Chapter 8

There was a nastiness, a vulgarity in this that was as unworthy of Jane as are all the unlovely emotions of us who are always sweet and refined when we are our true selves--but have a bad habit of only too often not being what we flatter ourselves is our true selves. Jane was growing angry as she, away from Selma, resumed her normal place in the world and her normal point of view. Davy Hull belonged to her; he had no right to be hanging about another, anyway--especially an attractive woman. Her anger was not lessened by Davy's retort. Said he:

"Her dress may have been the same. But her face wasn't--and her mind wasn't. Those things are more difficult to change than a dress."

She was so angry that she did not take warning from this reminder that Davy was by no means merely a tedious retailer of stale commonplaces. She said with fine irony--and with no show of anger: "It is always a shock to a lady to realize how coarse men are--how they don't discriminate."

Davy laughed. "Women get their rank from men," said he coolly.

"In themselves they have none. That's the philosophy of the peculiarity you've noted."

This truth, so galling to a lady, silenced Jane, made her bite her lips with rage. "I beg your pardon," she finally said. "I didn't realize that you were in love with Selma."

"Yes, I am in love with her," was Davy's astounding reply. "She's the noblest and simplest creature I've ever met."

"You don't mean you want to marry her!" exclaimed Jane, so amazed that she for the moment lost sight of her own personal interest in this affair.

Davy looked at her sadly, and a little contemptuously.

"What a poor opinion at bottom you women--your sort of women--have of woman," said he.

"What a poor opinion of men you mean," retorted she. "After a little experience of them a girl--even a girl--learns that they are incapable of any emotion that isn't gross."

"Don't be so ladylike, Jane," said Hull.

Miss Hastings was recovering control of herself. She took a new tack. "You haven't asked her yet?"

"Hardly. This is the second time I've seen her. I suspected that she was the woman for me the moment I saw her. To-day I confirmed my idea. She is all that I thought--and more. And, Jane, I know that you appreciate her, too."

Jane now saw that Davy was being thus abruptly and speedily confiding because he had decided it was the best way out of his entanglement with her. Behind his coolness she could see an uneasy watchfulness--the fear that she might try to hold him. Up boiled her rage--the higher because she knew that if there were any possible way of holding Davy, she would take it--not because she wished to, or would, marry him, but because she had put her mark upon him. But this new rage was of the kind a clever woman has small difficulty in dissembling.

"Indeed I do appreciate her, Davy," said she sweetly. "And I hope you will be happy with her."

"You think I can get her?" said he, fatuously eager. "You think she likes me? I've been rather hoping that because it seized me so suddenly and so powerfully it must have seized her, too. I think often things occur that way."

"In novels," said Jane, pleasantly judicial. "But in real life about the hardest thing to do is for a man to make a woman care for him--really care for him."

"Well, no matter how hard I have to try----"

"Of course," pursued Miss Hastings, ignoring his interruption, "when a man who has wealth and position asks a woman who hasn't to marry him, she usually accepts--unless he happens to be downright repulsive, or she happens to be deeply and hopefully in love with another man."

Davy winced satisfactorily. "Do you suspect," he presently asked, "that she's in love with Victor Dorn?"

"Perhaps," said Jane reflectively. "Probably. But I'd not feel discouraged by that if I were you."

"Dorn's a rather attractive chap in some ways."

Davy's manner was so superior that Jane almost laughed in his face. What fools men were. If Victor Dorn had position, weren't surrounded by his unquestionably, hopelessly common family, weren't deliberately keeping himself common--was there a woman in the world who wouldn't choose him without a second thought being necessary, in preference to a Davy Hull? How few men there were who could reasonably hope to hold their women against all comers.

Victor Dorn might possibly be of those few. But Davy Hull--the idea was ridiculous. All his advantages--height, looks, money, position--were excellent qualities in a show piece; but they weren't the qualities that make a woman want to live her life with a man, that make her hope he will be able to give her the emotions woman-nature craves beyond anything.

"He is very attractive," said Jane, "and I've small doubt that Selma Gordon is infatuated with him. But--I shouldn't let that worry me if I were you." She paused to enjoy his anxiety, then proceeded: "She is a level-headed girl. The girls of the working class--the intelligent ones--have had the silly sentimentalities knocked out of them by experience. So, when you ask her to marry you, she will accept."

"What a low opinion you have of her!" exclaimed Davy. "What a low view you take of life!"--most inconsistent of him, since he was himself more than half convinced that Jane's observations were not far from the truth.

"Women are sensible," said Jane tranquilly. "They appreciate that they've got to get a man to support them. Don't forget, my dear Davy, that marriage is a woman's career."

"You lived abroad too long," said Hull bitterly.

"I've lived at home and abroad long enough and intelligently enough not to think stupid hypocrisies, even if I do sometimes imitate other people and SAY them."

