Four years at Wellesley; two years about equally divided among Paris, Dresden and Florence. And now Jane Hastings was at home again. At home in the unchanged house—spacious, old-fashioned—looking down from its steeply sloping lawns and terraced gardens upon the sooty, smoky activities of Remsen City, looking out upon a charming panorama of hills and valleys in the heart of South Central Indiana. Six years of striving in the East and abroad to satisfy the restless energy she inherited from her father; and here she was, as restless as ever—yet with everything done that a woman could do in the way of an active career. She looked back upon her years of elaborate preparation; she looked forward upon—nothing. That is, nothing but marriage—dropping her name, dropping her personality, disappearing in the personality of another. She had never seen a man for whom she would make such a sacrifice; she did not believe that such a man existed.
She meditated bitterly upon that cruel arrangement of Nature's whereby the father transmits his vigorous qualities in twofold measure to the daughter, not in order that she may be a somebody, but solely in order that she may transmit them to sons. "I don't believe it," she decided. "There's something for ME to do." But what? She gazed down at Remsen City, connected by factories and pierced from east, west and south by railways. She gazed out over the fields and woods. Yes, there must be something for her besides merely marrying and breeding—just as much for her as for a man. But what? If she should marry a man who would let her rule him, she would despise him. If she should marry a man she could respect—a man who was of the master class like her father—how she would hate him for ignoring her and putting her in her ordained inferior feminine place. She glanced down at her skirts with an angry sense of enforced masquerade. And then she laughed—for she had a keen sense of humor that always came to her rescue when she was in danger of taking herself too seriously.
Through the foliage between her and the last of the stretches of highroad winding up from Remsen City she spied a man climbing in her direction—a long, slim figure in cap, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers. Instantly—and long before he saw her—there was a grotesque whisking out of sight of the serious personality upon which we have been intruding. In its stead there stood ready to receive the young man a woman of the type that possesses physical charm and knows how to use it—and does not scruple to use it. For a woman to conquer man by physical charm is far and away the easiest, the most fleeting and the emptiest of victories. But for woman thus to conquer without herself yielding anything whatsoever, even so little as an alluring glance of the eye—that is quite another matter. It was this sort of conquest that Jane Hastings delighted in—and sought to gain with any man who came within range. If the men had known what she was about, they would have denounced her conduct as contemptible and herself as immoral, even brazen. But in their innocence they accused only their sophisticated and superbly masculine selves and regarded her as the soul of innocence. This was the more absurd in them because she obviously excelled in the feminine art of inviting display of charm. To glance at her was to realize at once the beauty of her figure, the exceeding grace of her long back and waist. A keen observer would have seen the mockery lurking in her light-brown eyes, and about the corners of her full red lips.
She arranged her thick dark hair to make a secret, half-revealed charm of her fascinating pink ears and to reveal in dazzling unexpectedness the soft, round whiteness of the nape of her neck.
Because you are thus let into Miss Hastings' naughty secret, so well veiled behind an air of earnest and almost cold dignity, you must not do her the injustice of thinking her unusually artful. Such artfulness is common enough; it secures husbands by the thousand and by the tens of thousands. No, only in the skill of artfulness was Miss Hastings unusual.
As the long strides of the tall, slender man brought him rapidly nearer, his face came into plain view. A refined, handsome face, dark and serious. He had dark-brown eyes—and Miss Hastings did not like brown eyes in a man. She thought that men should have gray or blue or greenish eyes, and if they were cruel in their love of power she liked it the better.
"Hello, Dave," she cried in a pleasant, friendly voice. She was posed—in the most unconscious of attitudes—upon a rustic bench so that her extraordinary figure was revealed at its most attractive.
The young man halted before her, his breath coming quickly—not altogether from the exertion of his steep and rapid climb. "Jen, I'm mad about you," he said, his brown eyes soft and luminous with passion. "I've done nothing but think about you in the week you've been back. I didn't sleep last night, and I've come up here as early as I dared to tell you—to ask you to marry me."
He did not see the triumph she felt, the joy in having subdued another of these insolently superior males. Her eyes were discreetly veiled; her delightful mouth was arranged to express sadness.
"I thought I was an ambition incarnate," continued the young man, unwittingly adding to her delight by detailing how brilliant her conquest was. "I've never cared a rap about women—until I saw you. I was all for politics—for trying to do something to make my fellow men the better for my having lived. Now—it's all gone. I want you, Jen. Nothing else matters."
As he paused, gazing at her in speechless longing, she lifted her eyes—simply a glance. With a stifled cry he darted forward, dropped beside her on the bench and tried to enfold her in his arms. The veins stood out in his forehead; the expression of his eyes was terrifying.
She shrank, sprang up. His baffled hands had not even touched her. "David Hull!" she cried, and the indignation and the repulsion in her tone and in her manner were not simulated, though her artfulness hastened to make real use of them. She loved to rouse men to frenzy. She knew that the sight of their frenzy would chill her—would fill her with an emotion that would enable her to remain mistress of the situation.
At sight of her aversion his eyes sank. "Forgive me," he muttered. "You make me—CRAZY."
"I!" she cried, laughing in angry derision. "What have I ever done to encourage you to be—impertinent?"
