The Conflict Part 7

"On the contrary, he's always laughing. He's the best natured man I know."

As they descended and started along the carpet under the middle of the awning, Jane halted. She glanced toward the dripping figure whom the police would not permit under the shelter. Said she: "I want one of those papers."

Davy moved toward the drenched distributor of strike literature. "Give me one, Dorn," he said in his most elegant manner.

"Sure, Davy," said Dorn in a tone that was a subtle commentary on Hull's aristocratic tone and manner. As he spoke he glanced at Jane; she was looking at him. Both smiled--at Davy's expense.

Davy and Jane pa.s.sed on in, Jane folding the dodger to tuck it away for future reading. She said to him: "But you didn't tell me about his eyes."

"What's the matter with them?"

"Everything," replied she--and said no more.

II

The dance was even more tiresome than Jane had antic.i.p.ated. There had been little pleasure in outshining the easily outshone belles of Remsen City. She had felt humiliated by having to divide the honors with a brilliantly beautiful and scandalously audacious Chicago girl, a Yvonne Hereford--whose style, in looks, in dress and in wit, was more comfortable to the standard of the best young men of Remsen City--a standard which Miss Hastings, cultivated by foreign travel and social adventure, regarded as distinctly poor, not to say low. Miss Hereford's audacities were especially offensive to Jane. Jane was audacious herself, but she flattered herself that she had a delicate sense of that baffling distinction between the audacity that is the hall mark of the lady and the audacity that proclaims the not-lady.

For example, in such apparently trifling matters as the way of smoking a cigarette, the way of crossing the legs or putting the elbows on the table or using slang, Jane found a difference, abysmal though narrow, between herself and Yvonne Hereford. "But then, her very name gives her away," reflected Jane. "There'd surely be a frightfully cheap streak in a mother who in this country would name her daughter Yvonne--or in a girl who would name herself that."

However, Jane Hastings was not deeply annoyed either by the shortcomings of Remsen City young men or by the rivalry of Miss Hereford. Her dissatisfaction was personal--the feeling of futility, of cheapness, in having dressed herself in her best and spent a whole evening at such unworthy business. "Whatever I am or am not fit for,"

said she to herself, "I'm not for society--any kind of society. At least I'm too much grown-up mentally for that." Her disdainful thoughts about others were, on this occasion as almost always, merely a mode of expressing her self-scorn.

As she was undressing she found in her party bag the dodger Hull had got for her from Victor Dorn. She, sitting at her dressing table, started to read it at once. But her attention soon wandered. "I'm not in the mood," she said. "To-morrow." And she tossed it into the top drawer. The fact was, the subject of politics interested her only when some man in whom she was interested was talking it to her. In a general way she understood things political, but like almost all women and all but a few men she could fasten her attention only on things directly and clearly and nearly related to her own interests. Politics seemed to her to be not at all related to her--or, indeed, to anybody but the men running for office. This dodger was politics, pure and simple. A plea to workingmen to awaken to the fact that their STRIKES were stupid and wasteful, that the way to get better pay and decent hours of labor was by uniting, taking possession of the power that was rightfully theirs and regulating their own affairs.

She resumed fixing her hair for the night. Her glance bent steadily downward at one stage of this performance, rested unseeingly upon the handbill folded printed side out and on top of the contents of the open drawer. She happened to see two capital letters--S.G.--in a line by themselves at the end of the print. She repeated them mechanically several times--"S.G.--S.G.--S.G."--then her hands fell from her hair upon the handbill. She settled herself to read in earnest.

"Selma Gordon," she said. "That's different."

She would have had some difficulty in explaining to herself why it was "different." She read closely, concentratedly now. She tried to read in an att.i.tude of unfriendly criticism, but she could not. A dozen lines, and the clear, earnest, honest sentences had taken hold of her.

How sensible the statements were, and how obviously true. Why, it wasn't the writing of an "anarchistic crank" at all--on the contrary, the writer was if anything more excusing toward the men who were giving the drivers and motormen a dollar and ten cents a day for fourteen hours' work--"fourteen hours!" cried Jane, her cheeks burning--yes, Selma Gordon was more tolerant of the owners of the street car line than Jane herself would have been.

When Jane had read, she gazed at the print with sad envy in her eyes.

"Selma Gordon can think--and she can write, too," said she half aloud.

"I want to know her--too."

That "too" was the first admission to herself of a curiously intense desire to meet Victor Dorn.

"Oh, to be in earnest about something! To have a real interest! To find something to do besides the nursery games disguised under new forms for the grown-up yet never to be grown-up infants of the world.

And THAT kind of politics doesn't sound shallow and dull. There's heart in it--and brains--real brains--not merely nasty little self-seeking cunning." She took up the handbill again and read a paragraph set in bolder type:

"The reason we of the working cla.s.s are slaves is because we haven't intelligence enough to be our own masters, let alone masters of anybody else. The talk of equality, workingmen, is nonsense to flatter your silly, ignorant vanity. We are not the equals of our masters. They know more than we do, and naturally they use that knowledge to make us work for them. So, even if you win in this strike or in all your strikes, you will not much better yourselves. Because you are ignorant and foolish, your masters will scheme around and take from you in some other way what you have wrenched from them in the strike.

