The Conflict by David Graham Phillips (page 3)

“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an evening session, being well aware of the favorable qualities of air and light after the matter-of-fact sun has withdrawn his last rays.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.

“What was the matter with me?” he asked himself. “I never acted in that way before.” And then he saw that his brusqueness had been the cover for fear of of her–fear of the allure of her luxury and her beauty. In love with her? He knew that he was not. No, his feeling toward her was merely the crudest form of the tribute of man to woman–though apparently woman as a rule preferred this form to any other.

“I owe her an apology,” he said to himself. And so it came to pass that at three the following afternoon he was once more facing her in that creeper-walled seclusion whose soft lights were almost equal to light of gloaming or moon or stars in romantic charm.

Said he–always direct and simple, whether dealing with man or woman, with devious person or straight:

“I’ve come to beg your pardon for what I said yesterday.”

“You certainly were wild and strange,” laughed she.

“I was supercilious,” said he. “And worse than that there is not. However, as I have apologized, and you have accepted my apology, we need waste no more time about that. You wished to persuade your father to—-”

“Just a moment!” interrupted she. “I’ve a question to ask. WHY did you treat me–why have you been treating me so–so harshly?”

“Because I was afraid of you,” replied he. “I did not realize it, but that was the reason.”

“Afraid of ME,” said she. “That’s very flattering.”

“No,” said he, coloring. “In some mysterious way I had been betrayed into thinking of you as no man ought to think of a woman unless he is in love with her and she with him. I am ashamed of myself. But I shall conquer that feeling–or keep away from you.

. . . Do you understand what the street car situation is?”

But she was not to be deflected from the main question, now that it had been brought to the front so unexpectedly and in exactly the way most favorable to her purposes. “You’ve made me uneasy,” said she. “I don’t in the least understand what you mean. I have wanted, and I still want, to be friends with you–good friends–just as you and Selma Gordon are–though of course I couldn’t hope to be as close a friend as she is. I’m too ignorant–too useless.”

He shook his head–with him, a gesture that conveyed the full strength of negation. “We are on opposite sides of a line across which friendship is impossible. I could not be your friend without being false to myself. You couldn’t be mine unless you were by some accident flung into the working class and forced to adopt it as your own. Even then you’d probably remain what you are. Only a small part of the working class as yet is at heart of the working class. Most of us secretly–almost openly–despise the life of work, and dream and hope a time of fortune that will put us up among the masters and the idlers.” His expressive eyes became eloquent. “The false and shallow ideas that have been educated into us for ages can’t be uprooted in a few brief years.”

She felt the admiration she did not try to conceal. She saw the proud and splendid conception of the dignity of labor–of labor as a blessing, not a curse, as a badge of aristocracy and not of slavery and shame. “You really believe that, don’t you?” she said. “I know it’s true. I say I believe it–who doesn’t SAY so? But I don’t FEEL it.”

“That’s honest,” said he heartily. “That’s some thing to build on.”

“And I’m going to build!” cried she. “You’ll help me–won’t you? I know, it’s a great deal to ask. Why should you take the time and the trouble to bother with one single unimportant person.”

“That’s the way I spend my life–in adding one man or one woman to our party–one at a time. It’s slow building, but it’s the only kind that endures. There are twelve hundred of us now–twelve hundred voters, I mean. Ten years ago there were only three hundred. We’d expand much more rapidly if it weren’t for the constant shifts of population. Our men are forced to go elsewhere as the pressure of capitalism gets too strong. And in place of them come raw emigrants, ignorant, full of dreams of becoming capitalists and exploiters of their fellow men and idlers. Ambition they call it. Ambition!” He laughed. “What a vulgar, what a cruel notion of rising in the world! To cease to be useful, to become a burden to others! . . . Did you ever think how many poor creatures have to toil longer hours, how many children have to go to the factory instead of to school, in order that there may be two hundred and seven automobiles privately kept in this town and seventy-four chauffeurs doing nothing but wait upon their masters? Money doesn’t grow on bushes, you know.

Every cent of it has to be earned by somebody–and earned by MANUAL labor.”

“I must think about that,” she said–for the first time as much interested in what he was saying as in the man himself. No small triumph for Victor over the mind of a woman dominated, as was Jane Hastings, by the sex instinct that determines the thoughts and actions of practically the entire female sex.

“Yes–think about it,” he urged. “You will never see it–or anything–until you see it for yourself.”

“That’s the way your party is built–isn’t it?” inquired she. “Of those who see it for themselves.”

“Only those,” replied he. “We want no others.”

“Not even their votes?” said she shrewdly.

“Not even their votes,” he answered. “We’ve no desire to get the offices until we get them to keep. And when we shall have conquered the city, we’ll move on to the conquest of the county–then of the district–then of the state. Our kind of movement is building in every city now, and in most of the towns and many of the villages. The old parties are falling to pieces because they stand for the old politics of the two factions of the upper class quarreling over which of them should superintend the exploiting of the people. Very few of us realize what is going on before our very eyes– that we’re seeing the death agonies of one form of civilization and the birth-throes of a newer form.”

“And what will it be?” asked the girl.