"Nothing," he admitted. "That is, nothing but just being yourself."
"I can't help that, can I?"
"No," said he, adding doggedly: "But neither can men help going crazy about you."
She looked at him sitting there at once penitent and impenitent; and her mind went back to the thoughts that had engaged it before he came into view. Marriage—to marry one of these men, with their coarse physical ideas of women, with their pitiful weakness before an emotion that seemed to her to have no charm whatever. And these were the creatures who ruled the world and compelled women to be their playthings and mere appendages! Well—no doubt it was the women's own fault, for were they not a poor, spiritless lot, trembling with fright lest they should not find a man to lean on and then, having found the man, settling down into fat and stupid vacuity or playing the cat at the silly game of social position? But not Jane Hastings! Her bosom heaved and her eyes blazed scorn as she looked at this person who had dared think the touch of his coarse hands would be welcome. Welcome!
"And I have been thinking what a delightful friendship ours was," said she, disgustedly. "And all the time, your talk about your ambition—the speeches you were going to make—the offices you were going to hold—the good you were going to do in purifying politics—it was all a blind!"
"All a blind," admitted he. "From the first night that you came to our house to dinner—Jen, I'll never forget that dress you wore—or the way you looked in it."
Miss Jane had thought extremely well of that toilet herself. She had heard how impervious this David Hull, the best catch in the town, was to feminine charm; and she had gone prepared to give battle. But she said dejectedly, "You don't know what a shock you've given me."
"Yes, I do," cried he. "I'm ashamed of myself. But—I love you, Jen! Can't you learn to love me?"
"I hadn't even thought of you in that way," said she. "I haven't bothered my head about marriage. Of course, most girls have to think about it, because they must get some one to support them——"
"I wish to God you were one of that sort," interrupted he. "Then I could have some hope."
"Hope of what," said she disdainfully. "You don't mean that you'd marry a girl who was marrying you because she had to have food, clothing and shelter?"
"I'd marry the woman I loved. Then—I'd MAKE her love me. She simply couldn't help it."
Jane Hastings shuddered. "Thank heaven, I don't have to marry!" Her eyes flashed. "But I wouldn't, even if I were poor. I'd rather go to work. Why shouldn't a woman work, anyhow?"
"At what?" inquired Hull. "Except the men who do manual labor, there are precious few men who can make a living honestly and self-respectingly. It's fortunate the women can hold aloof and remain pure."
Jane laughed unpleasantly. "I'm not so sure that the women who live with men just for shelter are pure," said she.
"Jen," the young man burst out, "you're ambitious—aren't you?"
"Rather," replied she.
"And you like the sort of thing I'm trying to do—like it and approve of it?"
"I believe a man ought to succeed—get to the top."
"So do I—if he can do it honorably."
Jane hesitated—dared. "To be quite frank," said she, "I worship success and I despise failure. Success means strength. Failure means weakness—and I abominate weakness."
He looked quietly disapproving. "You don't mean that. You don't understand what you're saying."
"Perfectly," she assured him. "I'm not a bit good. Education has taken all the namby-pamby nonsense out of me."
But he was not really hearing; besides, what had women to do with the realities of life? They were made to be the property of men—that was the truth, though he would never have confessed it to any woman. They were made to be possessed. "And I must possess this woman," he thought, his blood running hot. He said:
"Why not help me to make a career? I can do it, Jen, with you to help."
She had thought of this before—of making a career for herself, of doing the "something" her intense energy craved, through a man. The "something" must be big if it were to satisfy her; and what that was big could a woman do except through a man? But—this man. Her eyes turned thoughtfully upon him—a look that encouraged him to go on:
"Politics interest you, Jen. I've seen that in the way you listen and in the questions you ask."
She smiled—but not at the surface. In fact, his political talk had bored her. She knew nothing about the subject, and, so, had been as one listening to an unknown language. But, like all women, having only the narrowest range of interests herself and the things that would enable her to show off to advantage, she was used to being bored by the conversational efforts of men and to concealing her boredom. She had listened patiently and had led the conversation by slow, imperceptible stages round to the interesting personal—to the struggle for dominion over this difficult male.
"Anyhow," he went on, "no intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some things—and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain stealing unless we give some service in return. For instance, you and I—what have we done, what are we doing that entitles us to draw so much? Somebody must earn by hard labor all that is produced. We are not earning. So"—he was looking handsome now in his manly earnestness—"Jen, it's up to us to do our share—to stop stealing—isn't it?"
She was genuinely interested. "I hadn't thought of these things," said she.
"Victor Dorn says we ought to go to work like laborers," pursued David. "But that's where he's a crank. The truth is, we ought to give the service of leadership—especially in politics. And I'm going to do it, Jane Hastings!"
For the first time she had an interest in him other than that of conquest. "Just what are you going to do?" she asked.
"Not upset everything and tear everything to pieces, as Victor Dorn wants to do," replied he. "But reform the abuses and wrongs—make it so that every one shall have a fair chance—make politics straight and honest."
This sounded hazy to her. "And what will you get out of it?" asked she.