"I am sure that Selma Gordon would no more think of marrying me for any other reason but love--would no more think of it than--than YOU would!"

"No more," was Jane's unruffled reply. "But just as much. I didn't absolutely refuse you, when you asked me the other day, partly because I saw no other way of stopping your tiresome talk--and your unattractive way of trying to lay hands on me. I DETEST being handled."

Davy was looking so uncomfortable that he attracted the attention of the people they were passing in wide, shady Lincoln Avenue.

"But my principal reason," continued Jane, mercilessly amiable and candid, "was that I didn't know but that you might prove to be about the best I could get, as a means to realizing my ambition." She looked laughingly at the unhappy young man. "You didn't think I was in love with you, did you, Davy dear?" Then, while the confusion following this blow was at its height, she added: "You'll remember one of your chief arguments for my accepting you was ambition. You didn't think it low then--did you?"

Hull was one of the dry-skinned people. But if he had been sweating profusely he would have looked and would have been less wretched than burning up in the smothered heat of his misery.

They were nearing Martha's gates. Jane said: "Yes, Davy, you've got a good chance. And as soon as she gets used to our way of living, she'll make you a good wife." She laughed gayly.

"She'll not be quite so pretty when she settles down and takes on flesh. I wonder how she'll look in fine clothes and jewels."

She measured Hull's stature with a critical eye. "She's only about half as tall as you. How funny you'll look together!" With sudden soberness and sweetness, "But, seriously, David, I'm proud of your courage in taking a girl for herself regardless of her surroundings. So few men would be willing to face the ridicule and the criticism, and all the social difficulties." She nodded encouragingly. "Go in and win! You can count on my friendship--for I'm in love with her myself."

She left him standing dazedly, looking up and down the street as if it were some strange and pine-beset highway in a foreign land.

After taking a few steps she returned to the gates and called him: "I forgot to ask do you want me to regard what you've told me as confidential? I was thinking of telling Martha and Hugo, and it occurred to me that you might not like it."

"Please don't say anything about it," said he with panicky eagerness. "You see--nothing's settled yet."

"Oh, she'll accept you."

"But I haven't even asked her," pleaded Hull.

"Oh--all right--as you please."

When she was safely within doors she dropped to a chair and burst out laughing. It was part of Jane's passion for the sense of triumph over the male sex to felt that she had made a "perfect jumping jack of a fool" of David Hull. "And I rather think," said she to herself, "that he'll soon be back where he belongs." This with a glance at the tall heels of the slippers on the good-looking feet she was thrusting out for her own inspection. "How absurd for him to imagine he could do anything unconventional. Is there any coward anywhere so cowardly as an American conventional man? No wonder I hate to think of marrying one of them. But--I suppose I'll have to do it some day. What's a woman to do? She's GOT to marry."

So pleased with herself was she that she behaved with unusual forbearance toward Martha whose conduct of late had been most trying. Not Martha's sometimes peevish, sometimes plaintive criticisms of her; these she did not mind. But Martha's way of ordering her own life. Jane, moving about in the world with a good mind eager to improve, had got a horror of a woman's going to pieces--and that was what Martha was doing.

"I'm losing my looks rapidly," was her constant complaint. As she had just passed thirty there was, in Jane's opinion, not the smallest excuse for this. The remedy, the preventive, was obvious--diet and exercise. But Martha, being lazy and self-indulgent and not imaginative enough to foresee to what a pass a few years more of lounging and stuffing would bring her, regarded exercise as unladylike and dieting as unhealthful. She would not weaken her system by taking less than was demanded by "nature's infallible guide, the healthy appetite." She would not give up the venerable and aristocratic tradition that a lady should ever be reposeful.

"Another year or so," warned Jane, "and you'll be as steatopygous as the bride of a Hottentot chief."

"What does steat--that word mean?" said Martha suspiciously.

"Look in the dictionary," said Jane. "Its synonyms aren't used by refined people."

"I knew it was something insulting," said Martha with an injured sniff.

The only concessions Martha would make to the latter-day craze of women for youthfulness were buying a foolish chin-strap of a beauty quack and consulting him as to whether, if her hair continued to gray, she would better take to peroxide or to henna.

Jane had come down that day with a severe lecture on fat and wrinkles laid out in her mind for energetic delivery to the fast-seeding Martha. She put off the lecture and allowed the time to be used by Martha in telling Jane what were her (Jane's) strongest and less strong--not weaker but less strong, points of physical charm.

It was cool and beautiful in the shade of the big gardens behind the old Galland house. Jane, listening to Martha's honest and just compliments and to the faint murmurs of the city's dusty, sweaty toil, had a delicious sense of the superiority of her lot--a feeling that somehow there must be something in the theory of rightfully superior and inferior classes--that in taking what she had not earned she was not robbing those who had earned it, as her reason so often asserted, but was being supported by the toil of others for high purposes of aesthetic beauty. Anyhow, why heat one's self wrestling with these problems?

