The Conflict Part 24

"I didn't mean to say anything rude or offensive," said Selma, sensitive to the faintest impressions. "I was speaking my thoughts aloud.... Do you know David Hull?"

"The young reformer?" said Ellen with a queer little smile. "Yes--quite well."

"Does he live like this?"

"Rather more grandly," said Ellen.

Selma shook her head. A depressed expression settled upon her features. "It's useless," she said. "He couldn't possibly become a man."

Ellen laughed. "You must hurry," she said. "We're keeping everyone waiting."

As Selma was making a few pa.s.ses at her rebellious thick hair--pa.s.ses the like of which Miss Clearwater had never before seen--she explained:

"I've been somewhat interested in David Hull of late--have been hoping he could graduate from a fake reformer into a useful citizen. But--"

She looked round expressively at the luxury surrounding them--"one might as well try to grow wheat in sand."

"Davy is a fine fraud," said Ellen. "Fine--because he doesn't in the least realize that he's a fraud."

"I'm afraid he is a fraud," said Selma setting on her hat again. "What a pity? He might have been a man, if he'd been brought up properly."

She gazed at Ellen with sad, shining eyes. "How many men and women luxury blights!" she cried.

"It certainly has done for Davy," said Ellen lightly. "He'll never be anything but a respectable fraud."

"Why do YOU think so?" Selma inquired.

"My father is a public man," Miss Clearwater explained. "And I've seen a great deal of these reformers. They're the ordinary human variety of politician plus a more or less conscious hypocrisy. Usually they're men who fancy themselves superior to the common run in birth and breeding. My father has taught me to size them up."

They went down, and Selma, seated between Jane and Miss Clearwater, amused both with her frank comments on the scene so strange to her--the beautiful table, the costly service, the variety and profusion of elaborate food. In fact, Jane, reaching out after the effects got easily in Europe and almost as easily in the East, but overtaxed the resources of the household which she was only beginning to get into what she regarded as satisfactory order. The luncheon, therefore, was a creditable and promising attempt rather than a success, from the standpoint of fashion. Jane was a little ashamed, and at times extremely nervous--this when she saw signs of her staff falling into disorder that might end in rout. But Selma saw none of the defects.

She was delighted with the dazzling spectacle--for two or three courses. Then she lapsed into quiet and could not be roused to speak.

Jane and Ellen thought she was overwhelmed and had been seized of shyness in this company so superior to any in which she had ever found herself. Ellen tried to induce her to eat, and, failing, decided that her refraining was not so much firmness in the two meals-a-day system as fear of making a "break." She felt genuinely sorry for the silent girl growing moment by moment more ill-at-ease. When the luncheon was about half over Selma said abruptly to Jane:

"I must go now. I've stayed longer than I should."

"Go?" cried Jane. "Why, we haven't begun to talk yet."

"Another time," said Selma, pushing back her chair. "No, don't rise."

And up she darted, smiling gayly round at the company. "Don't anybody disturb herself," she pleaded. "It'll be useless, for I'll be gone."

And she was as good as her word. Before any one quite realized what she was about, she had escaped from the dining-room and from the house.

She almost ran across the lawn and into the woods. There she drew a long breath noisily.

"Free!" she cried, flinging out her arms. "Oh--but it was DREADFUL!"

Miss Hastings and Miss Clearwater had not been so penetrating as they fancied. Embarra.s.sment had nothing to do with the silence that had taken possession of the a.s.sociate editor of the New Day.

She was never self-conscious enough to be really shy. She hastened to the office, meeting Victor Dorn in the street doorway. She cried:

"Such an experience!"

"What now?" said Victor. He was used to that phrase from the ardent and impressionable Selma. For her, with her wide-open eyes and ears, her vivid imagination and her thirsty mind, life was one closely packed series of adventures.

"I had an hour to spare," she proceeded to explain. "I thought it was a chance to further a little scheme I've got for marrying Jane Hastings and David Hull."

