The Conflict Part 33

Very clever of him--very clever! If he were as brave as he is shrewd, I'd almost give up hope of winning this town while he was in politics here. But he lacks courage. And he daren't think and speak honestly.

How that does cripple a man!"

"He'll be one of us before very long," said Selma. "You misjudge him, Victor."

Dorn smiled. "Not so long as his own cla.s.s gratifies his ambitions,"

replied Victor. "If he came with us it'd be because his own cla.s.s had failed him and he hoped to rise through and upon--ours."

Selma did not agree with him. But as she always felt presumptuous and even foolish in disagreeing with Victor, she kept silent. And presently Victor began to lay out her share in the task of starting up the New Day. "I shall be all right within a week," said he, "and we must get the first number out the week following." She was realizing now that Hull's move had completely upset an elaborate plan of campaign into which Victor had put all his intelligence and upon which he had staked all his hopes. She marvelled as he talked, unfolding rapidly an entirely new campaign, different in every respect from what the other would have been. How swiftly his mind had worked, and how well! How little time he had wasted in vain regrets! How quickly he had recovered from a reverse that would have halted many a strong man.

And then she remembered how they all, his a.s.sociates, were like him, proof against the evil effects of set-back and defeat. And why were they so? Because Victor Dorn had trained them to fight for the cause, and not for victory. "Our cause is the right, and in the end right is bound to win because the right is only another name for the sensible"--that had been his teaching. And a hardy army he had trained. The armies trained by victory are strong; but the armies schooled by defeat--they are invincible.

When he had explained his new campaign--as much of it as he deemed it wise at that time to withdraw from the security of his own brain--she said:

"But it seems to me we've got a good chance to win, anyhow."

"A chance, perhaps," replied he. "But we'll not bother about that.

All we've got to do is to keep on strengthening ourselves."

"Yes, that's it!" she cried. "One added here--five there--ten yonder.

Every new stone fitted solidly against the ones already in place."

"We must never forget that we aren't merely building a new party," said Dorn. "We're building a new civilization--one to fit the new conditions of life. Let the Davy Hulls patch and tinker away at trying to keep the old structure from falling in. We know it's bound to fall and that it isn't fit for decent civilized human beings to live in.

And we're getting the new house ready. So--to us, election day is no more important than any of the three hundred and sixty-five."

It was into the presence of a Victor Dorn restored in mind as well as in body that Jane Hastings was shown by his sister, Mrs. Sherrill, one afternoon a week or so later.

All that time Jane had been searching for an excuse for going to see him. She had haunted the roads and the woods where he and Selma habitually walked. She had seen neither of them. When the pretext for a call finally came to her, as usual, the most obvious thing in the world. He must be suspecting her of having betrayed his confidence and brought about the vacating of those injunctions and the quashing of the indictments. She must go to him and clear herself of suspicion.

She felt that the question of how she should dress for this crucial interview, this attempt to establish some sort of friendly relations with him, was of the very highest importance. Should she wear something plain, something that would make her look as nearly as might be like one of his own cla.s.s? HIS cla.s.s!

No--no, indeed. The cla.s.s in which he was accidentally born and bred, but to which he did not belong. Or, should she go dressed frankly as of her own cla.s.s--wearing the sort of things that made her look her finest and most superior and most beautiful? Having nothing else to do, she spent several hours in trying various toilets. She was not long in deciding against disguising herself as a working woman. That garb might win his mental and moral approval; but not by mental and moral ways did women and men prevail with each other. In plain garb--so Jane decided, as she inspected herself--she was no match for Selma Gordon; she looked awkward, out of her element. So much being settled, there remained to choose among her various toilets. She decided for an embroidered white summer dress, extremely simple, but in the way that costs beyond the power of any but the very rich to afford. When she was ready to set forth, she had never looked so well in her life. Her toilet SEEMED a mere detail. In fact, it was some such subtlety as those arrangements of lines and colors in great pictures, whereby the glance of the beholder is unconsciously compelled toward the central figure, just as water in a funnel must go toward the aperture at the bottom. Jane felt, not without reason, that she had executed a stroke of genius. She was wearing nothing that could awaken Victor Dorn's prejudices about fine clothes, for he must have those prejudices. Yet she was dressed in conformity with all that centuries, ages of experience, have taught the dressmaking art on the subject of feminine allure. And, when a woman feels that she is so dressed, her natural allure becomes greatly enhanced.

She drove down to a point in Monroe Avenue not far from the house where Victor and his family lived. The day was hot; boss-ridden Remsen City had dusty and ragged streets and sidewalks. It, therefore, would not do to endanger the freshness of the toilet. But she would arrive as if she had come all the way on foot. Arrival in a motor at so humble a house would look like ostentation; also, if she were seen going through that street afoot, people would think she was merely strolling a little out of her way to view the ruins of the buildings set on fire by the mob. She did pause to look at these ruins; the air of the neighborhood still had a taint of burnt wood and paper. Presently, when she was sure the street was clear of people of the sort who might talk--she hastily entered the tiny front yard of Victor's house, and was pleased to find herself immediately screened from the street by the luxuriant bushes and creepers.