She had been waiting for some sign of the “crank,” the impractical dreamer. She was confident that this question would reveal the man she had been warned against–that in answering it he would betray his true self. But he disappointed and surprised her.

“How can I tell what it will be?” said he. “I’m not a prophet. All I can say is I am sure it will be human, full of imperfections, full of opportunities for improvements–and that I hope it will be better than what we have now. Probably not much better, but a little–and that little, however small it may be, will be a gain. Doesn’t history show a slow but steady advance of the idea that the world is for the people who live in it, a slow retreat of the idea that the world and the people and all its and their resources are for a favored few of some kind of an upper class? Yes–I think it is reasonable to hope that out of the throes will come a freer and a happier and a more intelligent race.”

Suddenly she burst out, apparently irrelevantly: “But I can’t–I really can’t agree with you that everyone ought to do physical labor. That would drag the world down–yes, I’m sure it would.”

“I guess you haven’t thought about that,” said he. “Painters do physical labor–and sculptors–and writers– and all the scientific men–and the inventors– and–” He laughed at her–“Who doesn’t do physical labor that does anything really useful? Why, you yourself–at tennis and riding and such things–do heavy physical labor. I’ve only to look at your body to see that. But it’s of a foolish kind–foolish and narrowly selfish.”

“I see I’d better not try to argue with you,” said she.

“No–don’t argue–with me or with anybody,” rejoined he. “Sit down quietly and think about life– about your life. Think how it is best to live so that you may get the most out of life–the most substantial happiness. Don’t go on doing the silly customary things simply because a silly customary world says they are amusing and worth while. Think–and do–for yourself, Jane Hastings.”

She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. “I’ll try to,” she said. She looked at him with the expression of the mind aroused. It was an expression that often rewarded him after a long straight talk with a fellow being. She went on: “I probably shan’t do what you’d approve. You see, I’ve got to be myself–got to live to a certain extent the kind of a life fate has made for me.”

“You couldn’t successfully live any other,” said he.

“But, while it won’t be at all what you’d regard as a model life–or even perhaps useful–it’ll be very different–very much better–than it would have been, if I hadn’t met you–Victor Dorn.”

“Oh, I’ve done nothing,” said he. “All I try to do is to encourage my fellow beings to be themselves. So –live your own life–the life you can live best–just as you wear the clothes that fit and become you. . . . And now–about the street car question. What do you want of me?”

“Tell me what to say to father.”

He shook his head. “Can’t do it,” said he. “There’s a good place for you to make a beginning. Put on an old dress and go down town and get acquainted with the family life of the street-car men. Talk to their wives and their children. Look into the whole business yourself.”

“But I’m not–not competent to judge,” objected she.

“Well, make yourself competent,” advised he.

“I might get Miss Gordon to go with me,” suggested she.

“You’ll learn more thoroughly if you go alone,” declared he.

She hesitated–ventured with a winning smile: “You won’t go with me–just to get me started right?”

“No,” said he. “You’ve got to learn for yourself– or not at all. If I go with you, you’ll get my point of view, and it will take you so much the longer to get your own.”

“Perhaps you’d prefer I didn’t go.”

“It’s not a matter of much importance, one way or the other–except perhaps to yourself,” replied he.

“Any one individual can do the human race little good by learning the truth about life. The only benefit is to himself. Don’t forget that in your sweet enthusiasm for doing something noble and generous and helpful. Don’t become a Davy Hull. You know, Davy is on earth for the benefit of the human race. Ever since he was born he has been taken care of–supplied with food, clothing, shelter, everything. Yet he imagines that he is somehow a God-appointed guardian of the people who have gathered and cooked his food, made his clothing, served him in every way. It’s very funny, that attitude of your class toward mine.”

“They look up to us,” said Jane. “You can’t blame us for allowing it–for becoming pleased with ourselves.”

“That’s the worst of it–we do look up to you,” admitted he. “But–we’re learning better.”

“YOU’VE already learned better–you personally, I mean. I think that when you compare me, for instance, with a girl like Selma Gordon, you look down on me.”

“Don’t you, yourself, feel that any woman who is self-supporting and free is your superior?”

“In some moods, I do,” replied Jane. “In other moods, I feel as I was brought up to feel.”

They talked on and on, she detaining him without seeming to do so. She felt proud of her adroitness. But the truth was that his stopping on for nearly two hours was almost altogether a tribute to her physical charm–though Victor was unconscious of it. When the afternoon was drawing on toward the time for her father to come, she reluctantly let him go. She said:

“But you’ll come again?”

“I can’t do that,” replied he regretfully. “I could not come to your father’s house and continue free. I must be able to say what I honestly think, without any restraint.”

“I understand,” said she. “And I want you to say and to write what you believe to be true and right. But–we’ll see each other again. I’m sure we are going to be friends.”

His expression as he bade her good-by told her that she had won his respect and his liking. She had a suspicion that she did not deserve either; but she was full of good resolutions, and assured herself she soon would be what she had pretended–that her pretenses were not exactly false, only somewhat premature.

