Chapter 2

"I certainly shall," replied the girl. "As soon as he comes home this afternoon, I'm going to talk to him about that damage suit. That has got to be straightened out." An expression of resolution, of gentleness and justice abruptly transformed her face. "You may not believe it, but I have a conscience." Absently, "A curious sort of a conscience--one that might become very troublesome, I'm afraid--in some circumstances."

Instantly the fine side of David Hull's nature was to the fore--the dominant side, for at the first appeal it always responded. "So have I, Jen," said he. "I think our similarity in that respect is what draws me so strongly to you. And it's that that makes me hope I can win you. Oh, Jen--there's so much to be done in the world--and you and I could have such a splendid happy life doing our share of it."

She was once more looking at him with an encouraging interest. But she said, gently: "Let's not talk about that any more to-day, Davy."

"But you'll think about it?" urged he.

"Yes," said she. "Let's be friends--and--and see what happens."

Hull strolled up to the house with her, but refused to stop for lunch. He pleaded an engagement; but it was one that could--and in other circumstances would--have been broken by telephone. His real reason for hurrying away was fear lest Jane should open out on the subject of Victor Dorn with her father, and, in her ignorance of the truth as to the situation, should implicate him.

She found her father already at home and having a bowl of crackers and milk in a shady corner of the west veranda. He was chewing in the manner of those whose teeth are few and not too secure. His brows were knitted and he looked as if not merely joy but everything except disagreeable sensation had long since fled his life beyond hope of return--an air not uncommon among the world's successful men. However, at sight of his lovely young daughter his face cleared somewhat and he shot at her from under his wildly and savagely narrowed eyebrows a glance of admiration and tenderness--a quaint expression for those cold, hard features.

Everyone spoke of him behind his back as "Old Morton Hastings."

In fact, he was barely past sixty, was at an age at which city men of the modern style count themselves young and even entertain--not without reason--hope of being desired of women for other than purely practical reasons. He was born on a farm--was born with an aversion to physical exertion as profound as was his passion for mental exertion. We never shall know how much of its progress the world owes to the physically lazy, mentally tireless men. Those are they who, to save themselves physical exertion, have devised all manner of schemes and machines to save labor. And, at bottom, what is progress but man's success in his effort to free himself from manual labor--to get everything for himself by the labor of other men and animals and of machines? Naturally his boyhood of toil on the farm did not lessen Martin Hastings' innate horror of "real work." He was not twenty when he dropped tools never to take them up again. He was shoeing a horse in the heat of the cool side of the barn on a frightful August day. Suddenly he threw down the hammer and said loudly: "A man that works is a damn fool. I'll never work again." And he never did.

As soon as he could get together the money--and it was not long after he set about making others work for him--he bought a buggy, a kind of phaeton, and a safe horse. Thenceforth he never walked a step that could be driven. The result of thirty-five years of this life, so unnatural to an animal that is designed by Nature for walking and is punished for not doing so--the result of a lifetime of this folly was a body shrivelled to a lean brown husk, legs incredibly meagre and so tottery that they scarcely could bear him about. His head--large and finely shaped--seemed so out of proportion that he looked at a glance senile. But no one who had business dealings with him suspected him of senility or any degree of weakness. He spoke in a thin dry voice, shrouded in sardonic humor.

"I don't care for lunch," said Jane, dropping to a chair near the side of the table opposite her father. "I had breakfast too late. Besides, I've got to look out for my figure. There's a tendency to fat in our family."

The old man chuckled. "Me, for instance," said he.

"Martha, for instance," replied Jane. Martha was her one sister--married and ten years older than she and spaciously matronly.

"Wasn't that Davy Hull you were talking to, down in the woods?" inquired her father.

Jane laughed. "You see everything," said she.

"I didn't see much when I saw him," said her father.

