The Conflict Part 37

To Jane Victor Dorn's a.n.a.lysis of his feeling toward her and of the reasons against yielding to it seemed of no importance whatever. Side by side with Selma's "One may not trifle with love" she would have put "In matters of love one does not reason," as equally axiomatic. Victor was simply talking; love would conquer him as it had conquered every man and every woman it had ever entered. Love--blind, unreasoning, irresistible--would have its will and its way.

And about most men she would have been right--about any man practically, of the preceding generation. But Victor represented a new type of human being--the type into whose life reason enters not merely as a theoretical force, to be consulted and disregarded, but as an authority, a powerful influence, dominant in all crucial matters. Only in our own time has science begun to make a notable impression upon the fog which formerly lay over the whole human mind, thicker here, thinner there, a mere haze yonder, but present everywhere. This fog made clear vision impossible, usually made seeing of any kind difficult; there was no such thing as finding a distinct line between truth and error as to any subject. And reason seemed almost as faulty a guide as feeling--was by many regarded as more faulty, not without justification.

But nowadays for some of us there are clear or almost clear horizons, and such fog banks as there are conceal from them nothing that is of importance in shaping a rational course of life. Victor Dorn was one of these emanc.i.p.ated few. All successful men form their lives upon a system of some kind. Even those who seem to live at haphazard, like the mult.i.tude, prove to have chart and compa.s.s and definite port in objective when their conduct is more attentively examined. Victor Dorn's system was as perfect as it was simple, and he held himself to it as rigidly as the father superior of a Trappist monastery holds his monks to their routine. Also, Victor had learned to know and to be on guard against those two arch-enemies of the man who wishes to "get somewhere"--self-excuse and optimism. He had got a good strong leash upon his vanity--and a muzzle, too. When things went wrong he instantly blamed HIMSELF, and did not rest until he had ferreted out the stupidity or folly of which HE had been guilty. He did not grieve over his failures; he held severely scientific post mortems upon them to discover the reason why--in order that there should not again be that particular kind of failure at least. Then, as to the other arch-enemy, optimism, he simply cut himself off from indulgence in it.

He worked for success; he a.s.sumed failure. He taught himself to care nothing about success, but only about doing as intelligently and as thoroughly as he could the thing next at hand.

What has all this to do with his infatuation for Jane? It serves to show not only why the Workingmen's League was growing like a plague of gypsy moth, but also why Victor Dorn was not the man to be conquered by pa.s.sion. Naturally, Jane, who had only the vaguest conception of the size and power of Victor Dorn's mind, could not comprehend wherein lay the difference between him and the men she read about in novels or met in her wanderings among the people of her own cla.s.s in various parts of the earth. It is possible for even the humblest of us to understand genius, just as it is possible to view a mountain from all sides and get a clear idea of it bulk and its dominion. But the hasty traveler contents himself with a glance, a "How superb," and a quick pa.s.sing on; and most of us are hasty travelers in the scenic land of intellectuality. Jane saw that he was a great man. But she was deceived by his frankness and his simplicity. She evoked in him only the emotional side of his nature, only one part of that.

Because it--the only phase of him she attentively examined--was so impressive, she a.s.sumed that it was the chief feature of the man.

Also, young and inexperienced women--and women not so young, and with opportunity to become less inexperienced but without the ability to learn by experience--always exaggerate the importance of pa.s.sion.

Almost without exception, it is by way of pa.s.sion that a man and a woman approach each other. It is, of necessity, the exterior that first comes into view. Thus, all that youth and inexperience can know about love is its aspect of pa.s.sion. Because Jane had again and again in her five grown-up years experienced men falling pa.s.sionately in love with her, she fancied she was an expert in matters of love. In fact, she had still everything to learn.

On the way home she, a.s.suming that the affair was as good as settled, that she and Victor Dorn were lovers, was busy with plans for the future. Victor Dorn had made a shrewd guess at the state of her mind.

She had no intention of allowing him to pursue his present career.

