The Conflict Part 2

"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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sociated with upper cla.s.s people, turning round and inciting the lower cla.s.ses 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 cla.s.s.

Of course, men can a.s.sociate 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 cla.s.s.

"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 cla.s.ses."

"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 circ.u.mstances."

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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sion 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 d.a.m.n 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 s.p.a.ciously 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."