When she was sure that Victor Dorn must have returned she called him on the telephone. "Can't you come out to see me to-night?" said she. "I've something important--something YOU'LL think important--to consult you about." She felt a refusal forming at the other end of the wire and hastened to add: "You must know I'd not ask this if I weren't certain you would be glad you came."

"Why not drop in here when you're down town?" suggested Victor.

She wondered why she did not hang up the receiver and forget him.

But she did not. She murmured, "In due time I'll punish you for this, sir," and said to him: "There are reasons why it's impossible for me to go there just now. And you know I can't meet you in a saloon or on a street corner."

"I'm not so sure of that," laughed he. "Let me see. I'm very busy. But I could come for half an hour this afternoon."

She had planned an evening session, being well aware of the favorable qualities of air and light after the matter-of-fact sun has withdrawn his last rays. But she promptly decided to accept what offered. "At three?"

"At four," replied he.

"You haven't forgotten those books?"

"Books? Oh, yes--yes, I remember. I'll bring them."

"Thank you so much," said she sweetly. "Good-by."

And at four she was waiting for him on the front veranda in a house dress that was--well, it was not quite the proper costume for such an occasion, but no one else was to see, and he didn't know about that sort of thing--and the gown gave her charms their best possible exposure except evening dress, which was out of the question. She had not long to wait. One of the clocks within hearing had struck and another was just beginning to strike when she saw him coming toward the house. She furtively watched him, admiring his walk without quite knowing why. You may perhaps know the walk that was Victor's--a steady forward advance of the whole body held firmly, almost rigidly--the walk of a man leading another to the scaffold, or of a man being led there in conscious innocence, or of a man ready to go wherever his purposes may order--ready to go without any heroics or fuss of any kind, but simply in the course of the day's business. When a man walks like that, he is worth observing--and it is well to think twice before obstructing his way.

That steady, inevitable advance gave Jane Hastings an absurd feeling of nervousness. She had an impulse to fly, as from some oncoming danger. Yet what was coming, in fact? A clever young man of the working class, dressed in garments of the kind his class dressed in on Sunday, and plebeianly carrying a bundle under his arm.

"Our clock says you are three seconds late," cried she, laughing and extending her hand in a friendly, equal way that would have immensely flattered almost any man of her own class. "But another protests that you are one second early."

"I'm one of those fools who waste their time and their nerves by being punctual," said he.

He laid the books on the wicker sofa. But instead of sitting Jane said: "We might be interrupted here. Come to the west veranda."

There she had him in a leafy solitude--he facing her as she posed in fascinating grace in a big chair. He looked at her--not the look of a man at a woman, but the look of a busy person at one who is about to show cause for having asked for a portion of his valuable time. She laughed--and laughter was her best gesture. "I can never talk to you if you pose like that," said she. "Honestly now, is your time so pricelessly precious?"

He echoed her laugh and settled himself more at his ease. "What did you want of me?" he asked.

"I intend to try to get better hours and better wages for the street car men," said she. "To do it, I must know just what is right--what I can hope to get. General talk is foolish. If I go at father I must have definite proposals to make, with reasons for them. I don't want him to evade. I would have gotten my information elsewhere, but I could think of no one but you who might not mislead me."

She had confidently expected that this carefully thought out scheme would do the trick. He would admire her, would be interested, would be drawn into a position where she could enlist him as a constant adviser. He moved toward the edge of his chair as if about to rise. He said, pleasantly enough but without a spark of enthusiasm:

"That's very nice of you, Miss Hastings. But I can't advise you--beyond saying that if I were you, I shouldn't meddle."

She--that is, her vanity--was cut to the quick. "Oh!" said she with irony, "I fancied you wished the laboring men to have a better sort of life."

"Yes," said he. "But I'm not in favor of running hysterically about with a foolish little atomizer in the great stable. You are talking charity. I am working for justice. It will not really benefit the working man for the company, at the urging of a sweet and lovely young Lady Bountiful, to deign graciously to grant a little less slavery to them. In fact, a well fed, well cared for slave is worse off than one who's badly treated--worse off because farther from his freedom. The only things that do our class any good, Miss Hastings, are the things they COMPEL--compel by their increased intelligence and increased unity and power. They get what they deserve. They won't deserve more until they compel more. Gifts won't help--not even gifts from--" His intensely blue eyes danced--"from such charming white hands so beautifully manicured."

She rose with an angry toss of the head. "I didn't ask you here to annoy me with impertinences about my finger nails."

He rose, at his ease, good-humored, ready to go. "Then you should have worn gloves," said he carelessly, "for I've been able to think only of your finger nails--and to wonder WHAT can be done with hands like that. Thank you for a pleasant talk." He bowed and smiled. "Good-by. Oh--Miss Gordon sent you her love."