That was merely foundation. With the aid of her love and council, and of her father's money and influence, he--he and she--would mount to something really worth while--something more than the petty politics of a third rate city in the West. Washington was the proper arena for his talents; they would take the shortest route to Washington. No trouble about bringing him around; a man so able and so sensible as he would not refuse the opportunity to do good on a grand scale. Besides--he must be got away from his family, from these doubtless good and kind but certainly not very high cla.s.s a.s.sociates of his, and from Selma Gordon. The idea of his comparing HER with Selma Gordon! He had not done so aloud, but she knew what was in his mind. Yes, he must be taken far away from all these provincial and narrowing a.s.sociations.

But all this was mere detail. The big problem was how to bring her father round. He couldn't realize what Victor Dorn would be after she had taken him in hand. He would see only Victor Dorn, the labor agitator of Remsen City, the nuisance who put mischievous motives into the heads of "the hands"--the man who made them think they had heads when they were intended by the Almighty to be simply hands. How reconcile him to the idea of accepting this nuisance, this poor, common member of the working cla.s.s as a son-in-law, as the husband of the daughter he wished to see married to some one of the "best"

families?

On the face of it, the thing was impossible. Why, then, did not Jane despair? For two reasons. In the first place, she was in love, and that made her an optimist. Somehow love would find the way. But the second reason--the one she hid from herself deep in the darkest sub-cellar of her mind, was the real reason. It is one matter to wish for a person's death. Only a villainous nature can harbor such a wish, can admit it except as a hastily and slyly in-crawling impulse, to be flung out the instant it is discovered. It is another matter to calculate--very secretly, very unconsciously--upon a death that seems inevitable anyhow. Jane had only to look at her father to feel that he would not be spared to her long. The mystery was how he had kept alive so long, how he continued to live from day to day. His stomach was gone; his whole digestive apparatus was in utter disorder. His body had shriveled until he weighed no more than a baby. His pulse was so feeble that even in the hot weather he complained of the cold and had to be wrapped in the heaviest winter garments. Yet he lived on, and his mind worked with undiminished vigor.

When Jane reached home, the old man was sitting on the veranda in the full sun. On his huge head was a fur cap pulled well down over his ears and intensifying the mortuary, skull-like appearance of his face.

Over his ulster was an old-fashioned Scotch shawl such as men used to wear in the days before overcoats came into fashion. About his wasted legs was wrapped a carriage robe, and she knew that there was a hot-water bag under his feet. Beside him sat young Doctor Charlton, whom Jane had at last succeeded in inducing her father to try.

Charlton did not look or smell like a doctor. He rather suggested a professional athlete, perhaps a better cla.s.s prize fighter. The weazened old financier was gazing at him with a fascinated expression--admiring, envious, amused.

Charlton was saying:

"Yes, you do look like a dead one. But that's only another of your tricks for fooling people. You'll live a dozen years unless you commit suicide. A dozen years? Probably twenty."

"You ought to be ashamed to make sport of a poor old invalid," said Hastings with a grin.

"Any man who could stand a lunch of crackers and milk for ten years could outlive anything," retorted Charlton. "No, you belong to the old stock. You used to see 'em around when you were a boy. They usually coughed and wheezed, and every time they did it, the family used to get ready to send for the undertaker. But they lived on and on. When did your mother die?"

"Couple of years ago," said Hastings.

"And your father?"

"He was killed by a colt he was breaking at sixty-seven."

Charlton laughed uproariously. "If you took walks and rides instead of always sitting round, you never would die," said he. "But you're like lots of women I know. You'd rather die than take exercise. Still, I've got you to stop that eating that was keeping you on the verge all the time."

"You're trying to starve me to death," grumbled Hastings.

"Don't you feel better, now that you've got used to it and don't feel hungry?"

"But I'm not getting any nourishment."

"How would eating help you? You can't digest any more than what I'm allowing you. Do you think you were better off when you were full of rotting food? I guess not."

"Well--I'm doing as you say," said the old man resignedly.

"And if you keep it up for a year, I'll put you on a horse. If you don't keep it up, you'll find yourself in a hea.r.s.e."

Jane stood silently by, listening with a feeling of depression which she could not have accounted for, if she would--and would not if she could. Not that she wished her father to die; simply that Charlton's confidence in his long life forced her to face the only alternative--bringing him round to accept Victor Dorn.