At dinner that evening she said to her father:

“I think I ought to do something beside enjoy myself. I’ve decided to go down among the poor people and see whether I can’t help them in some way.”

“You’d better keep away from that part of town,” advised her father. “They live awful dirty, and you might catch some disease. If you want to do anything for the poor, send a check to our minister or to the charity society. There’s two kinds of poor–those that are working hard and saving their money and getting up out of the dirt, and those that haven’t got no spunk or get-up. The first kind don’t need help, and the second don’t deserve it.”

“But there are the children, popsy,” urged Jane. “The children of the no-account poor ought to have a chance.”

“I don’t reckon there ever was a more shiftless, do-easy pair than my father and mother,” rejoined Martin Hastings. “They were what set me to jumping.”

She saw that his view was hopelessly narrow–that, while he regarded himself justly as an extraordinary man, he also, for purposes of prejudice and selfishness, regarded his own achievements in overcoming what would have been hopeless handicaps to any but a giant in character and in physical endurance as an instance of what any one could do if he would but work. She never argued with him when she wished to carry her point. She now said:

“It seems to me that, in our own interest, we ought to do what we can to make the poor live better. As you say, it’s positively dangerous to go about in the tenement part of town–and those people are always coming among us. For instance, our servants have relatives living in Cooper Street, where there’s a pest of consumption.”

Old Hastings nodded. “That’s part of Davy Hull’s reform programme,” said he. “And I’m in favor of it. The city government ought to make them people clean up.”

“Victor Dorn wants that done, too–doesn’t he?” said Jane.

“No,” replied the old man sourly. “He says it’s no use to clean up the slums unless you raise wages–and that then the slum people’d clean themselves up. The idea of giving those worthless trash more money to spend for beer and whisky and finery for their fool daughters. Why, they don’t earn what we give ’em now.”

Jane couldn’t resist the temptation to say, “I guess the laziest of them earn more than Davy Hull or I.”

“Because some gets more than they earn ain’t a reason why others should.” He grinned. “Maybe you and Davy ought to have less, but Victor Dorn and his riff-raff oughtn’t to be pampered. . . . Do you want me to cut your allowance down?”

She was ready for him. “If you can get as satisfactory a housekeeper for less, you’re a fool to overpay the one you have.”

The old man was delighted. “I’ve been cheating you,” said he. “I’ll double your pay.”

“You’re doing it just in time to stop a strike,” laughed the girl.

After a not unknown fashion she was most obedient to her father when his commands happened to coincide with her own inclinations.

Her ardor for an excursion into the slums and the tenements died almost with Victor Dorn’s departure. Her father’s reasons for forbidding her to go did not impress her as convincing, but she felt that she owed it to him to respect his wishes. Anyhow, what could she find out that she did not know already? Yes, Dorn and her father were right in the conclusion each reached by a different road. She would do well not to meddle where she could not possibly accomplish any good. She could question the servants and could get from them all the facts she needed for urging her father at least to cut down the hours of labor.

The more she thought about Victor Dorn the more uneasy she became. She had made more progress with him than she had hoped to make in so short a time. But she had made it at an unexpected cost. If she had softened him, he had established a disquieting influence over her. She was not sure, but she was afraid, that he was stronger than she–that, if she persisted in her whim, she would soon be liking him entirely too well for her own comfort. Except as a pastime, Victor Dorn did not fit into her scheme of life. If she continued to see him, to yield to the delight of his magnetic voice, of his fresh and original mind, of his energetic and dominating personality, might he not become aroused–begin to assert power over her, compel her to–to–she could not imagine what; only, it was foolish to deny that he was a dangerous man. “If I’ve got good sense,” decided she, “I’ll let him alone. I’ve nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

Her motor–the one her father had ordered as a birthday present–came the next day; and on the following day two girl friends from Cincinnati arrived for a long visit. So, Jane Hastings had the help she felt she perhaps needed in resisting the temptings of her whim.

To aid her in giving her friends a good time she impressed Davy Hull, in spite of his protests that his political work made social fooling about impossible. The truth was that the reform movement, of which he was one of the figureheads, was being organized by far more skillful and expert hands than his–and for purposes of which he had no notion. So, he really had all the time in the world to look after Ellen Clearwater and Josie Arthur, and to pose as a serious man bent upon doing his duty as an upper class person of leisure. All that the reform machine wished of him was to talk and to pose–and to ride on the show seat of the pretty, new political wagon.

The new movement had not yet been “sprung” upon the public. It was still an open secret among the young men of the “better element” in the Lincoln, the Jefferson and the University clubs.

Money was being subscribed liberally by persons of good family who hoped for political preferment and could not get it from the old parties, and by corporations tired of being “blackmailed” by Kelly and House, and desirous of getting into office men who would give them what they wanted because it was for the public good that they should not be hampered in any way. With plenty of money an excellent machine could be built and set to running. Also, there was talk of a fusion with the Democratic machine, House to order the wholesale indorsement of the reform ticket in exchange for a few minor places.