Jane was hugely amused. Her father watched her laughter--the dazzling display of fine teeth--with delighted eyes. "You've got mighty good teeth, Jenny," observed he. "Take care of 'em. You'll never know what misery is till you've got no teeth--or next to none." He looked disgustedly into his bowl. "Crackers and milk!" grunted he. "No teeth and no digestion. The only pleasure a man of my age can have left is eating, and I'm cheated out of that."

"So, you wouldn't approve of my marrying Davy?" said the girl.

Her father grunted--chuckled. "I didn't say that. Does he want to marry you?"

"I didn't say that," retorted Jane. "He's an unattached young man--and I, being merely a woman, have got to look out for a husband."

Martin looked gloomy. "There's no hurry," said he. "You've been away six years. Seems to me you might stay at home a while."

"Oh, I'd bring him here, popsy I've no intention of leaving you. You were in an awful state, when I came home. That mustn't ever happen again. And as you won't live with Martha and Hugo--why, I've got to be the victim."

"Yes--it's up to you, Miss, to take care of me in my declining years.... You can marry Davy--if you want to. Davy--or anybody. I trust to your good sense."

"If I don't like him, I can get rid of him," said the girl.

Her father smiled indulgently. "That's A LEETLE too up-to-date for an old man like me," observed he. "The world's moving fast nowadays. It's got a long ways from where it was when your ma and I were young."

"Do you think Davy Hull will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before--of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive--how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career in politics," she explained.

The old man munched and smacked for full a minute before he said, "Well, he can make a pretty good speech. Yes--I reckon he could be taken in hand and pushed. He's got a lot of fool college-bred ideas about reforming things. But he'd soon drop them, if he got into the practical swing. As soon as he had a taste of success, he'd stop being finicky. Just now, he's one of those nice, pure chaps who stand off and tell how things ought to be done. But he'd get over that."

Jane smiled peculiarly--half to herself. "Yes--I think he would. In fact, I'm sure he would." She looked at her father. "Do you think he amounts to as much as Victor Dorn?" she asked, innocently.

The old man dropped a half raised spoonful of milk and crackers into the bowl with a splash. "Dorn--he's a scoundrel!" he exclaimed, shaking with passion. "I'm going to have that dirty little paper of his stopped and him put out of town. Impudent puppy!--foul-mouthed demagogue! I'll SHOW him!"

"Why, he doesn't amount to anything, father," remonstrated the girl. "He's nothing but a common working man--isn't he?"

"That's all he is--the hound!" replied Martin Hastings. A look of cruelty, of tenacious cruelty, had come into his face. It would have startled a stranger. But his daughter had often seen it; and it did not disturb her, as it had never appeared for anything that in any way touched her life. "I've let him hang on here too long," went on the old man, to himself rather than to her. "First thing I know he'll be dangerous."

"If he's worth while I should think you'd hire him," remarked Jane shrewdly.

"I wouldn't have such a scoundrel in my employ," cried her father.

"Oh, maybe," pursued the daughter, "maybe you couldn't hire him."

"Of course I could," scoffed Hastings. "Anybody can be hired."

"I don't believe it," said the girl bluntly.

"One way or another," declared the old man. "That Dorn boy isn't worth the price he'd want."

"What price would he want?" asked Jane.

"How should I know?" retorted her father angrily.

"You've tried to hire him--haven't you?" persisted she.

The father concentrated on his crackers and milk. Presently he said: "What did that fool Hull boy say about Dorn to you?"

"He doesn't like him," replied Jane. "He seems to be jealous of him--and opposed to his political views."

"Dorn's views ain't politics. They're--theft and murder and highfalutin nonsense," said Hastings, not unconscious of his feeble anti-climax.

"All the same, he--or rather, his mother--ought to have got damages from the railway," said the girl. And there was a sudden and startling shift in her expression--to a tenacity as formidable as her father's own, but a quiet and secret tenacity.

Old Hastings wiped his mouth and began fussing uncomfortably with a cigar.

"I don't blame him for getting bitter and turning against society," continued she. "I'd have done the same thing--and so would you."

