The Conflict Part 8

"Yes, but I don't flaunt it as you do," rejoined Jane. "You'd make anyone who was the least bit off, furious."

Selma, still with the child-like expression, but now one of curiosity, was examining Jane's masculine riding dress. "What a sensible suit!"

she cried, delightedly. "I'd wear something like that all the time, if I dared."

"Dared?" said Jane. "You don't look like the frightened sort."

"Not on account of myself," explained Selma. "On account of the cause.

You see, we are fighting for a new idea. So, we have to be careful not to offend people's prejudices about ideas not so important. If we went in for everything that's sensible, we'd be regarded as cranks. One thing at a time."

Jane's glance shifted to the fourth picture. "Didn't you say that was--Karl Marx?"

"Yes."

"He wrote a book on political economy. I tried to read it at college.

But I couldn't. It was too heavy for me. He was a Socialist--wasn't he?--the founder of Socialism?"

"A great deal more than that," replied Selma. "He was the most important man for human liberty that ever lived--except perhaps one."

And she looked at Leonardo's "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

"Marx was a--a Hebrew--wasn't he?"

Selma's eyes danced, and Jane felt that she was laughing at her hesitation and choice of the softer word. Selma said:

"Yes--he was a Jew. Both were Jews."

"Both?" inquired Jane, puzzled.

"Marx and Jesus," explained Selma.

Jane was startled. "So HE was a Jew--wasn't He?"

"And they were both labor leaders--labor agitators. The first one proclaimed the brotherhood of man. But he regarded this world as hopeless and called on the weary and heavy laden ma.s.ses to look to the next world for the righting of their wrongs. Then--eighteen centuries after--came that second Jew"--Selma looked pa.s.sionate, reverent admiration at the powerful, bearded face, so masterful, yet so kind--"and he said: 'No! not in the hereafter, but in the here. Here and now, my brothers. Let us make this world a heaven. Let us redeem ourselves and destroy the devil of ignorance who is holding us in this h.e.l.l.' It was three hundred years before that first Jew began to triumph. It won't be so long before there are monuments to Marx in clean and beautiful and free cities all over the earth."

Jane listened intensely. There was admiring envy in her eyes as she cried: "How splendid!--to believe in something--and work for it and live for it--as you do!"

Selma laughed, with a charming little gesture of the shoulders and the hands that reminded Jane of her foreign parentage. "Nothing else seems worth while," said she. "Nothing else is worth while. There are only two entirely great careers--to be a teacher of the right kind and work to ease men's minds--as those four did--or to be a doctor of the right kind and work to make mankind healthy. All the suffering, all the crime, all the wickedness, comes from ignorance or bad health--or both.

Usually it's simply bad health."

Jane felt as if she were devoured of thirst and drinking at a fresh, sparkling spring. "I never thought of that before," said she.

"If you find out all about any criminal, big or little, you'll discover that he had bad health--poisons in his blood that goaded him on."

Jane nodded. "Whenever I'm difficult to get on with, I'm always not quite well."

"I can see that your disposition is perfect, when you are well," said Selma.

"And yours," said Jane.

"Oh, I'm never out of humor," said Selma. "You see, I'm never sick--not the least bit."

"You are Miss Gordon, aren't you?"

"Yes--I'm Selma Gordon."

"My name is Jane Hastings." Then as this seemed to convey nothing to Selma, Jane added: "I'm not like you. I haven't an individuality of my own--that anybody knows about. So, I'll have to identify myself by saying that I'm Martin Hastings' daughter."

Jane confidently expected that this announcement would cause some sort of emotion--perhaps of awe, perhaps of horror, certainly of interest.

She was disappointed. If Selma felt anything she did not show it--and Jane was of the opinion that it would be well nigh impossible for so direct and natural a person to conceal. Jane went on:

"I read in your paper about your fund for sick children. I was riding past your office--saw the sign--and I've come in to give what I happen to have about me." She drew out the small roll of bills and handed it to Selma.

The Russian girl--if it is fair thus to characterize one so intensely American in manner, in accent and in speech--took the money and said:

"We'll acknowledge it in the paper next week."

Jane flushed and a thrill of alarm ran through her. "Oh--please--no,"

she urged. "I'd not like to have my name mentioned. That would look as if I had done it to seem charitable. Besides, it's such a trifle."

Selma was calm and apparently unsuspicious. "Very well," said she.

"We'll write, telling what we did with the money, so that you can investigate."

"But I trust you entirely," cried Jane.

Selma shook her head. "But we don't wish to be trusted," said she.

"Only dishonest people wish to be trusted when it's possible to avoid trusting. And we all need watching. It helps us to keep straight."

"Oh, I don't agree with you," protested Miss Hastings. "Lots of the time I'd hate to be watched. I don't want everybody to know all I do."

Selma's eyes opened. "Why not?" she said.

Jane cast about for a way to explain what seemed to her a self-evident truth. "I mean--privacy," she said. "For instance, if you were in love, you'd not want everybody to know about it?"

"Yes, indeed," declared Selma. "I'd be tremendously proud of it. It must be wonderful to be in love."

In one of those curious twists of feminine nature, Miss Hastings suddenly felt the glow of a strong, unreserved liking for this strange, candid girl.

Selma went on: "But I'm afraid I never shall be. I get no time to think about myself. From rising till bed time my work pushes at me."

She glanced uneasily at her desk, apologetically at Miss Hastings. "I ought to be writing this minute. The strike is occupying Victor, and I'm helping out with his work."

"I'm interrupting," said Jane. "I'll go." She put out her hand with her best, her sweetest smile. "We're going to be friends--aren't we?"

Selma clasped her hand heartily and said: "We ARE friends. I like everybody. There's always something to like in everyone--and the bad part isn't their fault. But it isn't often that I like anyone so much as I do you. You are so direct and honest--quite different from the other women of your cla.s.s that I've met."

Jane felt unaccountably grateful and humble. "I'm afraid you're too generous. I guess you're not a very good judge of people," she said.

"So Victor--Victor Dorn--says," laughed Selma. "He says I'm too confiding. Well--why not? And really, he trusts everybody, too--except with the cause. Then he's--he's"--she glanced from face to face of the four pictures--"he's like those men."

Jane's glance followed Selma's. She said: "Yes--I should imagine so--from what I've heard." She startled, flushed, hid behind a somewhat constrained manner. "Will you come up to my house to lunch?"