When the excitement among the young gentlemen over the approaching moral regeneration of Remsen City politics was at the boiling point Victor Dorn sent for David Hull–asked him to come to the Baker Avenue cafe’, which was the social headquarters of Dorn’s Workingmen’s League. As Hull was rather counting on Dorn’s support, or at least neutrality, in the approaching contest, he accepted promptly. As he entered the cafe’ he saw Dorn seated at a table in a far corner listening calmly to a man who was obviously angrily in earnest. At second glance he recognized Tony Rivers, one of Dick Kelly’s shrewdest lieutenants and a labor leader of great influence in the unions of factory workers. Among those in “the know” it was understood that Rivers could come nearer to delivering the labor vote than any man in Remsen City. He knew whom to corrupt with bribes and whom to entrap by subtle appeals to ignorant prejudice. As a large part of his herd was intensely Catholic, Rivers was a devout Catholic. To quote his own phrase, used in a company on whose discretion he could count, “Many’s the pair of pants I’ve worn out doing the stations of the Cross.” In fact, Rivers had been brought up a Presbyterian, and under the name of Blake–his correct name–had “done a stretch” in Joliet for picking pockets.

Dorn caught sight of Davy Hull, hanging uncertainly in the offing. He rose at once, said a few words in a quiet, emphatic way to Rivers–words of conclusion and dismissal–and advanced to meet Hull.

“I don’t want to interrupt. I can wait,” said Hull, who saw Rivers’ angry scowl at him. He did not wish to offend the great labor leader.

“That fellow pushed himself on me,” said Dorn. “I’ve nothing to say to him.”

“Tony Rivers–wasn’t it?” said Davy as they seated themselves at another table.

“I’m going to expose him in next week’s New Day,” replied Victor. “When I sent him a copy of the article for his corrections, if he could make any, he came threatening.”

“I’ve heard he’s a dangerous man,” said Davy.

“He’ll not be so dangerous after Saturday,” replied Victor. “One by one I’m putting the labor agents of your friends out of business. The best ones–the chaps like Rivers–are hard to catch. And if I should attack one of them before I had him dead to rights, I’d only strengthen him.”

“You think you can destroy Rivers’ influence?” said Davy incredulously.

“If I were not sure of it I’d not publish a line,” said Victor.

“But to get to the subject I wish to talk to you about. You are to be the reform candidate for Mayor in the fall?”

Davy looked important and self-conscious. “There has been some talk of—-” he began.

“I’ve sent for you to ask you to withdraw from the movement, Hull,” interrupted Victor.

Hull smiled. “And I’ve come to ask you to support it,” said Hull. “We’ll win, anyhow. But I’d like to see all the forces against corruption united in this campaign. I am even urging my people to put one or two of your men on the ticket.”

“None of us would accept,” said Victor. “That isn’t our kind of politics. We’ll take nothing until we get everything. . . . What do you know about this movement you’re lending your name to?”

“I organized it,” said Hull proudly.

“Pardon me–Dick Kelly organized it,” replied Victor. “They’re simply using you, Davy, to play their rotten game. Kelly knew he was certain to be beaten this fall. He doesn’t care especially for that, because House and his gang are just as much Kelly as Kelly himself. But he’s alarmed about the judgeship.”

Davy Hull reddened, though he tried hard to look indifferent.

“He’s given up hope of pulling through the scoundrel who’s on the bench now. He knows that our man would be elected, though his tool had the support of the Republicans, the Democrats and the new reform crowd.”

Dorn had been watching Hull’s embarrassed face keenly. He now said: “You understand, I see, why Judge Freilig changed his mind and decided that he must stop devoting himself to the public and think of the welfare of his family and resume the practice of the law?”

“Judge Freilig is an honorable gentleman,” said Davy with much dignity. “I’m sorry, Dorn, that you listen to the lies of demagogues.”

“If Freilig had persisted in running,” said Victor, “I should have published the list of stocks and bonds of corporations benefiting by his decisions that his brother and his father have come into possession of during his two terms on the bench. Many of our judges are simply mentally crooked. But Freilig is a bribe taker. He probably believes his decisions are just. All you fellows believe that upper-class rule is really best for the people—-”

“And so it is,” said Davy. “And you, an educated man, know it.”

“I’ll not argue that now,” said Victor. “As I was saying, while Freilig decides for what he honestly thinks is right, he also feels he is entitled to a share of the substantial benefits.

Most of the judges, after serving the upper class faithfully for years, retire to an old age of comparative poverty. Freilig thinks that is foolish.”

“I suppose you agree with him,” said Hull sarcastically.

“I sympathize with him,” said Victor. “He retires with reputation unstained and with plenty of money. If I should publish the truth about him, would he lose a single one of his friends? You know he wouldn’t. That isn’t the way the world is run at present.”

“No doubt it would be run much better if your crowd were in charge,” sneered Hull.

“On the contrary, much worse,” replied Victor unruffled. “But we’re educating ourselves so that, when our time comes, we’ll not do so badly.”

“You’ll have plenty of time for education,” said Davy.

“Plenty,” said Victor. “But why are you angry? Because you realize now that your reform candidate for judge is of Dick Kelly’s selecting?”

“Kelly didn’t propose Hugo Galland,” cried Davy hotly. “I proposed him myself.”