He colored and was a little uneasy as he thus faced a direct demand for his innermost secret—the secret of selfishness he tried to hide even from himself. But there was no evading; if he would interest her he must show her the practical advantages of his proposal. "If I'm to do any good," said he, putting the best face, and really not a bad face, upon a difficult and delicate matter—"if I'm to do any good I must win a commanding position—must get to be a popular leader—must hold high offices—and—and—all that."
"I understand," said she. "That sounds attractive. Yes, David, you ought to make a career. If I were a man that's the career I'd choose."
"You can choose it, though you're a woman," rejoined he. "Marry me, and we'll go up together. You've no idea how exciting campaigns and elections are. A little while, and you'll be crazy about it all. The women are taking part, more and more."
"Who's Victor Dorn?" she suddenly asked.
"You must remember him. It was his father that was killed by the railway the day we all went on that excursion to Indianapolis."
"Dorn the carpenter," said Jane. "Yes—I remember." Her face grew dreamy with the effort of memory. "I see it all again. And there was a boy with a very white face who knelt and held his head."
"That was Victor," said Hull.
"Yes—I remember him. He was a bad boy—always fighting and robbing orchards and getting kept after school."
"And he's still a bad boy—but in a different way. He's out against everything civilized and everybody that's got money."
"What does he do? Keep a saloon?"
"No, but he spends a lot of time at them. I must say for him that he doesn't drink—and professes not to believe in drink. When I pointed out to him what a bad example he set, loafing round saloons, he laughed at me and said he was spending his spare time exactly as Jesus Christ did. 'You'll find, Davy, old man,' he said, 'if you'll take the trouble to read your Bible, that Jesus traveled with publicans and sinners—and a publican is in plain English a saloonkeeper.'"
"That was very original—wasn't it?" said Jane. "I'm interested in this man. He's—different. I like people who are different."
"I don't think you'd like him, Victor Dorn," said David.
"Don't you?"
"Oh, yes—in a way. I admire him," graciously. "He's really a remarkable fellow, considering his opportunities."
"He calls you 'Davy, old man,'" suggested Jane.
Hull flushed. "That's his way. He's free and easy with every one. He thinks conventionality is a joke."
"And it is," cried Miss Hastings.
"You'd not think so," laughed Hull, "if he called you Jane or Jenny or my dear Jenny half an hour after he met you."
"He wouldn't," said Miss Hastings in a peculiar tone.
"He would if he felt like it," replied Hull. "And if you resented it, he'd laugh at you and walk away. I suspect him of being a good deal of a poseur and a fakir. All those revolutionary chaps are. But I honestly think that he really doesn't care a rap for classes—or for money—or for any of the substantial things."
"He sounds common," said Miss Hastings. "I've lost interest in him." Then in the same breath: "How does he live? Is he a carpenter?"
"He was—for several years. You see, he and his mother together brought up the Dorn family after the father was killed. They didn't get a cent of damages from the railroad. It was an outrage——"
"But my father was the largest owner of the railroad."
Hull colored violently. "You don't understand about business, Jen. The railroad is a corporation. It fought the case—and the Dorns had no money—and the railway owned the judge and bribed several jurors at each trial. Dorn says that was what started him to thinking—to being a revolutionist—though he doesn't call himself that."
"I should think it would!" cried Miss Hastings. "If my father had known——" She caught her breath. "But he MUST have known! He was on the train that day."
"You don't understand business, Jen. Your father wouldn't interfere with the management of the corporation ."
"He makes money out of it—doesn't he?"
"So do we all get money out of corporations that are compelled to do all sorts of queer things. But we can't abolish the system—we've got to reform it. That's why I'm in politics—and want you——"
"Something must be done about that," interrupted Jane. "I shall talk to father——"
"For heaven's sake, Jen," cried David in alarm, "don't tell your father I'VE been stirring you up. He's one of the powers in politics in this State, and——"
"I'll not give you away, Davy," said Miss Hastings a little contemptuously. "I want to hear more about this Victor Dorn. I'll get that money for him and his mother. Is he very poor?"
"Well—you'd call him poor. But he says he has plenty. He runs a small paper. I think he makes about twenty-five dollars a week out of it—and a little more out of lecturing. Then—every once in a while he goes back to his trade—to keep his hand in and enjoy the luxury of earning honest money, as he puts it."
"How queer!" exclaimed Miss Hastings. "I would like to meet him. Is he—very ignorant?"
"Oh, no—no, indeed. He's worked his way through college—and law school afterward. Supported the family all the time."
"He must be tremendously clever."
"I've given you an exaggerated idea of him," Davy hastened to say. "He's really an ordinary sort of chap."
"I should think he'd get rich," said Miss Hastings. "Most of the men that do—so far as I've met them—seem ordinary enough."
"He says he could get rich, but that he wouldn't waste time that way. But he's fond of boasting."
"You don't think he could make money—after all he did—going to college and everything?"
"Yes—I guess he could," reluctantly admitted Davy. Then in a burst of candor: "Perhaps I'm a little jealous of him. If I were thrown on my own resources, I'm afraid I'd make a pretty wretched showing. But—don't get an exaggerated idea of him. The things I've told you sound romantic and unusual. If you met him—saw him every day—you'd realize he's not at all—at least, not much—out of the ordinary."