Hastings lit the cigar. "They wanted ten thousand dollars," he said, almost apologetically. "Why, they never saw ten thousand cents they could call their own."

"But they lost their bread-winner, father," pleaded the girl. "And there were young children to bring up and educate. Oh, I hate to think that--that we had anything to do with such a wrong."

"It wasn't a wrong, Jen--as I used to tell your ma," said the old man, much agitated and shrill of voice. "It was just the course of business. The law was with our company."

Jane said nothing. She simply gazed steadily at her father. He avoided her glance.

"I don't want to hear no more about it," he burst out with abrupt violence. "Not another word!"

"Father, I want it settled--and settled right," said the girl. "I ask it as a favor. Don't do it as a matter of business, but as a matter of sentiment."

He shifted uneasily, debating. When he spoke he was even more explosive than before. "Not a cent! Not a red! Give that whelp money to run his crazy paper on? Not your father, while he keeps his mind."

"But--mightn't that quiet him?" pleaded she. "What's the use of having war when you can have peace? You've always laughed at people who let their prejudices stand in the way of their interests. You've always laughed at how silly and stupid and costly enmities and revenges are. Now's your chance to illustrate, popsy." And she smiled charmingly at him.

He was greatly softened by her manner--and by the wisdom of what she said--a wisdom in which, as in a mirror, he recognized with pleasure her strong resemblance to himself. "That wouldn't be a bad idea, Jen," said he after reflection, "IF I could get a guarantee."

"But why not do it generously?" urged the girl. "Generosity inspires generosity. You'll make him ashamed of himself."

With a cynical smile on his shrivelled face the old man slowly shook his big head that made him look as top-heavy as a newborn baby. "That isn't as smart, child, as what you said before. It's in them things that the difference between theory and practice shows. He'd take the money and laugh at me. No, I'll try to get a guarantee." He nodded and chuckled. "Yes, that was a good idea of yours, Jen."

"But--isn't it just possible that he is a man with--with principles of a certain kind?" suggested she.

"Of course, he THINKS so," said Hastings. "They all do. But you don't suppose a man of any sense at all could really care about and respect working class people?--ignorant, ungrateful fools. _I_ know 'em. Didn't I come from among 'em? Ain't I dealt with 'em all my life? No, that there guy Dorn's simply trying to get up, and is using them to step up on. I did the same thing, only I did it in a decent, law-abiding way. I didn't want to tear down those that was up. I wanted to go up and join 'em. And I did."

And his eyes glistened fondly and proudly as he gazed at his daughter. She represented the climax of his rising--she, the lady born and bred, in her beautiful clothes, with her lovely, delicate charms. Yes, he had indeed "come up," and there before him was the superb tangible evidence of it.

Jane had the strongest belief in her father's worldly wisdom. At the same time, from what David Hull said she had got an impression of a something different from the ordinary human being in this queer Victor Dorn. "You'd better move slowly," she said to her father. "There's no hurry, and you might be mistaken in him."

"Plenty of time," asserted her father. "There's never any need to hurry about giving up money." Then, with one of those uncanny flashes of intuition for which he, who was never caught napping, was famous, he said to her sharply: "You keep your hands off, miss."

She was thrown into confusion--and her embarrassment enraged her against herself. "What could _I_ do?" she retorted with a brave attempt at indifference.

"Well--keep your hands off, miss," said the old man. "No female meddling in business. I'll stand for most anything, but not for that."

Jane was now all eagerness for dropping the subject. She wished no further prying of that shrewd mind into her secret thoughts. "It's hardly likely I'd meddle where I know nothing about the circumstances," said she. "Will you drive me down to Martha's?"

This request was made solely to change the subject, to shift her father to his favorite topic for family conversation--his daughter Martha, Mrs. Hugo Galland, her weakness for fashionable pastimes, her incessant hints and naggings at her father about his dowdy dress, his vulgar mannerisms of speech and of conduct, especially at table. Jane had not the remotest intention of letting her father drive her to Mrs. Galland's, or anywhere, in the melancholy old phaeton-buggy, behind the fat old nag whose coat was as shabby as the coat of the master or as the top and the side curtains of the sorrowful vehicle it drew along at caterpillar pace.