“Was his the first name you proposed?”

Something in Dorn’s tone made Davy feel that it would be unwise to yield to the impulse to tell a lie– for the highly moral purpose of silencing this agitator and demagogue.

“You will remember,” pursued Victor, “that Galland was the sixth or seventh name you proposed–and that Joe House rejected the others. He did it, after consulting with Kelly. You recall–don’t you?–that every time you brought him a name he took time to consider?”

“How do you know so much about all this?” cried Davy, his tone suggesting that Victor was wholly mistaken, but his manner betraying that he knew Victor was right.

“Oh, politicians are human,” replied Dorn. “And the human race is loose-mouthed. I saw years ago that if I was to build my party I must have full and accurate information as to all that was going on. I made my plans accordingly.”

“Galland is an honest man–rich–above suspicion –above corruption–an ideal candidate,” said Davy.

“He is a corporation owner, a corporation lawyer– and a fool,” said Victor. “As I’ve told you, all Dick Kelly’s interest in this fall’s local election is that judgeship.”

“Galland is my man. I want to see him elected. If Kelly’s for Galland, so much the better. Then we’re sure of electing him–of getting the right sort of a man on the bench.”

“I’m not here to argue with you about politics, Davy,” said Victor. “I brought you here because I like you–believe in your honesty–and don’t want to see you humiliated. I’m giving you a chance to save yourself .”

“From what?” inquired Hull, not so valiant as he pretended to be.

“From the ridicule and disgrace that will cover this reform movement, if you persist in it.”

Hull burst out laughing. “Of all the damned impudence!” he exclaimed. “Dorn, I think you’ve gone crazy .”

“You can’t irritate me, Hull. I’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt. I think you are falling into the commonest kind of error–doing evil and winking at evil in order that a good end may be gained. Now, listen. What are the things you reformers are counting on to get you votes this fall”

Davy maintained a haughty silence.

“The traction scandals, the gas scandals and the paving scandals–isn’t that it?”

“Of course,” said Davy.

“Then–why have the gas crowd, the traction crowd and the paving crowd each contributed twenty-five thousand dollars to your campaign fund?”

Hull stared at Victor Dorn in amazement. “Who told you that lie?” he blustered.

Dorn looked at him sadly. “Then you knew? I hoped you didn’t, Hull. But–now that you’re facing the situation squarely, don’t you see that you’re being made a fool of? Would those people put up for your election if they weren’t SURE you and your crowd were THEIR crowd?”

“They’ll find out!” cried Hull.

“You’ll find out, you mean,” replied Victor. “I see your whole programme, Davy. They’ll put you in, and they’ll say, `Let us alone and we’ll make you governor of the State. Annoy us, and you’ll have no political future.’ And you’ll say to yourself, `The wise thing for me to do is to wait until I’m governor before I begin to serve the people. THEN I can really do something.’ And so, you’ll be THEIR mayor–and afterward THEIR governor–because they’ll hold out another inducement. Anyhow, by that time you’ll be so completely theirs that you’ll have no hope of a career except through them.”

After reading how some famous oration wrought upon its audience we turn to it and wonder that such tempests of emotion could have been produced by such simple, perhaps almost commonplace words. The key to the mystery is usually a magic quality in the tone of the orator, evoking before its hypnotized hearers a series of vivid pictures, just as the notes of a violin, with no aid from words or even from musical form seem to materialize into visions.

This uncommon yet by no means rare power was in Victor Dorn’s voice, and explained his extraordinary influence over people of all kinds and classes; it wove a spell that enmeshed even those who disliked him for his detestable views. Davy Hull, listening to Victor’s simple recital of his prospective career, was so wrought upon that he sat staring before him in a kind of terror.

“Davy,” said Victor gently, “you’re at the parting of the ways. The time for honest halfway reformers– for political amateurs has passed. `Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!’–that’s the situation today.”

And Hull knew that it was so. “What do you propose, Dorn?” he said. “I want to do what’s right– what’s best for the people.”

“Don’t worry about the people, Hull,” said Victor.

“Upper classes come and pass, but the people remain– bigger and stronger and more aggressive with every century. And they dictate language and art, and politics and religion–what we shall all eat and wear and think and do. Only what they approve, only that yoke even which they themselves accept, has any chance of enduring. Don’t worry about the people, Davy. Worry about yourself.”

“I admit,” said Hull, “that I don’t like a lot of things about the–the forces I find I’ve got to use in order to carry through my plans. I admit that even the sincere young fellows I’ve grouped together to head this movement are narrow–supercilious–self-satisfied –that they irritate me and are not trustworthy. But I feel that, if I once get the office, I’ll be strong enough to put my plans through.” Nervously, “I’m giving you my full confidence–as I’ve given it to no one else.”

“You’ve told me nothing I didn’t know already,” said Victor.

“I’ve got to choose between this reform party and your party,” continued Hull. “That is, I’ve got no choice. For, candidly, I’ve no confidence in the working class. It’s too ignorant to do the ruling. It’s too credulous to build on–for its credulity makes it fickle. And I believe in the better class, too. It may be sordid and greedy and tyrannical, but by appealing to its good instincts–and to its fear of the money kings and the monopolists, something good can be got through it.”