"Perhaps," said Miss Hastings shrewdly, "perhaps I'm getting a better idea of him than you who see him so often."
"Oh, you'll run across him sometime," said Davy, who was bearing up no better than would the next man under the strain of a woman's interest in and excitement about another man. "When you do, you'll get enough in about five minutes. You see, he's not a gentleman ."
"I'm not sure that I'm wildly crazy about gentlemen—AS gentlemen," replied the girl. "Very few of the interesting people I've read about in history and biography have been gentlemen."
"And very few of them would have been pleasant to associate with," rejoined Hull. "You'll admire Victor as I do. But you'll feel—as I do—that there's small excuse for a man who has been educated, who has associated with upper class people, turning round and inciting the lower classes against everything that's fine and improving."
It was now apparent to the girl that David Hull was irritatedly jealous of this queer Victor Dorn—was jealous of her interest in him. Her obvious cue was to fan this flame. In no other way could she get any amusement out of Davy's society; for his tendency was to be heavily serious—and she wanted no more of the too strenuous love making, yet wanted to keep him "on the string." This jealousy was just the means for her end. Said she innocently: "If it irritates you, Davy, we won't talk about him."
"Not at all—not at all," cried Hull. "I simply thought you'd be getting tired of hearing so much about a man you'd never known."
"But I feel as if I did know him," replied she. "Your account of him was so vivid. I thought of asking you to bring him to call."
Hull laughed heartily. "Victor Dorn—calling!"
"Why not?"
"He doesn't do that sort of thing. And if he did, how could I bring him here?"
"Why not?"
"Well—in the first place, you are a lady—and he is not in your class. Of course, men can associate with each other in politics and business. But the social side of life—that's different."
"But a while ago you were talking about my going in for politics," said Miss Hastings demurely.
"Still, you'd not have to meet SOCIALLY queer and rough characters——"
"Is Victor Dorn very rough?"
The interrupting question was like the bite of a big fly to a sweating horse. "I'm getting sick of hearing about him from you," cried Hull with the pettishness of the spoiled children of the upper class.
"In what way is he rough?" persisted Miss Hastings. "If you didn't wish to talk about Victor Dorn, why did you bring the subject up?"
"Oh—all right," cried Hull, restraining himself. "Victor isn't exactly rough. He can act like a gentleman—when he happens to want to. But you never can tell what he'll do next."
"You MUST bring him to call!" exclaimed Miss Hastings.
"Impossible," said Hull angrily.
"But he's the only man I've heard about since I've been home that I've taken the least interest in."
"If he did come, your father would have the servants throw him off the place."
"Oh, no," said Hiss Hastings haughtily. "My father wouldn't insult a guest of mine."
"But you don't know, Jen," cried David. "Why, Victor Dorn attacks your father in the most outrageous way in his miserable little anarchist paper—calls him a thief, a briber, a blood-sucker—a—I'd not venture to repeat to you the things he says."
"No doubt he got a false impression of father because of that damage suit," said Miss Hastings mildly. "That was a frightful thing. I can't be so unjust as to blame him, Davy—can you?"
Hull was silent.
"And I guess father does have to do a lot of things in the course of business—— Don't all the big men—the leaders?"
"Yes—unfortunately they do," said Hull. "That's what gives plausibility to the shrieks of demagogues like Victor Dorn—though Victor is too well educated not to know better than to stir up the ignorant classes."
"I wonder why he does it," said Miss Hastings, reflectively. "I must ask him. I want to hear what he says to excuse himself." In fact, she had not the faintest interest in the views of this queer unknown; her chief reason for saying she had was to enjoy David Hull's jealousy.
"Before you try to meet Victor," said Hull, in a constrained, desperate way, "please speak to your father about it."
"I certainly shall," replied the girl. "As soon as he comes home this afternoon, I'm going to talk to him about that damage suit. That has got to be straightened out." An expression of resolution, of gentleness and justice abruptly transformed her face. "You may not believe it, but I have a conscience." Absently, "A curious sort of a conscience—one that might become very troublesome, I'm afraid—in some circumstances."
Instantly the fine side of David Hull's nature was to the fore—the dominant side, for at the first appeal it always responded. "So have I, Jen," said he. "I think our similarity in that respect is what draws me so strongly to you. And it's that that makes me hope I can win you. Oh, Jen—there's so much to be done in the world—and you and I could have such a splendid happy life doing our share of it."
She was once more looking at him with an encouraging interest. But she said, gently: "Let's not talk about that any more to-day, Davy."
"But you'll think about it?" urged he.
"Yes," said she. "Let's be friends—and—and see what happens."
Hull strolled up to the house with her, but refused to stop for lunch. He pleaded an engagement; but it was one that could—and in other circumstances would—have been broken by telephone. His real reason for hurrying away was fear lest Jane should open out on the subject of Victor Dorn with her father, and, in her ignorance of the truth as to the situation, should implicate him.
