader
without a following--and what is more futile and ridiculous than that?"
"They worship you," said Jane. "They trust you implicitly. They know
that whatever you did would be for their good."
He laughed heartily. "How little you know my friends," said he. "I am
their leader only because I am working with them, doing what we all see
must be done, doing it in the way in which we all see it must be done."
"But THAT is not power!" cried Jane.
"No," replied Victor. "But it is the career I wish--the only one I'd
have. Power means that one's followers are weak or misled or ignorant.
To be first among equals--that's worth while. The other thing is the
poor tawdriness that kings and bosses crave and that shallow, snobbish
people admire."
"I see that," said Jane. "At least, I begin to see it. How wonderful
you are!"
Victor laughed. "Is it that I know so much, or is it that you know so
little?"
"You don't like for me to tell you that I admire you?" said Jane,
subtle and ostentatiously timid.
"I don't care much about it one way or the other," replied Victor, who
had, when he chose, a rare ability to be blunt without being rude.
"Years ago, for my own safety, I began to train myself to care little
for any praise or blame but my own, and to make myself a very searching
critic of myself. So, I am really flattered only when I win my own
praise--and I don't often have that pleasure."
"Really, I don't see why you bother with me," said she with sly
innocence--which was as far as she dared let her resentments go.
"For two reasons," replied he promptly. "It flatters me that you are
interested in me. The second reason is that, when I lost control of
myself yesterday, I involved myself in certain responsibilities to you.
It has seemed to me that I owe it to myself and to you to make you see
that there is neither present nor future in any relations between us."
She put out her hand, and before he knew what he was doing he had
clasped it. With a gentle, triumphant smile she said: "THERE'S the
answer to all your reasoning, Victor."
He released her hand. "AN answer," he said, "but not the correct
answer." He eyed her thoughtfully. "You have done me a great
service," he went on. "You have shown me an unsuspected, a dangerous
weakness in myself. At another time--and coming in another way, I
might have made a mess of my career--and of the things that have been
entrusted to me." A long pause, then he added, to himself rather than
to her, "I must look out for that. I must do something about it."
Jane turned toward him and settled herself in a resolute attitude and
with a resolute expression. "Victor," she said, "I've listened to you
very patiently. Now I want you to listen to me. What is the truth
about us? Why, that we are as if we had been made for each other. I
don't know as much as you do. I've led a much narrower life. I've
been absurdly mis-educated. But as soon as I saw you I felt that I had
found the man I was looking for. And I believe--I feel--I KNOW you
were drawn to me in the same way. Isn't that so?"
"You--fascinated me," confessed he. "You--or your clothes--or your
perfume."
"Explain it as you like," said she. "The fact remains that we were
drawn together. Well--Victor, _I_ am not afraid to face the future, as
fate maps it out for us. Are you?"
He did not answer.
"You--AFRAID," she went on. "No--you couldn't be afraid."
A long silence. Then he said abruptly: "IF we loved each other. But
I know that we don't. I know that you would hate me when you realized
that you couldn't move me. And I know that I should soon get over the
infatuation for you. As soon as it became a question of
sympathies--common tastes--congeniality--I'd find you hopelessly
lacking."
She felt that he was contrasting her with some one else--with a certain
some one. And she veiled her eyes to hide their blazing jealousy. A
movement on his part made her raise them in sudden alarm. He had
risen. His expression told her that the battle was lost--for the day.
Never had she loved him as at that moment, and never had longing to
possess him so dominated her willful, self-indulgent, spoiled nature.
Yet she hated him, too; she longed to crush him, to make him suffer--to
repay him with interest for the suffering he was inflicting upon
her--the humiliation. But she dared not show her feelings. It would
be idle to try upon this man any of the coquetries indicated for such
cases--to dismiss him coldly, or to make an appeal through an
exhibition of weakness or reckless passion.
"You will see the truth, for yourself, as you think things over," said
he.
She rose, stood before him with downcast eyes, with mouth sad and
sweet. "No," she said, "It's you who are hiding the truth from
yourself. I hope--for both our sakes--that you'll see it before long.
Good-by--dear." She stretched out her hand.
Hesitatingly he took it. As their hands met, her pulse beating against
his, she lifted her eyes. And once more he was holding her close, was
kissing her. And she was lying in his arms unresisting, with two large
tears shining in the long lashes of her closed eyes.