“If you want to get office,” said Dorn, “you’re right. But if you want to BE somebody, if you want to develop yourself, to have the joy of being utterly unafraid in speech and in action–why, come with us.”

After a pause Hull said, “I’d like to do it. I’d like to help you.”

Victor laid his hand on Davy’s arm. “Get it straight, Davy,” he said. “You can’t help us. We don’t need you. It’s you that needs us. We’ll make an honest man of you–instead of a trimming politician, trying to say or to do something more or less honest once in a while and winking at or abetting crookedness most of the time.”

“I’ve done nothing, and I’ll do nothing, to be ashamed of,” protested Hull.

“You are not ashamed of the way your movement is financed?”

Davy moved uncomfortably. “The money’s ours now,” said he. “They gave it unconditionally.”

But he could not meet Victor’s eyes. Victor said: “They paid a hundred thousand dollars for a judgeship and for a blanket mortgage on your party. And if you should win, you’d find you could do little showy things that were of no value, but nothing that would seriously disturb a single leech sucking the blood of this community.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Davy. He roused himself into anger–his only remaining refuge. “Your prejudices blind you to all the means–the PRACTICAL means–of doing good, Dorn. I’ve listened patiently to you because I respect your sincerity. But I’m not going to waste my life in mere criticism. I’m going to DO something.”

An expression of profound sadness came into Victor’s face. “Don’t decide now,” he said. “Think it over. Remember what I’ve told you about what we’ll be compelled to do if you launch this party.”

Hull was tempted to burst out violently. Was not this swollen-headed upstart trying to intimidate him by threats? But his strong instinct for prudence persuaded him to conceal his resentment. “Why the devil should you attack US?” he demanded.

“Surely we’re nearer your kind of thing than the old parties–and we, too, are against them–their rotten machines.”

“We purpose to keep the issue clear in this town,” replied Victor. “So, we can’t allow a party to grow up that PRETENDS to be just as good as ours but is really a cover behind which the old parties we’ve been battering to pieces can reorganize.”

“That is, you’ll tolerate in this market no brand of honest politics but your own?”

“If you wish to put it that way,” replied Victor coolly.

“I suppose you’d rather see Kelly or House win?”

“We’ll see that House does win,” replied Victor. “When we have shot your movement full of holes and sunk it, House will put up a straight Democratic ticket, and it will win.”

“And House means Kelly–and Kelly means corruption rampant.”

“And corruption rampant means further and much needed education in the school of hard experience for the voters,” said Dorn. “And the more education, the larger our party and the quicker its triumph.”

Hull laughed angrily. “Talk about low self-seeking! Talk about rotten practical politics!”

But Dorn held his good humor of the man who has the power and knows it. “Think it over, Davy,” counseled he. “You’ll see you’ve got to come with us or join Kelly. For your own sake I’d like to see you with us. For the party’s sake you’d better be with Kelly, for you’re not really a workingman, and our fellows would be uneasy about you for a long time. You see, we’ve had experience of rich young men whose hearts beat for the wrongs of the working class–and that experience has not been fortunate.”

“Before you definitely decide to break with the decent element of the better class, Victor, I want YOU to think it over,” said Davy. “We–I, myself–have befriended you more than once. But for a few of us who still have hope that demagoguery will die of itself, your paper would have been suppressed long ago.”

Victor laughed. “I wish they would suppress it,” said he. “The result would give the `better element’ in this town a very bad quarter of an hour, at least.” He rose. “We’ve both said all we’ve got to say to each other. I see I’ve done no good. I feared it would be so.” He was looking into Hull’s eyes–into his very soul. “When we meet again, you will probably be my open and bitter enemy. It’s a pity. It makes me sad. Good-by, and–do think it over, Davy.”

Dorn moved rapidly away. Hull looked after him in surprise. At first blush he was astonished that Dorn should care so much about him as this curious interview and his emotion at its end indicated. But on reflecting his astonishment disappeared, and he took the view that Dorn was simply impressed by his personality and by his ability–was perhaps craftily trying to disarm him and to destroy his political movement which was threatening to destroy the Workingmen’s League. “A very shrewd chap is Dorn,” thought Davy–why do we always generously concede at least acumen to those we suspect of having a good opinion of us?–“A VERY shrewd chap. It’s unfortunate he’s cursed with that miserable envy of those better born and better off than he is.”

Davy spent the early evening at the University Club, where he was an important figure. Later on he went to a dance at Mrs. Venable’s–and there he was indeed a lion, as an unmarried man with money cannot but be in a company of ladies–for money to a lady is what soil and sun and rain are to a flower–is that without which she must cease to exist. But still later, when he was alone in bed–perhaps with the supper he ate at Mrs. Venable’s not sitting as lightly as comfort required–the things Victor Dorn had said came trailing drearily through his mind. What kind of an article would Dorn print? Those facts about the campaign fund certainly would look badly in cold type–especially if Dorn had the proofs. And Hugo Galland– Beyond question the mere list of the corporations in which Hugo was director or large stockholder would make him absurd as a judge, sitting in that district. And Hugo the son-in-law of the most offensive capitalist in that section of the State! And the deal with House, endorsed by Kelly–how nasty that would look, IF Victor had the proofs. IF Victor had the proofs. But had he?