She found her father already at home and having a bowl of crackers and milk in a shady corner of the west veranda. He was chewing in the manner of those whose teeth are few and not too secure. His brows were knitted and he looked as if not merely joy but everything except disagreeable sensation had long since fled his life beyond hope of return—an air not uncommon among the world's successful men. However, at sight of his lovely young daughter his face cleared somewhat and he shot at her from under his wildly and savagely narrowed eyebrows a glance of admiration and tenderness—a quaint expression for those cold, hard features.
Everyone spoke of him behind his back as "Old Morton Hastings."
In fact, he was barely past sixty, was at an age at which city men of the modern style count themselves young and even entertain—not without reason—hope of being desired of women for other than purely practical reasons. He was born on a farm—was born with an aversion to physical exertion as profound as was his passion for mental exertion. We never shall know how much of its progress the world owes to the physically lazy, mentally tireless men. Those are they who, to save themselves physical exertion, have devised all manner of schemes and machines to save labor. And, at bottom, what is progress but man's success in his effort to free himself from manual labor—to get everything for himself by the labor of other men and animals and of machines? Naturally his boyhood of toil on the farm did not lessen Martin Hastings' innate horror of "real work." He was not twenty when he dropped tools never to take them up again. He was shoeing a horse in the heat of the cool side of the barn on a frightful August day. Suddenly he threw down the hammer and said loudly: "A man that works is a damn fool. I'll never work again." And he never did.
As soon as he could get together the money—and it was not long after he set about making others work for him—he bought a buggy, a kind of phaeton, and a safe horse. Thenceforth he never walked a step that could be driven. The result of thirty-five years of this life, so unnatural to an animal that is designed by Nature for walking and is punished for not doing so—the result of a lifetime of this folly was a body shrivelled to a lean brown husk, legs incredibly meagre and so tottery that they scarcely could bear him about. His head—large and finely shaped—seemed so out of proportion that he looked at a glance senile. But no one who had business dealings with him suspected him of senility or any degree of weakness. He spoke in a thin dry voice, shrouded in sardonic humor.
"I don't care for lunch," said Jane, dropping to a chair near the side of the table opposite her father. "I had breakfast too late. Besides, I've got to look out for my figure. There's a tendency to fat in our family."
The old man chuckled. "Me, for instance," said he.
"Martha, for instance," replied Jane. Martha was her one sister—married and ten years older than she and spaciously matronly.
"Wasn't that Davy Hull you were talking to, down in the woods?" inquired her father.
Jane laughed. "You see everything," said she.
"I didn't see much when I saw him," said her father.
Jane was hugely amused. Her father watched her laughter—the dazzling display of fine teeth—with delighted eyes. "You've got mighty good teeth, Jenny," observed he. "Take care of 'em. You'll never know what misery is till you've got no teeth—or next to none." He looked disgustedly into his bowl. "Crackers and milk!" grunted he. "No teeth and no digestion. The only pleasure a man of my age can have left is eating, and I'm cheated out of that."
"So, you wouldn't approve of my marrying Davy?" said the girl.
Her father grunted—chuckled. "I didn't say that. Does he want to marry you?"
"I didn't say that," retorted Jane. "He's an unattached young man—and I, being merely a woman, have got to look out for a husband."
Martin looked gloomy. "There's no hurry," said he. "You've been away six years. Seems to me you might stay at home a while."
"Oh, I'd bring him here, popsy I've no intention of leaving you. You were in an awful state, when I came home. That mustn't ever happen again. And as you won't live with Martha and Hugo—why, I've got to be the victim."
"Yes—it's up to you, Miss, to take care of me in my declining years.... You can marry Davy—if you want to. Davy—or anybody. I trust to your good sense."
"If I don't like him, I can get rid of him," said the girl.
Her father smiled indulgently. "That's A LEETLE too up-to-date for an old man like me," observed he. "The world's moving fast nowadays. It's got a long ways from where it was when your ma and I were young."
"Do you think Davy Hull will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before—of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive—how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career in politics," she explained.
The old man munched and smacked for full a minute before he said, "Well, he can make a pretty good speech. Yes—I reckon he could be taken in hand and pushed. He's got a lot of fool college-bred ideas about reforming things. But he'd soon drop them, if he got into the practical swing. As soon as he had a taste of success, he'd stop being finicky. Just now, he's one of those nice, pure chaps who stand off and tell how things ought to be done. But he'd get over that."
Jane smiled peculiarly—half to herself. "Yes—I think he would. In fact, I'm sure he would." She looked at her father. "Do you think he amounts to as much as Victor Dorn?" she asked, innocently.
The old man dropped a half raised spoonful of milk and crackers into the bowl with a splash. "Dorn—he's a scoundrel!" he exclaimed, shaking with passion. "I'm going to have that dirty little paper of his stopped and him put out of town. Impudent puppy!—foul-mouthed demagogue! I'll SHOW him!"
"Why, he doesn't amount to anything, father," remonstrated the girl. "He's nothing but a common working man—isn't he?"
"That's all he is—the hound!" replied Martin Hastings. A look of cruelty, of tenacious cruelty, had come into his face. It would have startled a stranger. But his daughter had often seen it; and it did not disturb her, as it had never appeared for anything that in any way touched her life. "I've let him hang on here too long," went on the old man, to himself rather than to her. "First thing I know he'll be dangerous."
