The Conflict Part 50

"Victor," she repeated a little more loudly.

He roused himself, glanced at her with an attempt at his usual friendly smile of the eyes.

"Is there something wrong that you haven't told me about?" she asked.

"It'll pa.s.s," said he. "I'll get used to it." With an attempt at the manner of the humorous philosopher, "Man is the most adaptable of all the animals. That's why he has distanced all his relations. I didn't realize how much our a.s.sociation meant to me until you set me to thinking about it by telling me you were going. I had been taking you for granted--a habit we easily fall into with those who simply work with and for us and don't insist upon themselves."

She was leaning against the frame of the open door into the hall, her hands behind her back. She was gazing out of the window across the room.

"You," he went on, "are as I'd like to be--as I imagined I was. Your sense of duty to the cause orders you elsewhere, and you go--like a good soldier, with never a backward glance."

She shook her head, but did not speak.

"With never a backward glance," he repeated. "While I--" He shut his lips together firmly and settled himself with fierce resolution to his work. "I beg your pardon," he said. "This is--cowardly. As I said before, I shall get myself in hand again, and go on."

She did not move. The breeze of the unseasonably warm and brilliant day fluttered her thick, loosely gathered hair about her brow. Her strange, barbaric little face suggested that the wind was blowing across it a throng of emotions like the clouds of a driven storm.

A long silence. He suddenly flung out his arms in a despairing gesture and let them fall to the table. At the crash she startled, gazed wildly about.

"Selma!" he cried. "I must say it. I love you."

A profound silence fell. After a while she went softly across the room and sat down at her desk.

"I think I've loved you from the first months of your coming here to work--to the old office, I mean. But we were always together--every day--all day long--working together--I thinking and doing nothing without your sharing in it. So, I never realized. Don't misunderstand. I'm not trying to keep you here. It's simply that I've got the habit of telling you everything--of holding back nothing from you."

"I was going," she said, "because I loved you."

He looked at her in amazement.

"That day you told me you had decided to get married--and asked my advice about the girls among our friends--that was the day I began to feel I'd have to go. It's been getting worse ever since."

Once more silence, both looking uneasily about, their glances avoiding each other. The door of the printing room opened, and Holman, the printer, came in, his case in his grimy hand. Said he:

"Where's the rest of that street car article?"

"I beg your pardon," said Selma, starting up and taking some ma.n.u.script from her desk and handing it to him.

"Louis," said Victor, as Holmes was retreating, "Selma and I are going to be married."

Louis paused, but did not look round. "That ain't what'd be called news," said he. "I've known it for more than three years."

He moved on toward his room. "I'll be ready for that leading article in half an hour. So, you'd better get busy."

He went out, closing the door behind him. Selma and Victor looked at each other and burst out laughing. Then--still laughing--they took hold of hands like two children. And the next thing they knew they were tight in each other's arms, and Selma was sobbing wildly.

X

When Jane had finished her apprenticeship, Doctor Charlton asked her to marry him. Said Jane:

"I never knew you to be commonplace before. I've felt this coming for some time, but I expected it would be in the form of an offer to marry me."

She promptly accepted him--and she has not, and will not regret it. So far as a single case can prove a theory, Jane's case has proved Charlton's theory that environment determines character. His alternations of tenderness and brusqueness, of devotion to her and devotion to his work, his constant offering of something new and his unremitting insistence upon something new from her each day make it impossible for her to develop the slightest tendency toward that sleeping sickness wherewith the germ of conventionality inflicts any mind it seizes upon.

David Hull, now temporarily in eclipse through over caution in radical utterance, is gathering himself for a fresh spurt that will doubtless place him at the front in politics again. He has never married. The belief in Remsen City is that he is a victim of disappointed love for Jane Hastings. But the truth is that he is unable to take his mind off himself long enough to be come sufficiently interested in another human being. There is no especial reason why he has thus far escaped the many snares that have been set for him because of his wealth and position. Who can account for the vagaries of chance?

The Workingmen's League now controls the government of Remsen City. It gives an honest and efficient administration, and keeps the public service corporations as respectful of the people as the laws will permit. But, as Victor Dorn always warned the people, little can be done until the State government is conquered--and even then there will be the national government to see that all the wrongs of vested rights are respected and that the people shall have little to say, in the management of their own affairs. As all sensible people know, any corrupt politician, or any greedy plutocrat, or any agent of either is a safer and better administrator of the people's affairs than the people themselves.

The New Day is a daily with a circulation for its weekly edition that is national. And Victor and Selma are still its editors, though they have two little boys to bring up.

Jane and Selma see a great deal of each other, and are friendly, and try hard to like each other. But they are not friends.

d.i.c.k Kelly's oldest son, graduated from Harvard, is the leader of the Remsen City fashionable set. Joe House's only son is a professional gambler and sets the pace among the sports.