"Oh, Jane--forgive me!" he cried, releasing her. "I must keep away
from you. I will--I WILL!" And he was rushing down the steep
slope--direct, swift, relentless. But she, looking after him with a
tender, dreamy smile, murmured: "He loves me. He will come again. If
not--I'll go and get him!"
To Jane Victor Dorn's analysis of his feeling toward her and of the
reasons against yielding to it seemed of no importance whatever. Side
by side with Selma's "One may not trifle with love" she would have put
"In matters of love one does not reason," as equally axiomatic. Victor
was simply talking; love would conquer him as it had conquered every
man and every woman it had ever entered. Love--blind, unreasoning,
irresistible--would have its will and its way.
And about most men she would have been right--about any man
practically, of the preceding generation. But Victor represented a new
type of human being--the type into whose life reason enters not merely
as a theoretical force, to be consulted and disregarded, but as an
authority, a powerful influence, dominant in all crucial matters. Only
in our own time has science begun to make a notable impression upon the
fog which formerly lay over the whole human mind, thicker here, thinner
there, a mere haze yonder, but present everywhere. This fog made clear
vision impossible, usually made seeing of any kind difficult; there was
no such thing as finding a distinct line between truth and error as to
any subject. And reason seemed almost as faulty a guide as
feeling--was by many regarded as more faulty, not without justification.
But nowadays for some of us there are clear or almost clear horizons,
and such fog banks as there are conceal from them nothing that is of
importance in shaping a rational course of life. Victor Dorn was one
of these emancipated few. All successful men form their lives upon a
system of some kind. Even those who seem to live at haphazard, like
the multitude, prove to have chart and compass and definite port in
objective when their conduct is more attentively examined. Victor
Dorn's system was as perfect as it was simple, and he held himself to
it as rigidly as the father superior of a Trappist monastery holds his
monks to their routine. Also, Victor had learned to know and to be on
guard against those two arch-enemies of the man who wishes to "get
somewhere"--self-excuse and optimism. He had got a good strong leash
upon his vanity--and a muzzle, too. When things went wrong he
instantly blamed HIMSELF, and did not rest until he had ferreted out
the stupidity or folly of which HE had been guilty. He did not grieve
over his failures; he held severely scientific post mortems upon them
to discover the reason why--in order that there should not again be
that particular kind of failure at least. Then, as to the other
arch-enemy, optimism, he simply cut himself off from indulgence in it.
He worked for success; he assumed failure. He taught himself to care
nothing about success, but only about doing as intelligently and as
thoroughly as he could the thing next at hand.
What has all this to do with his infatuation for Jane? It serves to
show not only why the Workingmen's League was growing like a plague of
gypsy moth, but also why Victor Dorn was not the man to be conquered by
passion. Naturally, Jane, who had only the vaguest conception of the
size and power of Victor Dorn's mind, could not comprehend wherein lay
the difference between him and the men she read about in novels or met
in her wanderings among the people of her own class in various parts of
the earth. It is possible for even the humblest of us to understand
genius, just as it is possible to view a mountain from all sides and
get a clear idea of it bulk and its dominion. But the hasty traveler
contents himself with a glance, a "How superb," and a quick passing on;
and most of us are hasty travelers in the scenic land of
intellectuality. Jane saw that he was a great man. But she was
deceived by his frankness and his simplicity. She evoked in him only
the emotional side of his nature, only one part of that.
Because it--the only phase of him she attentively examined--was so
impressive, she assumed that it was the chief feature of the man.
Also, young and inexperienced women--and women not so young, and with
opportunity to become less inexperienced but without the ability to
learn by experience--always exaggerate the importance of passion.
Almost without exception, it is by way of passion that a man and a
woman approach each other. It is, of necessity, the exterior that
first comes into view. Thus, all that youth and inexperience can know
about love is its aspect of passion. Because Jane had again and again
in her five grown-up years experienced men falling passionately in love
with her, she fancied she was an expert in matters of love. In fact,
she had still everything to learn.
On the way home she, assuming that the affair was as good as settled,
that she and Victor Dorn were lovers, was busy with plans for the
future. Victor Dorn had made a shrewd guess at the state of her mind.
She had no intention of allowing him to pursue his present career.
That was merely foundation. With the aid of her love and council, and
of her father's money and influence, he--he and she--would mount to
something really worth while--something more than the petty politics of
a third rate city in the West. Washington was the proper arena for his
talents; they would take the shortest route to Washington. No trouble
about bringing him around; a man so able and so sensible as he would
not refuse the opportunity to do good on a grand scale. Besides--he
must be got away from his family, from these doubtless good and kind
but certainly not very high class associates of his, and from Selma
Gordon. The idea of his comparing HER with Selma Gordon! He had not
done so aloud, but she knew what was in his mind. Yes, he must be
taken far away from all these provincial and narrowing associations.
But all this was mere detail. The big problem was how to bring her
father round. He couldn't realize what Victor Dorn would be after she
had taken him in hand. He would see only Victor Dorn, the labor
agitator of Remsen City, the nuisance who put mischievous motives into
the heads of "the hands"--the man who made them think they had heads
when they were intended by the Almighty to be simply hands. How
reconcile him to the idea of accepting this nuisance, this poor,
common member of the working class as a son-in-law, as the husband of
the daughter he wished to see married to some one of the "best"
families?
On the face of it, the thing was impossible. Why, then, did not Jane
despair? For two reasons. In the first place, she was in love, and
that made her an optimist. Somehow love would find the way. But the
second reason--the one she hid from herself deep in the darkest
sub-cellar of her mind, was the real reason. It is one matter to wish
for a person's death. Only a villainous nature can harbor such a wish,
can admit it except as a hastily and slyly in-crawling impulse, to be
flung out the instant it is discovered. It is another matter to
calculate--very secretly, very unconsciously--upon a death that seems
inevitable anyhow. Jane had only to look at her father to feel that he
would not be spared to her long. The mystery was how he had kept alive
so long, how he continued to live from day to day. His stomach was
gone; his whole digestive apparatus was in utter disorder. His body
had shriveled until he weighed no more than a baby. His pulse was so
feeble that even in the hot weather he complained of the cold and had
to be wrapped in the heaviest winter garments. Yet he lived on, and his
mind worked with undiminished vigor.
When Jane reached home, the old man was sitting on the veranda in the
full sun. On his huge head was a fur cap pulled well down over his
ears and intensifying the mortuary, skull-like appearance of his face.
Over his ulster was an old-fashioned Scotch shawl such as men used to
wear in the days before overcoats came into fashion. About his wasted
legs was wrapped a carriage robe, and she knew that there was a
hot-water bag under his feet. Beside him sat young Doctor Charlton,
whom Jane had at last succeeded in inducing her father to try.
Charlton did not look or smell like a doctor. He rather suggested a
professional athlete, perhaps a better class prize fighter. The
weazened old financier was gazing at him with a fascinated
expression--admiring, envious, amused.
Charlton was saying:
"Yes, you do look like a dead one. But that's only another of your
tricks for fooling people. You'll live a dozen years unless you commit
suicide. A dozen years? Probably twenty."
"You ought to be ashamed to make sport of a poor old invalid," said
Hastings with a grin.
"Any man who could stand a lunch of crackers and milk for ten years
could outlive anything," retorted Charlton. "No, you belong to the old
stock. You used to see 'em around when you were a boy. They usually
coughed and wheezed, and every time they did it, the family used to get
ready to send for the undertaker. But they lived on and on. When did
your mother die?"
"Couple of years ago," said Hastings.
"And your father?"
"He was killed by a colt he was breaking at sixty-seven."
Charlton laughed uproariously. "If you took walks and rides instead of
always sitting round, you never would die," said he. "But you're like
lots of women I know. You'd rather die than take exercise. Still,
I've got you to stop that eating that was keeping you on the verge all
the time."
"You're trying to starve me to death," grumbled Hastings.
"Don't you feel better, now that you've got used to it and don't feel
hungry?"
"But I'm not getting any nourishment."
"How would eating help you? You can't digest any more than what I'm
allowing you. Do you think you were better off when you were full of
rotting food? I guess not."
"Well--I'm doing as you say," said the old man resignedly.
"And if you keep it up for a year, I'll put you on a horse. If you
don't keep it up, you'll find yourself in a hearse."
Jane stood silently by, listening with a feeling of depression which
she could not have accounted for, if she would--and would not if she
could. Not that she wished her father to die; simply that Charlton's
confidence in his long life forced her to face the only
alternative--bringing him round to accept Victor Dorn.
At her father's next remark she began to listen with a high beating
heart. He said to Charlton:
"How about that there friend of yours--that young Dorn? You ain't
talked about him to-day as much as usual."
"The last time we talked about him we quarreled," said Charlton. "It's
irritating to see a man of your intelligence a slave to silly
prejudices."
"I like Victor Dorn," replied Hastings in a most conciliatory tone. "I
think he's a fine young man. Didn't I have him up here at my house not
long ago? Jane'll tell you that I like him. She likes him, too. But
the trouble with him--and with you, too--is that you're dreaming all
the time. You don't recognize facts. And, so, you make a lot of
trouble for us conservative men."
"Please don't use that word conservative," said Charlton. "It gags me
to hear it. YOU'RE not a conservative. If you had been you'd still be
a farm hand. You've been a radical all your life--changing things
round and round, always according to your idea of what was to your
advantage. The only difference between radicals like you robber
financiers and radicals like Victor and me is that our ideas of what's
to our advantage differ. To you life means money; to us it means
health and comfort and happiness. You want the world changed--laws
upset, liberty destroyed, wages lowered, and so on--so that you can get
all the money. We want the world changed so that we can be healthy and
comfortable and happy--securely so--which we can't be unless everybody
is, or is in the way to being."
Jane was surprised to see that her father, instead of being offended,
was amused and pleased. He liked his new doctor so well that he liked
everything he said and did. Jane looked at Charlton in her friendliest
way. Here might be an ally, and a valuable ally.
"Human nature doesn't change," said Hastings in the tone of a man who
is stating that which cannot be disputed.
"The mischief it doesn't," said Charlton in prompt and vigorous
dissent. "When conditions change, human nature has to change, has to
adapt itself. What you mean is that human nature doesn't change
itself. But conditions change it. They've been changing it very
rapidly these last few years. Science--steam, electricity, a thousand
inventions and discoveries, crowding one upon another--science has
brought about entirely new and unprecedented conditions so rapidly that
the changes in human nature now making and that must be made in the
next few years are resulting in a series of convulsions. You
old-fashioned fellows--and the political parties and the
politicians--are in danger of being stranded. Leaders like Victor
Dorn--movements like our Workingmen's League--they seem new and radical
to-day. By to-morrow they'll be the commonplace thing, found
everywhere--and administering the public affairs."
Jane was not surprised to see an expression of at least partial
admission upon her father's face. Charlton's words were of the kind
that set the imagination to work, that remind those who hear of a
thousand and one familiar related facts bearing upon the same points.
"Well," said Hastings, "I don't expect to see any radical changes in my
time."
"Then you'll not live as long as I think," said Charlton. "We
Americans advance very slowly because this is a big country and
undeveloped, and because we shift about so much that no one stays in
one place long enough to build up a citizenship and get an education in
politics--which is nothing more or less than an education in the art of
living. But slow though we are, we do advance. You'll soon see the
last of Boss Kelly and Boss House--and of such gentle, amiable frauds
as our friend Davy Hull."
Jane laughed merrily. "Why do you call him a fraud?" she asked.
"Because he is a fraud," said Charlton. "He is trying to confuse the
issue. He says the whole trouble is petty dishonesty in public life.
Bosh! The trouble is that the upper and middle classes are milking the
lower class--both with and without the aid of the various governments,
local, state and national. THAT'S the issue. And the reason it is
being forced is because the lower class, the working class, is slowly
awakening to the truth. When it completely awakens----" Charlton made
a large gesture and laughed.
"What then?" said Hastings.
"The end of the upper and the middle classes. Everybody will have to
work for a living."
"Who's going to be elected this fall?" asked Jane. "Your man?"
"Yes," said Doctor Charlton. "Victor Dorn thinks not. But he always
takes the gloomy view. And he doesn't meet and talk with the fellows
on the other side, as I do."
Hastings was looking out from under the vizor of his cap with a
peculiar grin. It changed to a look of startled inquiry as Charlton
went on to say:
"Yes, we'll win. But the Davy Hull gang will get the offices."
"Why do you think that?" asked old Hastings sharply.
Charlton eyed his patient with a mocking smile. "You didn't think any
one knew but you and Kelly--did you?" laughed he.