"If he's worth while I should think you'd hire him," remarked Jane shrewdly.
"I wouldn't have such a scoundrel in my employ," cried her father.
"Oh, maybe," pursued the daughter, "maybe you couldn't hire him."
"Of course I could," scoffed Hastings. "Anybody can be hired."
"I don't believe it," said the girl bluntly.
"One way or another," declared the old man. "That Dorn boy isn't worth the price he'd want."
"What price would he want?" asked Jane.
"How should I know?" retorted her father angrily.
"You've tried to hire him—haven't you?" persisted she.
The father concentrated on his crackers and milk. Presently he said: "What did that fool Hull boy say about Dorn to you?"
"He doesn't like him," replied Jane. "He seems to be jealous of him—and opposed to his political views."
"Dorn's views ain't politics. They're—theft and murder and highfalutin nonsense," said Hastings, not unconscious of his feeble anti-climax.
"All the same, he—or rather, his mother—ought to have got damages from the railway," said the girl. And there was a sudden and startling shift in her expression—to a tenacity as formidable as her father's own, but a quiet and secret tenacity.
Old Hastings wiped his mouth and began fussing uncomfortably with a cigar.
"I don't blame him for getting bitter and turning against society," continued she. "I'd have done the same thing—and so would you."
Hastings lit the cigar. "They wanted ten thousand dollars," he said, almost apologetically. "Why, they never saw ten thousand cents they could call their own."
"But they lost their bread-winner, father," pleaded the girl. "And there were young children to bring up and educate. Oh, I hate to think that—that we had anything to do with such a wrong."
"It wasn't a wrong, Jen—as I used to tell your ma," said the old man, much agitated and shrill of voice. "It was just the course of business. The law was with our company."
Jane said nothing. She simply gazed steadily at her father. He avoided her glance.
"I don't want to hear no more about it," he burst out with abrupt violence. "Not another word!"
"Father, I want it settled—and settled right," said the girl. "I ask it as a favor. Don't do it as a matter of business, but as a matter of sentiment."
He shifted uneasily, debating. When he spoke he was even more explosive than before. "Not a cent! Not a red! Give that whelp money to run his crazy paper on? Not your father, while he keeps his mind."
"But—mightn't that quiet him?" pleaded she. "What's the use of having war when you can have peace? You've always laughed at people who let their prejudices stand in the way of their interests. You've always laughed at how silly and stupid and costly enmities and revenges are. Now's your chance to illustrate, popsy." And she smiled charmingly at him.
He was greatly softened by her manner—and by the wisdom of what she said—a wisdom in which, as in a mirror, he recognized with pleasure her strong resemblance to himself. "That wouldn't be a bad idea, Jen," said he after reflection, "IF I could get a guarantee."
"But why not do it generously?" urged the girl. "Generosity inspires generosity. You'll make him ashamed of himself."
With a cynical smile on his shrivelled face the old man slowly shook his big head that made him look as top-heavy as a newborn baby. "That isn't as smart, child, as what you said before. It's in them things that the difference between theory and practice shows. He'd take the money and laugh at me. No, I'll try to get a guarantee." He nodded and chuckled. "Yes, that was a good idea of yours, Jen."
"But—isn't it just possible that he is a man with—with principles of a certain kind?" suggested she.
"Of course, he THINKS so," said Hastings. "They all do. But you don't suppose a man of any sense at all could really care about and respect working class people?—ignorant, ungrateful fools. I know 'em. Didn't I come from among 'em? Ain't I dealt with 'em all my life? No, that there guy Dorn's simply trying to get up, and is using them to step up on. I did the same thing, only I did it in a decent, law-abiding way. I didn't want to tear down those that was up. I wanted to go up and join 'em. And I did."
And his eyes glistened fondly and proudly as he gazed at his daughter. She represented the climax of his rising—she, the lady born and bred, in her beautiful clothes, with her lovely, delicate charms. Yes, he had indeed "come up," and there before him was the superb tangible evidence of it.
Jane had the strongest belief in her father's worldly wisdom. At the same time, from what David Hull said she had got an impression of a something different from the ordinary human being in this queer Victor Dorn. "You'd better move slowly," she said to her father. "There's no hurry, and you might be mistaken in him."
"Plenty of time," asserted her father. "There's never any need to hurry about giving up money." Then, with one of those uncanny flashes of intuition for which he, who was never caught napping, was famous, he said to her sharply: "You keep your hands off, miss."
She was thrown into confusion—and her embarrassment enraged her against herself. "What could I do?" she retorted with a brave attempt at indifference.
"Well—keep your hands off, miss," said the old man. "No female meddling in business. I'll stand for most anything, but not for that."
Jane was now all eagerness for dropping the subject. She wished no further prying of that shrewd mind into her secret thoughts. "It's hardly likely I'd meddle where I know nothing about the circumstances," said she. "Will you drive me down to Martha's?"