"Um!" said Victor with a quick change of expression--which, however, Selma happened not to observe.

"And," she went on, "I blundered into a luncheon party Jane was giving.

You never saw--you never dreamed of such style--such dresses and dishes and flowers and hats! And I was sitting there with them, enjoying it all as if it were a circus or a ballet, when--Oh, Victor, what a silly, what a pitiful waste of time and money! So much to do in the world--so much that is thrillingly interesting and useful--and those intelligent young people dawdling there at nonsense a child would weary of! I had to run away. If I had stayed another minute I should have burst out crying--or denouncing them--or pleading with them to behave themselves."

"What else can they do?" said Victor. "They don't know any better.

They've never been taught. How's the article?"

And he led the way up to the editorial room and held her to the subject of the article he had asked her to write. At the first opportunity she went back to the subject uppermost in her mind. Said she:

"I guess you're right--as usual. There's no hope for any people of that cla.s.s. The busy ones are thinking only of making money for themselves, and the idle ones are too enfeebled by luxury to think at all. No, I'm afraid there's no hope for Hull--or for Jane either."

"I'm not sure about Miss Hastings," said Victor.

"You would have been if you'd seen her to-day," replied Selma. "Oh, she was lovely, Victor--really wonderful to look at. But so obviously the idler. And--body and soul she belongs to the upper cla.s.s. She understands charity, but she doesn't understand justice, and never could understand it. I shall let her alone hereafter."

"How harsh you women are in your judgments of each other," laughed Dorn, busy at his desk.

"We are just," replied Selma. "We are not fooled by each other's pretenses."

Dorn apparently had not heard. Selma saw that to speak would be to interrupt. She sat at her own table and set to work on the editorial paragraphs. After perhaps an hour she happened to glance at Victor.

He was leaning back in his chair, gazing past her out into the open; in his face was an expression she had never seen--a look in the eyes, a relaxing of the muscles round the mouth that made her think of him as a man instead of as a leader. She was saying to herself. "What a fascinating man he would have been, if he had not been an incarnate cause."

She felt that he was not thinking of his work. She longed to talk to him, but she did not venture to interrupt. Never in all the years she had known him had he spoken to her--or to any one--a severe or even an impatient word. His tolerance, his good humor were infinite.

Yet--she, and all who came into contact with him, were afraid of him.

There could come, and on occasion there did come--into those extraordinary blue eyes an expression beside which the fiercest flash of wrath would be easy to face.

When she glanced at him again, his normal expression had returned--the face of the leader who aroused in those he converted into fellow-workers a fanatical devotion that was the more formidable because it was not infatuated. He caught her eye and said:

"Things are in such good shape for us that it frightens me. I spend most of my time in studying the horizon in the hope that I can foresee which way the storm's coming from and what it will be."

"What a pessimist you are!" laughed Selma.

"That's why the Workingmen's League has a thick-and-thin membership of thirteen hundred and fifty," replied Victor. "That's why the New Day has twenty-two hundred paying subscribers. That's why we grow faster than the employers can weed our men out and replace them with immigrants and force them to go to other towns for work."

"Well, anyhow," said the girl, "no matter what happens we can't be weeded out."

Victor shook his head. "Our danger period has just begun," he replied.

"The bosses realize our power. In the past we've been annoyed a little from time to time. But they thought us hardly worth bothering with.

In the future we will have to fight."

"I hope they will prosecute us," said Selma. "Then, we'll grow the faster."

"Not if they do it intelligently," replied Victor. "An intelligent persecution--if it's relentless enough--always succeeds. You forget that this isn't a world of moral ideas but of force.... I am afraid of d.i.c.k Kelly. He is something more than a vulgar boss. He SEES. My hope is that he won't be able to make the others see. I saw him a while ago. He was extremely polite to me--more so than he ever has been before. He is up to something. I suspect----"