At her father's next remark she began to listen with a high beating heart. He said to Charlton:

"How about that there friend of yours--that young Dorn? You ain't talked about him to-day as much as usual."

"The last time we talked about him we quarreled," said Charlton. "It's irritating to see a man of your intelligence a slave to silly prejudices."

"I like Victor Dorn," replied Hastings in a most conciliatory tone. "I think he's a fine young man. Didn't I have him up here at my house not long ago? Jane'll tell you that I like him. She likes him, too. But the trouble with him--and with you, too--is that you're dreaming all the time. You don't recognize facts. And, so, you make a lot of trouble for us conservative men."

"Please don't use that word conservative," said Charlton. "It gags me to hear it. YOU'RE not a conservative. If you had been you'd still be a farm hand. You've been a radical all your life--changing things round and round, always according to your idea of what was to your advantage. The only difference between radicals like you robber financiers and radicals like Victor and me is that our ideas of what's to our advantage differ. To you life means money; to us it means health and comfort and happiness. You want the world changed--laws upset, liberty destroyed, wages lowered, and so on--so that you can get all the money. We want the world changed so that we can be healthy and comfortable and happy--securely so--which we can't be unless everybody is, or is in the way to being."

Jane was surprised to see that her father, instead of being offended, was amused and pleased. He liked his new doctor so well that he liked everything he said and did. Jane looked at Charlton in her friendliest way. Here might be an ally, and a valuable ally.

"Human nature doesn't change," said Hastings in the tone of a man who is stating that which cannot be disputed.

"The mischief it doesn't," said Charlton in prompt and vigorous dissent. "When conditions change, human nature has to change, has to adapt itself. What you mean is that human nature doesn't change itself. But conditions change it. They've been changing it very rapidly these last few years. Science--steam, electricity, a thousand inventions and discoveries, crowding one upon another--science has brought about entirely new and unprecedented conditions so rapidly that the changes in human nature now making and that must be made in the next few years are resulting in a series of convulsions. You old-fashioned fellows--and the political parties and the politicians--are in danger of being stranded. Leaders like Victor Dorn--movements like our Workingmen's League--they seem new and radical to-day. By to-morrow they'll be the commonplace thing, found everywhere--and administering the public affairs."

Jane was not surprised to see an expression of at least partial admission upon her father's face. Charlton's words were of the kind that set the imagination to work, that remind those who hear of a thousand and one familiar related facts bearing upon the same points.

"Well," said Hastings, "I don't expect to see any radical changes in my time."

"Then you'll not live as long as I think," said Charlton. "We Americans advance very slowly because this is a big country and undeveloped, and because we shift about so much that no one stays in one place long enough to build up a citizenship and get an education in politics--which is nothing more or less than an education in the art of living. But slow though we are, we do advance. You'll soon see the last of Boss Kelly and Boss House--and of such gentle, amiable frauds as our friend Davy Hull."

Jane laughed merrily. "Why do you call him a fraud?" she asked.

"Because he is a fraud," said Charlton. "He is trying to confuse the issue. He says the whole trouble is petty dishonesty in public life.

Bosh! The trouble is that the upper and middle cla.s.ses are milking the lower cla.s.s--both with and without the aid of the various governments, local, state and national. THAT'S the issue. And the reason it is being forced is because the lower cla.s.s, the working cla.s.s, is slowly awakening to the truth. When it completely awakens----" Charlton made a large gesture and laughed.

"What then?" said Hastings.

"The end of the upper and the middle cla.s.ses. Everybody will have to work for a living."

"Who's going to be elected this fall?" asked Jane. "Your man?"

"Yes," said Doctor Charlton. "Victor Dorn thinks not. But he always takes the gloomy view. And he doesn't meet and talk with the fellows on the other side, as I do."

Hastings was looking out from under the vizor of his cap with a peculiar grin. It changed to a look of startled inquiry as Charlton went on to say:

"Yes, we'll win. But the Davy Hull gang will get the offices."

"Why do you think that?" asked old Hastings sharply.

Charlton eyed his patient with a mocking smile. "You didn't think any one knew but you and Kelly--did you?" laughed he.