This request was made solely to change the subject, to shift her father to his favorite topic for family conversation—his daughter Martha, Mrs. Hugo Galland, her weakness for fashionable pastimes, her incessant hints and naggings at her father about his dowdy dress, his vulgar mannerisms of speech and of conduct, especially at table. Jane had not the remotest intention of letting her father drive her to Mrs. Galland's, or anywhere, in the melancholy old phaeton-buggy, behind the fat old nag whose coat was as shabby as the coat of the master or as the top and the side curtains of the sorrowful vehicle it drew along at caterpillar pace.
When her father was ready to depart for his office in the Hastings Block—the most imposing office building in Remsen City, Jane announced a change of mind.
"I'll ride, instead," said she. "I need the exercise, and the day isn't too warm."
"All right," said Martin Hastings grumpily. He soon got enough of anyone's company, even of his favorite daughter's. Through years of habit he liked to jog about alone, revolving in his mind his business affairs—counting in fancy his big bundles of securities, one by one, calculating their returns past, present and prospective—reviewing the various enterprises in which he was dominant factor, working out schemes for getting more profit here, for paying less wages there, for tightening his grip upon this enterprise, for dumping his associates in that, for escaping with all the valuable assets from another. His appearance, as he and his nag dozed along the highroad, was as deceptive as that of a hive of bees on a hot day—no signs of life except a few sleepy workers crawling languidly in and out at the low, broad crack-door, yet within myriads toiling like mad.
Jane went up to dress. She had brought an Italian maid with her from Florence, and a mass of baggage that had given the station loungers at Remsen City something to talk about, when there was a dearth of new subjects, for the rest of their lives. She had transformed her own suite in the second story of the big old house into an appearance of the quarters of a twentieth century woman of wealth and leisure. In the sitting room were books in four languages; on the walls were tasteful reproductions of her favorite old masters. The excellence of her education was attested not by the books and pictures but by the absence of those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac where—with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their houses because they can think of nothing else to fill in the gaps.
Many of Jane's ways made Sister Martha uneasy. For Martha, while admitting that Jane through superior opportunity ought to know, could not believe that the "right sort" of people on the other side had thrown over all her beloved formalities and were conducting themselves distressingly like tenement-house people. For instance, Martha could not approve Jane's habit of smoking cigarettes—a habit which, by one of those curious freaks of character, enormously pleased her father. But—except in one matter—Martha entirely approved Jane's style of dress. She hastened to pronounce it "just too elegant" and repeated that phrase until Jane, tried beyond endurance, warned her that the word elegant was not used seriously by people of the "right sort" and that its use was regarded as one of those small but subtle signs of the loathsome "middle class."
The one thing in Jane's dress that Martha disapproved—or, rather, shied at—was her riding suit. This was an extremely noisy plaid man's suit—for Jane rode astride. Martha could not deny that Jane looked "simply stunning" when seated on her horse and dressed in that garb with her long slim feet and graceful calves encased in a pair of riding boots that looked as if they must have cost "something fierce." But was it really "ladylike"? Hadn't Jane made a mistake and adopted a costume worn only by the fashionables among the demi-mondaines of whom Martha had read and had heard such dreadful, delightful stories?
It was the lively plaid that Miss Hastings now clad herself in. She loved that suit. Not only did it give her figure a superb opportunity but also it brought out new beauties in her contour and coloring. And her head was so well shaped and her hair grew so thickly about brow and ears and nape of neck that it looked full as well plaited and done close as when it was framing her face and half concealing, half revealing her charming ears in waves of changeable auburn. After a lingering—and pardonably pleased—look at herself in a long mirror, she descended, mounted and rode slowly down toward town.
The old Galland homestead was at the western end of town—in a quarter that had become almost poor. But it was so dignified and its grounds were so extensive that it suggested a manor house with the humble homes of the lord's dependents clustering about it for shelter. To reach it Jane had to ride through two filthy streets lined with factories. As she rode she glanced at the windows, where could be seen in dusty air girls and boys busy at furiously driven machines—machines that compelled their human slaves to strain every nerve in the monotonous task of keeping them occupied. Many of the girls and boys paused long enough for a glance at the figure of the man-clad girl on the big horse.
Jane, happy in the pleasant sunshine, in her beauty and health and fine raiment and secure and luxurious position in the world, gave a thought of pity to these imprisoned young people. "How lucky I am," she thought, "not to have been born like that. Of course, we all have our falls now and then. But while they always strike on the hard ground, I've got a feather bed to fall on."
When she reached Martha's and was ushered into the cool upstairs sitting room, in somehow ghastly contrast to the hot rooms where the young working people sweated and strained, the subject persisted in its hold on her thoughts. There was Martha, in comfortable, corsetless expansiveness—an ideal illustration of the worthless idler fattening in purposelessness. She was engaged with all her energies in preparing for the ball Hugo Galland's sister, Mrs. Bertrand, was giving at the assembly rooms that night.
"I've been hard at it for several days now," said she. "I think at last I see daylight. But I want your opinion."
Jane gazed absently at the dress and accompanying articles that had been assembled with so much labor. "All right," said she. "You'll look fine and dandy."
Martha twitched. "Jane, dear—don't say that—don't use such an expression. I know it's your way of joking. But lots of people would think you didn't know any better."
"Let 'em think," said Jane. "I say and do as I please."