“I MUST have a talk with Kelly,” said Davy, aloud.

The words startled him–not his voice suddenly sounding in the profound stillness of his bedroom, but the words themselves. It was his first admission to himself of the vicious truth he had known from the outset and had been pretending to himself that he did not know–the truth that his reform movement was a fraud contrived by Dick Kelly to further the interests of the company of financiers and the gang of politico- criminal thugs who owned the party machinery. It is a nice question whether a man is ever allowed to go in HONEST self-deception decisively far along a wrong road. However this may be, certain it is that David Hull, reformer, was not so allowed. And he was glad of the darkness that hid him at least physically from himself as he strove to convince himself that, if he was doing wrong, it was from the highest motives and for the noblest purposes and would result in the public good– and not merely in fame and office for David Hull.

The struggle ended as struggles usually end in the famous arena of moral sham battles called conscience; and toward the middle of the following morning Davy, at peace with himself and prepared to make any sacrifice of personal squeamishness or moral idealism for the sake of the public good, sought out Dick Kelly.

Kelly’s original headquarters had, of course, been the doggery in and through which he had established himself as a political power. As his power grew and his relations with more respectable elements of society extended he shifted to a saloon and beer garden kept by a reputable German and frequented by all kinds of people–a place where his friends of the avowedly criminal class and his newer friends of the class that does nothing legally criminal, except in emergencies, would feel equally at ease. He retained ownership of the doggery, but took his name down and put up that of his barkeeper. When he won his first big political fight and took charge of the public affairs of Remsen City and made an arrangement with Joe House where– under Remsen City, whenever it wearied or sickened of Kelly, could take instead Kelly disguised as Joe House –when he thus became a full blown boss he established a secondary headquarters in addition to that at Herrmann’s Garden. Every morning at ten o’clock he took his stand in the main corridor of the City Hall, really a thoroughfare and short cut for the busiest part of town. With a cigar in his mouth he stood there for an hour or so, holding court, making appointments, attending to all sorts of political business.

Presently his importance and his ideas of etiquette expanded to such an extent that he had to establish the Blaine Club. Joe House’s Tilden Club was established two years later, in imitation of Kelly. If you had very private and important business with Kelly– business of the kind of which the public must get no inkling, you made–preferably by telephone–an appointment to meet him in his real estate offices in the Hastings Building–a suite with entrances and exits into three separated corridors. If you wished to see him about ordinary matters and were a person who could “confer” with Kelly without its causing talk you met him at the Blaine Club. If you wished to cultivate him, to pay court to him, you saw him at Herrmann’s–or in the general rooms of the club. If you were a busy man and had time only to exchange greetings with him–to “keep in touch”–you passed through the City Hall now and then at his hour. Some bosses soon grow too proud for the vulgar democracy of such a public stand; but Kelly, partly through shrewdness, partly through inclination, clung to the City Hall stand and encouraged the humblest citizens to seek him there and tell him the news or ask his aid or his advice.

It was at the City Hall that Davy Hull sought him, and found him.

Twice he walked briskly to the boss; the third time he went by slowly. Kelly, who saw everything, had known from the first glance at Hull’s grave, anxious face, that the young leader of the “holy boys” was there to see him. But he ignored Davy until Davy addressed him directly.

“Howdy, Mr. Hull!” said he, observing the young man with eyes that twinkled cynically. “What’s the good word?”

“I want to have a little talk with you,” Davy blurted out. “Where could I see you?”

“Here I am,” said Kelly. “Talk away.”

“Couldn’t I see you at some–some place where we’d not be interrupted? I saw Victor Dorn yesterday, and he said some things that I think you ought to know about.”

“I do know about ’em,” replied Kelly.

“Are you sure? I mean his threats to–to—-”

As Davy paused in an embarrassed search for a word that would not hurt his own but recently soothed conscience, Kelly laughed. “To expose you holy boys?” inquired he. “To upset the nice moral campaign you and Joe House have laid out? Yes, I know all about Mr. Victor Dorn. But–Joe House is the man you want to see. You boys are trying to do me up–trying to break up the party. You can’t expect ME to help you. I’ve got great respect for you personally, Mr. Hull. Your father–he was a fine old Republican wheel-horse. He stood by the party through thick and thin–and the party stood by him. So, I respect his son–personally. But politically– that’s another matter. Politically I respect straight organization men of either party, but I’ve got no use for amateurs and reformers. So–go to Joe House.” All this in perfect good humor, and in a tone of banter that might have ruffled a man with a keener sense of humor than Davy’s.

Davy was red to his eyes, not because Kelly was laughing at him, but because he stood convicted of such a stupid political blunder as coming direct to Kelly when obviously he should have gone to Kelly’s secret partner. “Dorn means to attack us all–Republicans, Democrats and Citizens’ Alliance,” stammered Davy, trying to justify himself.