When her father was ready to depart for his office in the Hastings Block--the most imposing office building in Remsen City, Jane announced a change of mind.

"I'll ride, instead," said she. "I need the exercise, and the day isn't too warm."

"All right," said Martin Hastings grumpily. He soon got enough of anyone's company, even of his favorite daughter's. Through years of habit he liked to jog about alone, revolving in his mind his business affairs--counting in fancy his big bundles of securities, one by one, calculating their returns past, present and prospective--reviewing the various enterprises in which he was dominant factor, working out schemes for getting more profit here, for paying less wages there, for tightening his grip upon this enterprise, for dumping his associates in that, for escaping with all the valuable assets from another. His appearance, as he and his nag dozed along the highroad, was as deceptive as that of a hive of bees on a hot day--no signs of life except a few sleepy workers crawling languidly in and out at the low, broad crack-door, yet within myriads toiling like mad.

Jane went up to dress. She had brought an Italian maid with her from Florence, and a mass of baggage that had given the station loungers at Remsen City something to talk about, when there was a dearth of new subjects, for the rest of their lives. She had transformed her own suite in the second story of the big old house into an appearance of the quarters of a twentieth century woman of wealth and leisure. In the sitting room were books in four languages; on the walls were tasteful reproductions of her favorite old masters. The excellence of her education was attested not by the books and pictures but by the absence of those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac where--with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their houses because they can think of nothing else to fill in the gaps.

Many of Jane's ways made Sister Martha uneasy. For Martha, while admitting that Jane through superior opportunity ought to know, could not believe that the "right sort" of people on the other side had thrown over all her beloved formalities and were conducting themselves distressingly like tenement-house people. For instance, Martha could not approve Jane's habit of smoking cigarettes--a habit which, by one of those curious freaks of character, enormously pleased her father. But--except in one matter--Martha entirely approved Jane's style of dress. She hastened to pronounce it "just too elegant" and repeated that phrase until Jane, tried beyond endurance, warned her that the word elegant was not used seriously by people of the "right sort" and that its use was regarded as one of those small but subtle signs of the loathsome "middle class."

The one thing in Jane's dress that Martha disapproved--or, rather, shied at--was her riding suit. This was an extremely noisy plaid man's suit--for Jane rode astride. Martha could not deny that Jane looked "simply stunning" when seated on her horse and dressed in that garb with her long slim feet and graceful calves encased in a pair of riding boots that looked as if they must have cost "something fierce." But was it really "ladylike"? Hadn't Jane made a mistake and adopted a costume worn only by the fashionables among the demi-mondaines of whom Martha had read and had heard such dreadful, delightful stories?

It was the lively plaid that Miss Hastings now clad herself in. She loved that suit. Not only did it give her figure a superb opportunity but also it brought out new beauties in her contour and coloring. And her head was so well shaped and her hair grew so thickly about brow and ears and nape of neck that it looked full as well plaited and done close as when it was framing her face and half concealing, half revealing her charming ears in waves of changeable auburn. After a lingering--and pardonably pleased--look at herself in a long mirror, she descended, mounted and rode slowly down toward town.

The old Galland homestead was at the western end of town--in a quarter that had become almost poor. But it was so dignified and its grounds were so extensive that it suggested a manor house with the humble homes of the lord's dependents clustering about it for shelter. To reach it Jane had to ride through two filthy streets lined with factories. As she rode she glanced at the windows, where could be seen in dusty air girls and boys busy at furiously driven machines--machines that compelled their human slaves to strain every nerve in the monotonous task of keeping them occupied. Many of the girls and boys paused long enough for a glance at the figure of the man-clad girl on the big horse.

Jane, happy in the pleasant sunshine, in her beauty and health and fine raiment and secure and luxurious position in the world, gave a thought of pity to these imprisoned young people. "How lucky I am," she thought, "not to have been born like that. Of course, we all have our falls now and then. But while they always strike on the hard ground, I've got a feather bed to fall on."