There was nothing in the least pretentious about the appearance of the little house. It was simply a well built cottage--but of brick, instead of the usual wood, and the slate roof descended at attractive angles. The door she was facing was superior to the usual flimsy-looking door. Indeed, she at once became conscious of a highly attractive and most unexpected air of substantiality and good taste.

The people who lived here seemed to be permanent people--long resident, and looking forward to long residence. She had never seen such beautiful or such tastefully grouped sun flowers, and the dahlias and marigolds were far above the familiar commonplace kitchen garden flowers.

The door opened, and a handsome, extremely intelligent looking woman, obviously Victor's sister, was looking pleasantly at her. Said she: "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. But I was busy in the kitchen.

This is Miss Hastings, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Jane, smiling friendlily.

"I've heard my brother and Selma talk of you." (Jane wondered WHAT they had said.) "You wish to see Victor?"

"If I'd not be interrupting," said Jane.

"Come right in. He's used to being interrupted. They don't give him five minutes to himself all day long--especially now that the campaign's on. He always does his serious work very early in the morning."

They went through a hall, pleasantly odorous of baking in which good flour and good b.u.t.ter and good eggs were being manufactured into something probably appetizing, certainly wholesome. Jane caught a glimpse through open doors on either side of a neat and reposeful little library-sitting room, a plain delightfully simple little bedroom, a kitchen where everything shone. She arrived at the rear door somehow depressed, bereft of the feeling of upper-cla.s.s superiority which had, perhaps unconsciously, possessed her as she came toward the house. At the far end of an arbor on which the grape vines were so trellised that their broad leaves cast a perfect shade, sat Victor writing at a table under a tree. He was in his shirt sleeves, and his shirt was open at the throat. His skin was smooth and healthily white below the collar line. The forearms exposed by his rolled up sleeves were strong but slender, and the faint fair hair upon them suggested a man, but not an animal.

Never had she seen his face and head so fine. He was writing rapidly, his body easily erect, his head and neck in a poise of grace and strength. Jane grew pale and trembled--so much so that she was afraid the keen, friendly eyes of Alice Sherrill were seeing. Said Mrs.

Sherrill, raising her voice:

"Victor--here's Miss Hastings come to see you." Then to Jane: "Excuse me, please. I don't dare leave that kitchen long."

She departed. Jane waited while Victor, his pencil reluctantly slackening and his glance lingeringly rising from the paper, came back to sense of his surroundings. He stared at her blankly, then colored a little. He rose--stiff, for him formal. Said he:

"How d'you do, Miss Hastings?"

She came down the arbor, recovering her a.s.surance as she again became conscious of herself, so charmingly dressed and no doubt beautiful in his eyes. "I know you're not glad to see me," said she. "But I'm only stopping a very little minute."

His eyes had softened--softened under the influence of the emotion no man can ever fail to feel at least in some degree at sight of a lovely woman. "Won't you sit?" said he, with a glance at the wooden chair near the other side of the table.

She seated herself, resting one gloved hand on the prettily carved end of her white-sunshade. She was wearing a big hat of rough black straw, with a few very gorgeous white plumes. "What a delightful place to work," exclaimed she, looking round, admiring the flowers, the slow ripening grapes, the delicious shade. "And you--how WELL you look!"

"I've forgotten I was ever anything but well," said he.

"You're impatient for me to go," she cried laughing. "It's very rude to show it so plainly."

"No," replied he. "I am not impatient for you to go. But I ought to be, for I'm very busy."

"Well, I shall be gone in a moment. I came only to tell you that you are suspecting me wrongly."

"Suspecting you?--of what?"

"Of having broken my word. I know you must think I got father to set Davy Hull on to upsetting your plans."

"The idea never entered my head," said he. "You had promised--and I know you are honest."

Jane colored violently and lowered her eyes. "I'm not--not up to what you say," she protested. "But at least I didn't break my promise.

Davy thought of that himself."

"I have been a.s.suming so."

"And you didn't suspect me?"

"Not for an instant," Victor a.s.sured her. "Davy simply made the move that was obviously best for him."

"And now he will be elected," said Jane regretfully.

"It looks that way," replied Victor. And he had the air of one who has nothing more to say.

Suddenly Jane looked at him with eyes shining and full of appeal.

"Don't send me away so quickly," she pleaded. "I've not been telling the exact truth. I came only partly because I feared you were suspecting me. The real reason was that--that I couldn't stay away any longer. I know you're not in the least interested in me----"

She was watching him narrowly for signs of contradiction. She hoped she had not watched in vain.