"Organize! Think! Learn! Then you will rise out of the dirt where you wallow with your wives and your children. Don't blame your masters; they don't enslave you. They don't keep you in slavery. Your chains are of your own forging and only you can strike them off!"

Certainly no tenement house woman could be lazier, emptier of head, more inane of life than her sister Martha. "She wouldn't even keep clean if it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for her to do, and a help at filling in her long idle day." Yet--Martha Galland had every comfort and most of the luxuries, was as sheltered from all the hardships as a hot-house flower. Then there was Hugo--to go no further afield than the family. Had he ever done an honest hour's work in his life? Could anyone have less brains than he? Yet Hugo was rich and respected, was a director in big corporations, was a member of a first-cla.s.s law firm. "It isn't fair," thought the girl. "I've always felt it. I see now why. It's a bad system of taking from the many for the benefit of us few. And it's kept going by a few clever, strong men like father. They work for themselves and their families and relatives and for their cla.s.s--and the rest of the people have to suffer."

She did not fall asleep for several hours, such was the tumult in her aroused brain. The first thing the next morning she went down town, bought copies of the New Day--for that week and for a few preceding weeks--and retreated to her favorite nook in her father's grounds to read and to think--and to plan. She searched the New Day in vain for any of the wild, wandering things Davy and her father had told her Victor Dorn was putting forth. The four pages of each number were given over either to philosophical articles no more "anarchistic" than Emerson's essays, not so much so as Carlyle's, or to plain accounts of the current stealing by the politicians of Remsen City, of the squalor and disease--danger in the tenements, of the outrages by the gas and water and street car companies. There was much that was terrible, much that was sad, much that was calculated to make an honest heart burn with indignation against those who were cheerily sacrificing the whole community to their desire for profits and dividends and graft, public and private. But there was also a great deal of humor--of rather a sardonic kind, but still seeing the fantastic side of this grand game of swindle.

Two paragraphs made an especial impression on her:

"Remsen City is no worse--and no better--than other American cities.

It's typical. But we who live here needn't worry about the rest of the country. The thing for us to do is to CLEAN UP AT HOME."

"We are more careful than any paper in this town about verifying every statement we make, before we make it. If we should publish a single statement about anyone that was false even in part we would be suppressed. The judges, the bosses, the owners of the big blood-sucking public service corporations, the whole ruling cla.s.s, are eager to put us out of existence. Don't forget this fact when you hear the New Day called a lying, demagogical sheet."

With the paper beside her on the rustic bench, she fell to dreaming--not of a brighter and better world, of a wiser and freer race, but of Victor Dorn, the personality that had unaided become such a power in Remsen City, the personality that sparkled and glowed in the interesting pages of the New Day, that made its sentences read as if they were spoken into your very ears by an earnest, honest voice issuing from a fascinating, humor-loving, intensely human and natural person before your very eyes. But it was not round Victor Dorn's brain that her imagination played.

"After all," thought she, "Napoleon wasn't much over five feet. Most of the big men have been little men. Of course, there were Alexander--and Washington--and Lincoln, but--how silly to bother about a few inches of height, more or less! And he wasn't really SHORT. Let me see--how high did he come on Davy when Davy was standing near him?

Above his shoulder--and Davy's six feet two or three. He's at least as tall as I am--anyhow, in my ordinary heels."

She was attracted by both the personalities she discovered in the little journal. She believed she could tell them apart. About some of the articles, the shorter ones, she was doubtful. But in those of any length she could feel that difference which enables one to distinguish the piano touch of a player in another room--whether it is male or female. Presently she was searching for an excuse for sc.r.a.ping acquaintance with this pair of pariahs--pariahs so far as her world was concerned. And soon she found it. The New Day was taking subscriptions for a fund to send sick children and their mothers to the country for a vacation from the dirt and heat of the tenements--for Remsen City, proud though it was and boastful of its prosperity, housed most of its inhabitants in slums--though of course that low sort of people oughtn't really to be counted--except for purposes of swelling census figures--and to do all the rough and dirty work necessary to keep civilization going.

She would subscribe to this worthy charity--and would take her subscription, herself. Settled--easily and well settled. She did not involve herself, or commit herself in any way. Besides, those who might find out and might think she had overstepped the bounds would excuse her on the ground that she had not been back at home long and did not realize what she was doing.

What should she wear?

Her instinct was for an elaborate toilet--a descent in state--or such state as the extremely limited resources of Martin Hastings' stables would permit. The traps he had ordered for her had not yet come; she had been glad to accept David Hull's offer of a lift the night before.

Still, without a carriage or a motor she could make quite an impression with a Paris walking dress and hat, properly supported by fashionable accessories of the toilet.