Martha sighed. Here was one member of her family who could be a credit, who could make people forget the unquestionably common origin of the Hastingses and of the Morleys. Yet this member was always breaking out into something mortifying, something reminiscent of the farm and of the livery stable—for the deceased Mrs. Hastings had been daughter of a livery stable keeper—in fact, had caught Martin Hastings by the way she rode her father's horses at a sale at a county fair. Said Martha:
"You haven't really looked at my clothes, Jane. Why DID you go back to calling yourself Jane?"
"Because it's my name," replied her sister.
"I know that. But you hated it and changed it to Jeanne, which is so much prettier."
"I don't think so any more," replied Miss Hastings. "My taste has improved. Don't be so horribly middle class, Martha—ashamed of everything simple and natural."
"You think you know it all—don't you?—just because you've lived abroad," said Martha peevishly.
"On the contrary, I don't know one-tenth as much as I thought I did, when I came back from Wellesley with a diploma."
"Do you like my costume?" inquired Martha, eying her finery with the fond yet dubious expression of the woman who likes her own taste but is not sure about its being good taste.
"What a lazy, worthless pair we are!" exclaimed Jane, hitting her boot leg a tremendous rap with her little cane.
Martha startled. "Good God—Jane—what is it?" she cried.
"On the way here I passed a lot of factories," pursued Jane. "Why should those people have to work like—like the devil, while we sit about planning ball dresses?"
Martha settled back comfortably. "I feel so sorry for those poor people," said she, absently sympathetic.
"But why?" demanded Jane. "WHY? Why should we be allowed to idle while they have to slave? What have we done—what are we doing—to entitle us to ease? What have they done to condemn them to pain and toil?"
"You know very well, Jane, that we represent the finer side of life."
"Slop!" ejaculated Jane.
"For pity's sake, don't let's talk politics," wailed Martha. "I know nothing about politics. I haven't any brains for that sort of thing."
"Is that politics?" inquired Jane. "I thought politics meant whether the Democrats or the Republicans or the reformers were to get the offices and the chance to steal."
"Everything's politics, nowadays," said Martha, comparing the color of the material of her dress with the color of her fat white arm. "As Hugo says, that Victor Dorn is dragging everything into politics—even our private business of how we make and spend our own money."
Jane sat down abruptly. "Victor Dorn," she said in a strange voice. "WHO is Victor Dorn? WHAT is Victor Dorn? It seems that I can hear of nothing but Victor Dorn to-day."
"He's too low to talk about," said Martha, amiable and absent.
"Why?"
"Politics," replied Martha. "Really, he is horrid, Jane."
"To look at?"
"No—not to look at. He's handsome in a way. Not at all common looking. You might take him for a gentleman, if you didn't know. Still—he always dresses peculiarly—always wears soft hats. I think soft hats are SO vulgar—don't you?"
"How hopelessly middle-class you are, Martha," mocked Jane.
"Hugo would as soon think of going in the street in a—in a—I don't know what."
"Hugo is the finest flower of American gentleman. That is, he's the quintessence of everything that's nice—and 'nasty.' I wish I were married to him for a week. I love Hugo, but he gives me the creeps." She rose and tramped restlessly about the room. "You both give me the creeps. Everything conventional gives me the creeps. If I'm not careful I'll dress myself in a long shirt, let down my hair and run wild."
"What nonsense you do talk," said Martha composedly.
Jane sat down abruptly. "So I do!" she said. "I'm as poor a creature as you at bottom. I simply like to beat against the bars of my cage to make myself think I'm a wild, free bird by nature. If you opened the door, I'd not fly out, but would hop meekly back to my perch and fall to smoothing my feathers.... Tell me some more about Victor Dorn."
"I told you he isn't fit to talk about," said Martha. "Do you know, they say now that he is carrying on with that shameless, brazen thing who writes for his paper, that Selma Gordon?"
"Selma Gordon," echoed Jane. Her brows came down in a gesture reminiscent of her father, and there was a disagreeable expression about her mouth and in her light brown eyes. "Who's Selma Gordon?"
"She makes speeches—and writes articles against rich people—and—oh, she's horrid."
"Pretty?"
"No—a scrawny, black thing. The men—some of them—say she's got a kind of uncanny fascination. Some even insist that she's beautiful." Martha laughed. "Beautiful! How could a woman with black hair and a dark skin and no flesh on her bones be beautiful?"
"It has been known to happen," said Jane curtly. "Is she one of THE Gordons?"
"Mercy, no!" cried Martha Galland. "She simply took the name of Gordon—that is, her father did. He was a Russian peasant—a Jew. And he fell in love with a girl who was of noble family—a princess, I think."
"Princess doesn't mean much in Russia," said Jane sourly.
"Anyhow, they ran away to this country. And he worked in the rolling mill here—and they both died—and Selma became a factory girl—and then took to writing for the New Day—that's Victor Dorn's paper, you know."
"How romantic," said Jane sarcastically. "And now Victor Dorn's in love with her?"
"I didn't say that," replied Martha, with a scandal-smile.
Jane Hastings went to the window and gazed out into the garden. Martha resumed her habitual warm day existence—sat rocking gently and fanning herself and looking leisurely about the room. Presently she said: