"You are charitable," said Jane.
"I am scientific," replied he. "It's very intelligent to go about
distributing praise and blame. To do that is to obey a slightly higher
development of the instinct that leads one to scowl at and curse the
stone he stumps his toe on. The sensible thing to do is to look at the
causes of things--of brutishness in human beings, for example--and to
remove those causes."
"It was wonderful, the way you dragged father back to life and almost
saved him. That reminds me. Wait a second, please."
She went up to her room and got the envelope addressed to Charlton
which she had found in the drawer, as her father directed. Charlton
opened it, took out five bank notes each of a thousand dollars. She
glanced at the money, then at his face. It did not express the emotion
she was expecting. On the contrary, its look was of pleased curiosity.
"Five thousand dollars," he said, reflectively. "Your father certainly
was a queer mixture of surprises and contradictions. Now, who would
have suspected him of a piece of sentiment like this? Pure sentiment.
He must have felt that I'd not be able to save him, and he knew my bill
wouldn't be one-tenth this sum."
"He liked you, and admired you," said Jane.
"He was very generous where he liked and admired."
Charlton put the money back in the envelope, put the envelope in his
pocket. "I'll give the money to the Children's Hospital," said he.
"About six months ago I completed the sum I had fixed on as necessary
to my independence; so, I've no further use for money--except to use it
up as it comes in."
"You may marry some day," suggested Jane.
"Not a woman who wishes to be left richer than independent," replied
he. "As for the children, they'll be brought up to earn their own
independence. I'll leave only incubators and keepsakes when I die.
But no estate. I'm not that foolish and inconsiderate."
"What a queer idea!" exclaimed Jane.
"On the contrary, it's simplest common sense. The idea of giving
people something they haven't earned--that's the queer idea."
"You are SO like Victor Dorn!"
"That reminds me!" exclaimed Charlton. "It was very negligent of me to
forget. The day your father died I dropped in on Victor and told
him--him and Selma Gordon--about it. And both asked me to take you
their sympathy. They said a great deal about your love for your
father, and how sad it was to lose him. They were really distressed."
Jane's face almost brightened. "I've been rather hurt because I hadn't
received a word of sympathy from--them," she said.
"They'd have come, themselves, except that politics has made a very
ugly feeling against them--and Galland's your brother-in-law."
"I understand," said Jane. "But I'm not Galland--and not of that
party."
"Oh, yes, you are of that party," replied Charlton. "You draw your
income from it, and one belongs to whatever he draws his income from.
Civilization means property--as yet. And it doesn't mean men and
women--as yet. So, to know the man or the woman we look at the
property."
"That's hideously unjust," cried Jane.
"Don't be utterly egotistical," said Charlton. "Don't attach so much
importance to your little, mortal, WEAK personality. Try to realize
that you're a mere chip in the great game of chance. You're a chip with
the letter P on it--which stands for Plutocracy. And you'll be played
as you're labeled."
"You make it very hard for any one to like you."
"Well--good-by, then."
And ignoring her hasty, half-laughing, half-serious protests he took
himself away. She was intensely irritated. A rapid change in her
outward character had been going forward since her father's death--a
change in the direction of intensifying the traits that had always been
really dominant, but had been less apparent because softened by other
traits now rapidly whithering.
The cause of the change was her inheritance.
Martin Hastings, remaining all his life in utter ignorance of the showy
uses of wealth and looking on it with the eyes of a farm hand, had
remained the enriched man of the lower classes, at heart a member of
his original class to the end. The effect of this upon Jane had been
to keep in check all the showy and arrogant, all the upper class,
tendencies which education and travel among the upper classes of the
East and of Europe had implanted in her. So long as plain old Martin
lived, she could not FEEL the position she had--or, rather, would some
day have--in the modern social system. But just as soon as he passed
away, just as soon as she became a great heiress, actually in
possession of that which made the world adore, that which would buy
servility, flattery, awe--just so soon did she begin to be an
upper-class lady.
She had acquired a superficial knowledge of business--enough to enable
her to understand what the various items in the long, long schedule of
her holdings meant. Symbols of her importance, of her power. She had
studied the "great ladies" she had met in her travels and visitings.
She had been impressed by the charm of the artistic, carefully
cultivated air of simplicity and equality affected by the greatest of
these great ladies as those born to wealth and position. To be gentle
and natural, to be gracious--that was the "proper thing." So, she now
adopted a manner that was if anything too kindly. Her pose, her mask,
behind which she was concealing her swollen and still swelling pride
and sense of superiority, as yet fitted badly. She "overacted," as
youth is apt to do. She would have given a shrewd observer--one not
dazzled by her wealth beyond the power of clear sight--the impression
that she was pitying the rest of mankind, much as we all pity and
forbear with a hopeless cripple.
But the average observer would simply have said: "What a sweet,
natural girl, so unspoiled by her wealth!"--just as the hopeless
cripple says, "What a polite person," as he gets the benefit of
effusive good manners that would, if he were shrewd, painfully remind
him that he was an unfortunate creature.
Of all the weeds that infest the human garden snobbishness, the
commonest, is the most prolific, and it is a mighty cross breeder,
too--modifying every flower in the garden, changing colors from rich to
glaring, changing odors from perfumes to sickening-sweet or to
stenches. The dead hands of Martin Hastings scattered showers of
shining gold upon his daughter's garden; and from these seeds was
springing a heavy crop of that most prolific of weeds.
She was beginning to resent Charlton's manner--bluff, unceremonious,
candid, at times rude. He treated women exactly as he treated men, and
he treated all men as intimates, free and easy fellow travelers afoot
upon a dusty, vulgar highway. She had found charm in that manner, so
natural to the man of no pretense, of splendid physical proportions, of
the health of a fine tree. She was beginning to get into the state of
mind at which practically all very rich people in a civilized society
sooner or later arrive--a state of mind that makes it impossible for
any to live with or near them except hirelings and dependents. The
habit of power of any kind breeds intolerance of equality of level
intercourse. This is held in check, often held entirely in check,
where the power is based upon mental superiority; for the very
superiority of the mind keeps alive the sense of humor and the sense of
proportion. Not so the habit of money power. For money power is
brutal, mindless. And as it is the only real power in any and all
aristocracies, aristocracies are inevitably brutal and brutalizing.
If Jane had been poor, or had remained a few years longer--until her
character was better set--under the restraining influence of her
unfrilled and unfrillable father, her passion for power, for
superiority would probably have impelled her to develop her mind into a
source of power and position. Fate abruptly gave her the speediest and
easiest means to power known in our plutocratic civilization. She
would have had to be superhuman in beauty of character or a genius in
mind to have rejected the short and easy way to her goal and struggled
on in the long and hard--and doubtful--way.
She did not herself appreciate the change within herself. She fancied
she was still what she had been two weeks before. For as yet nothing
had occurred to enable her to realize her changed direction, her
changed view of life. Thus, she was still thinking of Victor Dorn as
she had thought of him; and she was impatient to see him. She was now
free FREE! She could, without consulting anybody, have what she
wanted. And she wanted Victor Dorn.
She had dropped from her horse and with her arm through the bridle was
strolling along one of the quieter roads which Victor often took in his
rambles. It was a tonic October day, with floods of sunshine upon the
gorgeous autumnal foliage, never more gorgeous than in that fall of the
happiest alternations of frost and warmth. She heard the pleasant
rustle of quick steps in the fallen leaves that carpeted the byroad.
She knew it was he before she glanced; and his first view of her face
was of its beauty enhanced by a color as delicate and charming as that
in the leaves about them.
She looked at his hands in which he was holding something half
concealed. "What is it?" she said, to cover her agitation.
He opened his hands a little wider. "A bird," said he. "Some hunter
has broken its wing. I'm taking it to Charlton for repairs and a fair
start for its winter down South."
His eyes noted for an instant significantly her sombre riding costume,
then sought her eyes with an expression of simple and friendly
sympathy. The tears came to her eyes, and she turned her face away.
