Chapter 23

Victor Dorn described Davy Hull's inaugural address as "an uninteresting sample of the standard reform brand of artificial milk for political infants." The press, however, was enthusiastic, and substantial people everywhere spoke of it as having the "right ring," as being the utterance of a "safe, clean man whom the politicians can't frighten or fool." In this famous speech David urged everybody who was doing right to keep on doing so, warned everybody who was doing wrong that they would better look out for themselves, praised those who were trying to better conditions in the right way, condemned those who were trying to do so in the wrong way. It was all most eloquent, most earnest. Some few people were disappointed that he had not explained exactly what and whom he meant by right and by wrong; but these carping murmurs were drowned in the general acclaim. A man whose fists clenched and whose eyes flashed as did David Hull's must "mean business"--and if no results came of these words, it wouldn't be his fault, but the machinations of wicked plutocrats and their political agents.

"Isn't it disgusting!" exclaimed Selma, reading an impassioned paragraph aloud to Victor Dorn. "It almost makes me despair when I see how people--our sort of people, too--are taken in by such guff. And they stand with their empty picked pockets and cheer this man, who's nothing but a stool pigeon for pickpockets."

"It's something gained," observed Victor tranquilly, "when politicians have to denounce the plutocracy in order to get audiences and offices. The people are beginning to know what's wrong. They read into our friend Hull's generalities what they think he ought to mean--what they believe he does mean. The next step is--he'll have to do something or they'll find him out."

"He do anything?" Selma laughed derisively. "He hasn't the courage--or the honesty."

"Well--'patience and shuffle the cards,' as Sancho Panza says. We're winning Remsen City. And our friends are winning a little ground here, and a little there and a little yonder--and soon--only too soon--this crumbling false politics will collapse and disappear. Too soon, I fear. Before the new politics of a work-compelling world for the working class only is ready to be installed."

Selma had been only half attending. She now said abruptly, with a fluttering movement that suggested wind blowing strongly across open prairies under a bright sky:

"I've decided to go away."

"Yes, you must take a vacation," said Victor. "I've been telling you that for several years. And you must go away to the sea or the mountains where you'll not be harassed by the fate of the human race that you so take to heart."

"I didn't mean a vacation," said Selma. "I meant to Chicago--to work there."

"You've had a good offer?" said Victor. "I knew it would come. You've got to take it. You need the wider experience--the chance to have a paper of your own--or a work of your own of some kind. It's been selfishness, my keeping you all this time."

Selma had turned away. With her face hidden from him she said, "Yes, I must go."

"When?" said Victor.

"As soon as you can arrange for some one else."

"All right. I'll look round. I've no hope of finding any one to take your place, but I can get some one who will do."

"You can train any one," said Selma. "Just as you trained me."

"I'll see what's to be done," was all he said.

A week passed--two weeks. She waited; he did not bring up the subject. But she knew he was thinking of it; for there had been a change in his manner toward her--a constraint, a self-consciousness theretofore utterly foreign to him in his relations with any one. Selma was wretched, and began to show it first in her appearance, then in her work. At last she burst out:

"Give that article back to me," she cried. "It's rotten. I can't write any more. Why don't you tell me so frankly? Why don't you send me away?"

"You're doing better work than I am," said he. "You're eager to be off--aren't you? Will you stay a few days longer? I must get away to the country--alone--to get a fresh grip on myself. I'll come back as soon as I can, and you'll be free. There'll be no chance for vacations after you're gone."

"Very well," said she. She felt that he would think this curtness ungracious, but more she could not say.

He was gone four days. When he reappeared at the office he was bronzed, but under the bronze showed fatigue--in a man of his youth and strength sure sign of much worry and loss of sleep. He greeted her almost awkwardly, his eyes avoiding hers, and sat down to opening his accumulated mail. Although she was furtively observing him she started when he abruptly said:

"You know you are free to go--at any time."

"I'll wait until you catch up with your work," she suggested.

"No--never mind. I'll get along. I've kept you out of all reason.... The sooner you go the better. I've got to get used to it, and--I hate suspense."

"Then I'll go in the morning," said Selma. "I've no arrangements to make--except a little packing that'll take less than an hour. Will you say good-by for me to any one who asks? I hate fusses, and I'll be back here from time to time."

He looked at her curiously, started to speak, changed his mind and resumed reading the letter in his hand. She turned to her work, sat pretending to write. In fact she was simply scribbling. Her eyes were burning and she was fighting against the sobs that came surging. He rose and began to walk up and down the room. She hastily crumpled and flung away the sheet on which she had be scrawling; he might happen to glance at her desk and see. She bent closer to the paper and began to write--anything that came into her head. Presently the sound of his step ceased. An uncontrollable impulse to fly seized her. She would get up--would not put on her hat--would act as if she were simply going to the street door for a moment. And she would not return--would escape the danger of a silly breakdown. She summoned all her courage, suddenly rose and moved swiftly toward the door. At the threshold she had to pause; she could not control her heart from a last look at him.

He was seated at his table, was staring at its litter of letters, papers and manuscripts with an expression so sad that it completely transformed him. She forgot herself. She said softly:

"Victor!"

He did not hear.

"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 pass," 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 association 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 manuscript 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.

Dick 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.