"Knew what?" demanded Hastings, with a blank stare.
"No matter," said Charlton. "I know what you intend to do. Well,
you'll get away with the goods. But you'll wish you hadn't. You
old-fashioned fellows, as I've been telling you, don't realize that
times have changed."
"Do you mean, Doctor, that the election is to be stolen away from you?"
inquired Jane.
"Was that what I meant, Mr. Hastings?" said Charlton.
"The side that loses always shouts thief at the side that wins," said
the old man indifferently. "I don't take any interest in politics."
"Why should you?" said the Doctor audaciously. "You own both sides.
So, it's heads you win, tails I lose."
Hastings laughed heartily. "Them political fellows are a lot of
blackmailers," said he.
"That's ungrateful," said Charlton. "Still, I don't blame you for
liking the Davy Hull crowd better. From them you can get what you want
just the same, only you don't have to pay for it."
He rose and stretched his big frame, with a disregard of conventional
good manners so unconscious that it was inoffensive.
But Charlton had a code of manners of his own, and somehow it seemed to
suit him where the conventional code would have made him seem cheap.
"I didn't mean to look after your political welfare, too," said he.
"But I'll make no charge for that."
"Oh, I like to hear you young fellows talk," said Martin. "You'll sing
a different song when you're as old as I am and have found out what a
lot of damn fools the human race is."
"As I told you before," said Charlton, "it's conditions that make the
human animal whatever it is. It's in the harness of conditions--the
treadmill of conditions--the straight jacket of conditions. Change the
conditions and you change the animal."
When he was swinging his big powerful form across the lawns toward the
fringe of woods, Jane and her father looking after him, Jane said:
"He's wonderfully clever, isn't he?"
"A dreamer--a crank," replied the old man.
"But what he says sounds reasonable," suggested the daughter.
"It SOUNDS sensible," admitted the old man peevishly. "But it ain't
what _I_ was brought up to call sensible. Don't you get none of those
fool ideas into your head. They're all very well for men that haven't
got any property or any responsibilities--for flighty fellows like
Charlton and that there Victor Dorn. But as soon as anybody gets
property and has interests to look after, he drops that kind of talk."
"Do you mean that property makes a man too blind or too cowardly to
speak the truth?" asked Jane with an air of great innocence.
The old man either did not hear or had no answer ready. He said:
"You heard him say that Davy Hull was going to win?"
"Why, he said Victor Dorn was going to win," said Jane, still simple
and guileless.
Hastings frowned impatiently. "That was just loose talk. He admitted
Davy was to be the next mayor. If he is--and I expect Charlton was
about right--if Davy is elected, I shouldn't be surprised to see him
nominated for governor next year. He's a sensible, knowing fellow.
He'll make a good mayor, and he'll be elected governor on his record."
"And on what you and the other men who run things will do for him,"
suggested Jane slyly.
Her father grinned expressively. "I like to see a sensible, ambitious
young fellow from my town get on," said he. "And I'd like to see my
girl married to a fellow of that sort, and settled."
"I think more could be done with a man like Victor Dorn," said Jane.
"It seems to me the Davy Hull sort of politics is--is about played out.
Don't you think so?"
Jane felt that her remark was a piece of wild audacity. But she was
desperate. To her amazement her father did not flare up but kept
silent, wearing the look she knew meant profound reflection.
After a moment he said:
"Davy's a knowing boy. He showed that the other day when he jumped in
and made himself a popular hero. He'd never 'a' been able to come
anywheres near election but for that. Dorn'd 'a' won by a vote so big
that Dick Kelly wouldn't 'a' dared even try to count him out....
Dorn's a better man than Davy. But Dorn's got a foolish streak in him.
He believes the foolishness he talks, instead of simply talking it to
gain his end. I've been looking him over and thinking him over. He
won't do, Jinny."
Was her father discussing the matter abstractly, impersonally, as he
seemed? Or, had he with that uncanny shrewdness of his somehow
penetrated to her secret--or to a suspicion of it? Jane was so
agitated that she sat silent and rigid, trying to look unconcerned.
"I had a strong notion to try to do something for him," continued the
old man. "But it'd be no use. He'd not rise to a chance that was
offered him. He's set on going his own way."