When she reached Martha's and was ushered into the cool upstairs sitting room, in somehow ghastly contrast to the hot rooms where the young working people sweated and strained, the subject persisted in its hold on her thoughts. There was Martha, in comfortable, corsetless expansiveness--an ideal illustration of the worthless idler fattening in purposelessness. She was engaged with all her energies in preparing for the ball Hugo Galland's sister, Mrs. Bertrand, was giving at the assembly rooms that night.

"I've been hard at it for several days now," said she. "I think at last I see daylight. But I want your opinion."

Jane gazed absently at the dress and accompanying articles that had been assembled with so much labor. "All right," said she. "You'll look fine and dandy."

Martha twitched. "Jane, dear--don't say that--don't use such an expression. I know it's your way of joking. But lots of people would think you didn't know any better."

"Let 'em think," said Jane. "I say and do as I please."

Martha sighed. Here was one member of her family who could be a credit, who could make people forget the unquestionably common origin of the Hastingses and of the Morleys. Yet this member was always breaking out into something mortifying, something reminiscent of the farm and of the livery stable--for the deceased Mrs. Hastings had been daughter of a livery stable keeper--in fact, had caught Martin Hastings by the way she rode her father's horses at a sale at a county fair. Said Martha:

"You haven't really looked at my clothes, Jane. Why DID you go back to calling yourself Jane?"

"Because it's my name," replied her sister.

"I know that. But you hated it and changed it to Jeanne, which is so much prettier."

"I don't think so any more," replied Miss Hastings. "My taste has improved. Don't be so horribly middle class, Martha--ashamed of everything simple and natural."

"You think you know it all--don't you?--just because you've lived abroad," said Martha peevishly.

"On the contrary, I don't know one-tenth as much as I thought I did, when I came back from Wellesley with a diploma."

"Do you like my costume?" inquired Martha, eying her finery with the fond yet dubious expression of the woman who likes her own taste but is not sure about its being good taste.

"What a lazy, worthless pair we are!" exclaimed Jane, hitting her boot leg a tremendous rap with her little cane.

Martha startled. "Good God--Jane--what is it?" she cried.

"On the way here I passed a lot of factories," pursued Jane. "Why should those people have to work like--like the devil, while we sit about planning ball dresses?"

Martha settled back comfortably. "I feel so sorry for those poor people," said she, absently sympathetic.

"But why?" demanded Jane. "WHY? Why should we be allowed to idle while they have to slave? What have we done--what are we doing--to entitle us to ease? What have they done to condemn them to pain and toil?"

"You know very well, Jane, that we represent the finer side of life."

"Slop!" ejaculated Jane.

"For pity's sake, don't let's talk politics," wailed Martha. "I know nothing about politics. I haven't any brains for that sort of thing."

"Is that politics?" inquired Jane. "I thought politics meant whether the Democrats or the Republicans or the reformers were to get the offices and the chance to steal."

"Everything's politics, nowadays," said Martha, comparing the color of the material of her dress with the color of her fat white arm. "As Hugo says, that Victor Dorn is dragging everything into politics--even our private business of how we make and spend our own money."

Jane sat down abruptly. "Victor Dorn," she said in a strange voice. "WHO is Victor Dorn? WHAT is Victor Dorn? It seems that I can hear of nothing but Victor Dorn to-day."

"He's too low to talk about," said Martha, amiable and absent.

"Why?"

"Politics," replied Martha. "Really, he is horrid, Jane."

"To look at?"

"No--not to look at. He's handsome in a way. Not at all common looking. You might take him for a gentleman, if you didn't know. Still--he always dresses peculiarly--always wears soft hats. I think soft hats are SO vulgar--don't you?"

"How hopelessly middle-class you are, Martha," mocked Jane.

"Hugo would as soon think of going in the street in a--in a--I don't know what."