Good sense and good taste forbade these promptings of nature. No, she would dress most simply--in her very plainest things--taking care to maintain all her advantages of face and figure. If she overwhelmed Dorn and Miss Gordon, she would defeat her own purpose--would not become acquainted with them.

In the end she rejected both courses and decided for the riding costume. The reason she gave for this decision--the reason she gave herself--was that the riding costume would invest the call with an air of accident, of impulse. The real reason.

It may be that some feminine reader can guess why she chose the most startling, the most gracefully becoming, the most artlessly physical apparel in her wardrobe.

She said nothing to her father at lunch about her plans. Why should she speak of them? He might oppose; also, she might change her mind.

After lunch she set out on her usual ride, galloping away into the hills--but she had put twenty-five dollars in bills in her trousers pocket. She rode until she felt that her color was at its best, and then she made for town--a swift, direct ride, her heart beating high as if she were upon a most daring and fateful adventure. And, as a matter of fact, never in her life had she done anything that so intensely interested her. She felt that she was for the first time slackening rein upon those unconventional instincts, of unknown strength and purpose, which had been making her restless with their vague stirrings.

"How silly of me!" she thought. "I'm doing a commonplace, rather common thing--and I'm trying to make it seem a daring, romantic adventure. I MUST be hard up for excitement!"

Toward the middle of the afternoon she dropped from her horse before the office of the New Day and gave a boy the bridle. "I'll be back in a minute," she explained. It was a two-story frame building, dingy and in disrepair. On the street floor was a grocery. Access to the New Day was by a rickety stairway. As she ascended this, making a great noise on its unsteady boards with her boots, she began to feel cheap and foolish. She recalled what Hull had said in the carriage. "No doubt," replied she, "I'd feel much the same way if I were going to see Jesus Christ--a carpenter's son, sitting in some hovel, talking with his friends the fishermen and camel drivers--not to speak of the women."

The New Day occupied two small rooms--an editorial work room, and a printing work room behind it. Jane Hastings, in the doorway at the head of the stairs, was seeing all there was to see. In the editorial room were two tables--kitchen tables, littered with papers and journals, as was the floor, also. At the table directly opposite the door no one was sitting--"Victor Dorn's desk," Jane decided. At the table by the open window sat a girl, bent over her writing. Jane saw that the figure was below, probably much below, the medium height for woman, that it was slight and strong, that it was clad in a simple, clean gray linen dress. The girl's black hair, drawn into a plain but distinctly graceful knot, was of that dense and wavy thickness which is a characteristic and a beauty of the Hebrew race. The skin at the nape of her neck, on her hands, on her arms bare to the elbows was of a beautiful dead-white--the skin that so admirably compliments dead-black hair.

Before disturbing this busy writer Jane glanced round. There was nothing to detain her in the view of the busy printing plant in the room beyond. But on the walls of the room before her were four pictures--lithographs, cheap, not framed, held in place by a tack at each corner. There was Washington--then Lincoln--then a copy of Leonardo's Jesus in the Last Supper fresco--and a fourth face, bearded, powerful, imperious, yet wonderfully kind and good humored--a face she did not know. Pointing her riding stick at it she said:

"And who is that?"

With a quick but not in the least a startled movement the girl at the table straightened her form, turned in her chair, saying, as she did so, without having seen the pointing stick:

"That is Marx--Karl Marx."

Jane was so astonished by the face she was now seeing--the face of the girl--that she did not hear the reply. The girl's hair and skin had reminded her of what Martha had told her about the Jewish, or half-Jewish, origin of Selma Gordon. Thus, she a.s.sumed that she would see a frankly Jewish face. Instead, the face looking at her from beneath the wealth of thick black hair, carelessly parted near the centre, was Russian--was Cossack--strange and primeval, intense, dark, as superbly alive as one of those exuberant tropical flowers that seem to cry out the mad joy of life. Only, those flowers suggest the evanescent, the flame burning so fiercely that it must soon burn out, while this Russian girl declared that life was eternal. You could not think of her as sick, as old, as anything but young and vigorous and vivid, as full of energy as a healthy baby that kicks its dresses into rags and wears out the strength of its strapping nurse. Her nose was as straight as Jane's own particularly fine example of nose. Her dark gray eyes, beneath long, slender, coal black lines of brow, were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with life and with fun. She had a wide, frank, scarlet mouth; her teeth were small and sharp and regular, and of the strong and healthy shade of white. She had a very small, but a very resolute chin. With another quick, free movement she stood up. She was indeed small, but formed in proportion. She seemed out of harmony with her linen dress. She looked as if she ought to be careening on the steppes in some romantic, half-savage costume. Jane's first and instant thought was, "There's not another like her in the whole world. She's the only living specimen of her kind."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Jane. "But you ARE healthy."

The smile took full advantage of the opportunity to broaden into a laugh. A most flattering expression of frank, childlike admiration came into the dark gray eyes. "You're not sickly, yourself," replied Selma. Jane was disappointed that the voice was not untamed Cossack, but was musically civilized.