Jane trembled--dared. "I believe _I_ could do something with him,"
said she--and she was pleased with the coolness of her voice, the
complete absence of agitation or of false note.
"Try if you like," said her father. "But I'm sure you'll find I'm
right. Be careful not to commit yourself in any way. But I needn't
warn you. You know how to take care of yourself. Still, maybe you
don't realize how set up he'd be over being noticed by a girl in your
position. And if you gave him the notion that there was a chance for
him to marry you, he'd be after you hammer and tongs. The idea of
getting hold of so much money'd set him crazy."
"I doubt if he cares very much--or at all--about money," said Jane,
judicially.
Hastings grinned satirically. "There ain't nobody that don't care
about money," said he, "any more than there's anybody that don't care
about air to breathe. Put a pin right there, Jinny."
"I hate to think that," she said, reluctantly, "but I'm
afraid--it's--so."
As she was taking her ride one morning she met David Hull also on
horseback and out for his health. He turned and they rode together,
for several miles, neither breaking the silence except with an
occasional remark about weather or scenery. Finally Davy said:
"You seem to be down about something, too?"
"Not exactly down," replied Jane. "Simply--I've been doing a lot of
thinking--and planning--or attempt at planning--lately."
"I, too," said Davy.
"Naturally. How's politics?"
"Of course I don't hear anything but that I'm going to be elected. If
you want to become convinced that the whole world is on the graft, take
part in a reform campaign. We've attracted every broken-down political
crook in this region. It's hard to say which crowd is the more
worthless, the college amateurs at politics or these rotten old
in-goods who can't get employment with either Kelly or House and, so,
have joined us. By Jove, I'd rather be in with the out and out
grafters--the regulars that make no bones of being in politics for the
spoils. There's slimy hypocrisy over our crowd that revolts me. Not a
particle of sincerity or conviction. Nothing but high moral guff."
"Oh, but YOU'RE sincere, Davy," said Jane with twinkling eyes.
"Am I?" said Davy angrily. "I'm not so damn sure of it." Hastily, "I
don't mean that. Of course, I'm sincere--as sincere as a man can be
and get anywhere in this world. You've got to humbug the people,
because they haven't sense enough to want the truth."
"I guess, Davy," said Jane shrewdly, "if you told them the whole truth
about yourself and your party they'd have sense enough--to vote for
Victor Dorn."
"He's a demagogue," said Davy with an angry jerk at his rein. "He knows
the people aren't fit to rule."
"Who is?" said Jane. "I've yet to see any human creature who could run
anything without making more or less of a mess of it. And--well,
personally, I'd prefer incompetent honest servants to competent ones
who were liars or thieves."
"Sometimes I think," said Davy, "that the only thing to do is to burn
the world up and start another one."
"You don't talk like a man who expected to be elected," said Jane.
"Oh--I'm worrying about myself--not about the election," said Hull,
lapsing into sullen silence. And certainly he had no reason to worry
about the election. He had the Citizen's Alliance and the Democratic
nominations. And, as a further aid to him, Dick Kelly had given the
Republican nomination to Alfred Sawyer, about the most unpopular
manufacturer in that region. Sawyer, a shrewd money maker, was an ass
in other ways, was strongly seized of the itch for public office.
Kelly, seeking the man who would be the weakest, combined business with
good politics; he forced Sawyer to pay fifty thousand dollars into the
"campaign fund" in a lump sum, and was counting confidently upon
"milking" him for another fifty thousand in installments during the
campaign. Thus, in the natural order of things, Davy could safely
assume that he would be the next mayor of Remsen City by a gratifyingly
large majority. The last vote of the Workingmen's League had been made
fifteen hundred. Though it should quadruple its strength at the coming
election--which was most improbable--it would still be a badly beaten
second. Politically, Davy was at ease.
Jane waited ten minutes, then asked abruptly:
"What's become of Selma Gordon?"
"Did you see this week's New Day?"
"Is it out? I've seen no one, and haven't been down town."
"There was a lot of stuff in it against me. Most of it demagoguing, of
course, but more or less hysterical campaigning. The only nasty article
about me--a downright personal attack on my sincerity--was signed
'S.G.'"
"Oh--to be sure," said Jane, with smiling insincerity. "I had almost
forgotten what you told me. Well, it's easy enough to bribe her to
silence. Go offer yourself to her."