"What IS the matter, Mr. Dorn?" cried the girl desperately. "I want your friendship--your respect. CAN'T I get it? Am I utterly hopeless in your eyes?"

A curious kind of color rose in his cheeks. His eyes regarded her with a mysterious steadiness. "You want neither my respect nor my friendship," said he. "You want to amuse yourself." He pointed at her hands. "Those nails betray you." He shrugged his shoulders, laughed, said as if to a child: "You are a nice girl, Jane Hastings. It's a pity you weren't brought up to be of some use. But you weren't--and it's too late."

Her eyes flashed, her bosom heaved. "WHY do I take these things from you? WHY do I invite them?"

"Because you inherit your father's magnificent persistence--and you've set your heart on the whim of making a fool of me--and you hate to give up."

"You wrong me--indeed you do," cried she. "I want to learn--I want to be of use in the world. I want to have some kind of a real life."

"Really?" mocked he good-humoredly.

"Really," said she with all her power of sweet earnestness.

"Then--cut your nails and go to work. And when you have become a genuine laborer, you'll begin to try to improve not the condition of others, but your own. The way to help workers is to abolish the idlers who hang like a millstone about their necks. You can help only by abolishing the one idler under your control."

She stood nearer him, very near him. She threw out her lovely arms in a gesture of humility. "I will do whatever you say," she said.

They looked each into the other's eyes. The color fled from her face, the blood poured into his--wave upon wave, until he was like a man who has been set on fire by the furious heat of long years of equatorial sun. He muttered, wheeled about and strode away--in resolute and relentless flight. She dropped down where he had been sitting and hid her face in her perfumed hands.

"I care for him," she moaned, "and he saw and he despises me! How COULD I--how COULD I!"

Nevertheless, within a quarter of an hour she was in her dressing room, standing at the table, eyes carefully avoiding her mirrored eyes--as she cut her finger nails.

IV

Jane was mistaken in her guess at the cause of Victor Dorn's agitation and abrupt flight. If he had any sense whatever of the secret she had betrayed to him and to herself at the same instant it was wholly unconscious. He had become panic-stricken and had fled because he, faced with her exuberance and tempting wealth of physical charm, had become suddenly conscious of her and of himself in a way as new to him as if he had been fresh from a monkery where no woman had ever been seen. Thus far the world had been peopled for him with human beings without any reference to sex. The phenomena of sex had not interested him because his mind had been entirely taken up with the other aspects of life; and he had not yet reached the stage of development where a thinker grasps the truth that all questions are at bottom questions of the sex relation, and that, therefore, no question can be settled right until the sex relations are settled right.

Jane Hastings was the first girl he had met in his whole life who was in a position to awaken that side of his nature. And when his brain suddenly filled with a torrent of mad longings and of sensuous appreciations of her laces and silk, of her perfume and smoothness and roundness, of the ecstasy that would come from contact with those warm, rosy lips--when Victor Dorn found himself all in a flash eager impetuosity to seize this woman whom he did not approve of, whom he did not even like, he felt bowed with shame. He would not have believed himself capable of such a thing. He fled.

He fled, but she pursued. And when he sat down in the garden behind his mother's cottage, to work at a table where bees and butterflies had been his only disturbers, there was this SHE before him--her soft, shining gaze fascinating his gaze, her useless but lovely white hands extended tantalizingly toward him.

As he continued to look at her, his disapproval and dislike melted. "I was brutally harsh to her," he thought repentantly.

"She was honestly trying to do the decent thing. How was she to know? And wasn't I as much wrong as right in advising her not to help the men?"

Beyond question, it was theoretically best for the two opposing forces, capital and labor, to fight their battle to its inevitable end without interference, without truce, with quarter neither given nor taken on either side. But practically--wasn't there something to be said for such humane proposals of that of Jane Hastings? They would put off the day of right conditions rightly and therefore permanently founded--conditions in which master and slave or serf or wage-taker would be no more; but, on the other hand, slaves with shorter hours of toil and better surroundings could be enlightened more easily. Perhaps. He was by no means sure; he could not but fear that anything that tended to make the slave comfortable in his degradation must of necessity weaken his aversion to degradation. Just as the worst kings were the best kings because they hastened the fall of monarchy, so the worst capitalists, the most rapacious, the most rigid enforcers of the economic laws of a capitalistic society were the best capitalists, were helping to hasten the day when men would work for what they earned and would earn what they worked for--when every man's pay envelope would contain his wages, his full wages, and nothing but his wages.

Still, where judgment was uncertain, he certainly had been unjust to that well meaning girl. And was she really so worthless as he had on first sight adjudged her? There might be exceptions to the rule that a parasite born and bred can have no other instructor or idea but those of parasitism. She was honest and earnest, was eager to learn the truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been almost insultingly curt and mocking.