The Conflict Part 48

"In my room," was her impatient answer.

"In bed?"

"I haven't gotten up yet," said she. "What IS the matter?"

"Had your breakfast?"

"No. I've rung for it. It'll be here in a few minutes."

"I thought so," said Charlton.

"This is very mysterious--or very absurd," said Jane.

"Please ring off and call your kitchen and tell them to put your breakfast on the dining-room table for you in three-quarters of an hour. Then get up, take your bath and your exercises--dress yourself for the day--and go down and eat your breakfast. How can you hope to amount to anything unless you live by a rational system? And how can you have a rational system unless you begin the day right?"

"DID you see Victor Dorn?" said Jane--furious at his impertinence but restraining herself.

"And after you have breakfasted," continued Charlton, "call me up again, and I'll answer your questions."

With that he hung up his receiver. Jane threw herself angrily back against her pillow. She would lie there for an hour, then call him again. But--if he should ask her whether she had obeyed his orders?

True, she might lie to him; but wouldn't that be too petty? She debated with herself for a few minutes, then obeyed him to the letter.

As she was coming through the front hall after breakfast, he appeared in the doorway.

"You didn't trust me!" she cried reproachfully.

"Oh, yes," replied he. "But I preferred to talk with you face to face."

"DID you see Mr. Dorn?"

Charlton nodded. "He refused to advise me. He said he had a personal prejudice in your favor that would make his advice worthless."

Jane glowed--but not quite so thrillingly as she would have glowed in the same circ.u.mstances a year before.

"Besides, he's in no state of mind to advise anybody about anything just now," said Charlton.

Jane glanced sharply at him. "What do you mean?" she said.

"It's not my secret," replied Charlton.

"You mean he has fallen in love?"

"That's shrewd," said Charlton. "But women always a.s.sume a love affair."

"With whom?" persisted Jane.

"Oh, a very nice girl. No matter. I'm not here to talk about anybody's affairs but yours--and mine."

"Answer just one question," said Jane, impulsively. "Did he tell you anything about--me?"

Charlton stared--then whistled. "Are YOU in love with him, too?" he cried.

Jane flushed--hesitated--then met his glance frankly. "I WAS," said she.

"WAS?"

"I mean that I'm over it," said she. "What have you decided to do about me?"

Charlton did not answer immediately. He eyed her narrowly--an examination which she withstood well. Then he glanced away and seemed to be reflecting. Finally he came back to her question. Said he:

"To give you a trial. To find out whether you'll do."

She drew a long sigh of relief.

"Didn't you guess?" he went on, smilingly, nodding his round, prize-fighter head at her. "Those suggestions about bed and breakfast--they were by way of a beginning."

"You must give me a lot to do," urged she. "I mustn't have a minute of idle time."

He laughed. "Trust me," he said.

While Jane was rescuing her property from her brother and was safeguarding it against future attempts by him, or by any of that numerous company whose eyes are ever roving in search of the most inviting of prey, the lone women with baggage--while Jane was thus occupied, David Hull was, if possible, even busier and more absorbed.

He was being elected governor. His State was being got ready to say to the mayor of Remsen City, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many."

The nomination was not obtained for him without difficulty. The Republican party--like the Democratic--had just been brought back under "safe and sane and conservative" leadership after a prolonged debauch under the influence of that once famous and revered reformer, Aaron Whitman, who had not sobered up or released the party for its sobering until his wife's extravagant entertaining at Washington had forced him to accept large "retainers" from the plutocracy. The machine leaders had in the beginning forwarded the ambitions of Whitman under the impression that his talk of a "square deal" was "just the usual dope"

and that Aaron was a "level-headed fellow at bottom." It had developed--after they had let Aaron become a popular idol, not to be trifled with--it had developed that he was almost sincere--as sincere as can be expected of an ambitious, pushing fellow. Now came David Hull, looking suspiciously like Whitman at his worst-and a more hopeless case, because he had money a plenty, while Whitman was luckily poor and blessed with an extravagant wife. True, Hull had the backing of d.i.c.k Kelly--and Kelly was not the man "to hand the boys a lemon."

Still Hull looked like a "holy boy," talked like one, had the popular reputation of having acted like one as mayor--and the "reform game" was certainly one to attract a man who could afford it and was in politics for position only. Perhaps d.i.c.k wanted to be rid of Hull for the rest of his term, and was "kicking him upstairs." It would be a shabby trick upon his fellow leaders, but justifiable if there should be some big "job" at Remsen City that could be "pulled off" only if Hull were out of the way.

The leaders were cold until d.i.c.k got his masters in the Remsen City branch of the plutocracy to pa.s.s the word to the plutocracy's general agents at Indianapolis--a certain well-known firm of political bankers.

Until that certification came the leaders, having no candidate who stood a chance of winning, were ready to make a losing campaign and throw the election to the Democrats--not a serious misfortune at a time when the machines of the two parties had become simply friendly rival agents for the same rich master.

There was a sharp fight in the convention. The anti-machine element, repudiating Whitman under the leadership of a shrewd and honest young man named Joe Bannister, had attacked Hull in the most shocking way.

Bannister had been reading Victor Dorn's New Day and had got a notion of David Hull as man and mayor different from the one made current by the newspapers. He made a speech on the floor of the convention which almost caused a riot and nearly cost Davy the nomination. That catastrophe was averted by adjournment. Davy gave d.i.c.k Kelly's second lieutenant, Osterman, ten thousand in cash, of which Osterman said there was pressing need "for perfectly legitimate purposes, I a.s.sure you, Mr. Mayor." Next day the Bannister faction lost forty and odd st.u.r.dy yeomen from districts where the crops had been painfully short, and Davy was nominated.

In due time the election was held, and Mayor Hull became Governor Hull by a satisfactory majority for so evenly divided a State. He had spent--in contributions to the machine campaign fund--upwards of one hundred thousand dollars. But that seemed a trifling sacrifice to make for reform principles and for keeping the voice of the people the voice of G.o.d. He would have been elected if he had not spent a cent, for the Democratic machine, bent on reorganizing back to a sound basis with all real reformers or reformers tainted with sincerity eliminated, had nominated a straight machine man--and even the politicians know that the people who decide elections will not elect a machine man if they have a chance to vote for any one else. It saddened David Hull, in the midst of victory, that his own town and county went against him, preferring the Democrat, whom it did not know, as he lived at the other end of the State. Locally the offices at stake were all captured by the "Dorn crowd." At last the Workingmen's League had a judge; at last it could have a day in court. There would not be a repet.i.tion of the great frauds of the Hull-Harbinger campaign.

By the time David had sufficient leisure to reopen the heart department of his ambition, Jane was deep in the effort to show Doctor Charlton how much intelligence and character she had. She was serving an apprenticeship as trained nurse in the Children's Hospital, where he was chief of the staff, and was taking several extra courses with his young a.s.sistants. It was nearly two weeks after David's first attempt to see her when her engagements and his at last permitted this meeting.

Said he:

"What's this new freak?"

"I can't tell you yet," replied she. "I'm not sure, myself."

"I don't see how you can endure that fellow Charlton. They say he's as big a crank in medicine as he is in politics."

"It's all of a piece," said Jane, tranquilly. "He says he gets his political views from his medicine and his medical ideas from his politics."

"Don't you think he's a frightful bounder?"

"Frightful," said Jane.