She for the first time had a sense of loss, a moving memory of her
father's goodness to her, of an element of tenderness that had passed
out of her life forever. And she felt abjectly ashamed--ashamed of her
relief at the lifting of the burden of his long struggle against death,
ashamed of her miserable wranglings with Martha and Billy's wife,
ashamed of her forgetfulness of her father in the exultation over her
wealth, ashamed of the elaborately fashionable mourning she was
wearing--and of the black horse she had bought to match. She hoped he
would not observe these last flauntings of the purely formal character
of a grief that was being utilized to make a display of fashionableness.
"You always bring out the best there is in me," said she.
He stood silently before her--not in embarrassment, for he was rarely
self-conscious enough to be embarrassed, but refraining from speech
simply because there was nothing to say.
"I haven't heard any of the details of the election," she went on.
"Did you come out as well as you hoped?"
"Better," said he. "As a result of the election the membership of the
League has already a little more than doubled. We could have quadrupled
it, but we are somewhat strict in our requirements. We want only those
who will stay members as long as they stay citizens of Remsen City.
But I must go on to Charlton or he'll be out on his rounds."
She caught his glance, which was inclined to avoid hers. She gave him
a pleading look. "I'll walk with you part of the way," she said.
He seemed to be searching for an excuse to get away. Whether because
he failed to find it or because he changed his mind, he said: "You'll
not mind going at a good gait?"
"I'll ride," said she. "It's not comfortable, walking fast in these
boots."
He stood by to help her, but let her get into the saddle alone. She
smiled down at him with a little coquetry. "Are you afraid to touch
me--to-day?" she asked.
He laughed: "The bird IS merely an excuse," he admitted. "I've got
back my self-control, and I purpose to keep it."
She flushed angrily. His frankness now seemed to her to be flavored
with impertinent assurance. "That's amusing," said she, with an
unpleasant smile. "You have an extraordinary opinion of yourself,
haven't you?"
He shrugged his shoulders as if the subject did not interest him and
set off at a gait that compelled her horse to a rapid walk. She said
presently:
"I'm going to live at the old place alone for the present. You'll come
to see me?"
He looked at her. "No," he said. "As I told you a moment ago, that's
over. You'll have to find some one else to amuse you--for, I
understand perfectly, Jane, that you were only doing what's called
flirting. That sort of thing is a waste of time--for me. I'm not
competent to judge whether it's a waste for you."
She looked coldly down at him. "You have changed since I last saw
you," she said. "I don't mean the change in your manner toward me. I
mean something deeper. I've often heard that politics makes a man
deteriorate. You must be careful, Victor."
"I must think about that," said he. "Thank you for warning me."
His prompt acceptance of her insincere criticism made her straightway
repentant. "No, it's I that have changed," she said. "Oh, I'm
horrid!--simply horrid. I'm in despair about myself."
"Any one who thinks about himself is bound to be," said he
philosophically. "That's why one has to keep busy in order to keep
contented." He halted. "I can save a mile and half an hour by
crossing these fields." He held the wounded bird in one hand very
carefully while he lifted his hat.
She colored deeply. "Victor," she said, "isn't there any way that you
and I can be friends?"
"Yes," replied he. "As I told you before, by becoming one of us.
Those are impossible terms, of course. But that's the only way by
which we could be of use to each other. Jane, if I, professing what I
do profess, offered to be friends with you on any other terms, you'd be
very foolish not to reject my offer. For, it would mean that I was a
fraud. Don't you see that?"
"Yes," she admitted. "But when I am with you I see everything exactly
as you represent it."
"It's fortunate for you that I'm not disposed to take advantage of
that--isn't it?" said he, with good-humored irony.
"You don't believe me!"
"Not altogether," he confessed. "To be quite candid, I think that for
some reason or other I rouse in you an irresistible desire to pose. I
doubt if you realize it--wholly. But you'd be hard pressed just where
to draw the line between the sincere and the insincere, wouldn't
you--honestly?"
She sat moodily combing at her horse's mane.
"I know it's cruel," he went on lightly, "to deny anything, however
small, to a young lady who has always had her own way. But in
self-defense I must do it."
"Why DO I take these things from you?" she cried, in sudden
exasperation. And touching her horse with her stick, she was off at a
gallop.