Kelly shifted his cigar and shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t worry about his attacks on me–on US,” said he. “We’re used to being attacked. We haven’t got no reputation for superior virtue to lose.”

“But he says he can prove that our whole campaign is simply a deal between you and House and me to fool the people and elect a bad judge.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Kelly. “But what of it? You know it ain’t so.”

“No, I don’t, Mr. Kelly,” replied Hull, desperately. “On the contrary, I think it is so. And I may add I think we are justified in making such a deal, when that’s the only way to save the community from Victor Dorn and his crowd of–of anarchists.”

Kelly looked at him silently with amused eyes.

“House can’t do anything,” pursued Davy. “Maybe YOU can. So I came straight to you.”

“I’m glad you’re getting a little political sense, my boy,” said Kelly. “Perhaps you’re beginning to see that a politician has got to be practical–that it’s the organizations that keeps this city from being the prey to Victor Dorns.”

“I see that,” said Davy. “I’m willing to admit that I’ve misjudged you, Mr. Kelly–that the better classes owe you a heavy debt–and that you are one of the men we’ve got to rely on chiefly to stem the tide of anarchy that’s rising–the attack on the propertied classes–the intelligent classes.”

“I see your eyes are being opened, my boy,” said Kelly in a kindly tone that showed how deeply he appreciated this unexpected recognition of his own notion of his mission. “You young silk stocking fellows up at the University Club, and the Lincoln and the Jefferson, have been indulging in a lot of loose talk against the fellows that do the hard work in politics–the fellows that helped your fathers to make fortunes and that are helping you boys to keep ’em. If I didn’t have a pretty level head on me, I’d take my hands off and give Dorn and his gang a chance at you.

I tell you, when you fool with that reform nonsense, you play with fire in a powder mill.”

“But I–I had an idea that you wanted me to go ahead,” said Davy.

“Not the way you started last spring,” replied Kelly. “Not the way you’d ‘a gone if I hadn’t taken hold. I’ve been saving you in spite of yourselves. Thanks to me, your party’s on a sound, conservative basis and won’t do any harm and may do some good in teaching a lesson to those of our boys that’ve been going a little too far. It ain’t good for an organization to win always.”

“Victor Dorn seemed to be sure–absolutely sure,” said Hull. “And he’s pretty shrewd at politics– isn’t he?”

“Don’t worry about him, I tell you,” replied Kelly.

The sudden hardening of his voice and of his never notably soft face was tribute stronger than any words to Dorn’s ability as a politician, to his power as an antagonist. Davy felt a sinister intent–and he knew that Dick Kelly had risen because he would stop at nothing. He was as eager to get away from the boss as the boss was to be rid of him. The intrusion of a henchman, to whom Kelly had no doubt signaled, gave him the excuse. As soon as he had turned from the City Hall into Morton Street he slackened to as slow a walk as his length of leg would permit. Moving along, absorbed in uncomfortable thoughts, he startled violently when he heard Selma Gordon’s voice:

“How d’you do, Mr. Hull? I was hoping I’d see you to-day.”

She was standing before him–the same fascinating embodiment of life and health and untamed energy; the direct, honest glance.

“I want to talk to you,” she went on, “and I can’t, walking beside you. You’re far too tall. Come into the park and we’ll sit on that bench under the big maple.”

He had mechanically lifted his hat, but he had not spoken. He did not find words until they were seated side by side, and then all he could say was:

“I’m very glad to see you again–very glad, indeed.”

In fact, he was the reverse of glad, for he was afraid of her, afraid of himself when under the spell of her presence. He who prided himself on his self-control, he could not account for the effect this girl had upon him. As he sat there beside her the impulse Jane Hastings had so adroitly checked came surging back. He had believed, had hoped it was gone for good and all. He found that in its mysterious hiding place it had been gaining strength. Quite clearly he saw how absurd was the idea of making this girl his wife–he tall and she not much above the bend of his elbow; he conventional, and she the incarnation of passionate revolt against the restraints of class and form and custom which he not only conformed to but religiously believed in. And she set stirring in him all kinds of vague, wild longings to run amuck socially and politically–longings that, if indulged, would ruin him for any career worthy of the name.

He stood up. “I must go–I really must,” he said, confusedly.

She laid her small, strong hand on his arm–a natural, friendly gesture with her, and giving no suggestion of familiarity. Even as she was saying, “Please–only a moment,” he dropped back to the seat.

“Well–what is it?” he said abruptly, his gaze resolutely away from her face.

“Victor was telling me this morning about his talk with you,” she said in her rapid, energetic way. “He was depressed because he had failed. But I felt sure– I feel sure–that he hasn’t. In our talk the other day, Mr. Hull, I got a clear idea of your character. A woman understands better. And I know that, after Victor told you the plain truth about the situation, you couldn’t go on.”

David looked round rather wildly, swallowed hard several times, said hoarsely: “I won’t, if you’ll marry me.”

But for a slight change of expression or of color Davy would have thought she had not heard–or perhaps that he had imagined he was uttering the words that forced themselves to his lips in spite of his efforts to suppress them. For she went on in the same impetuous, friendly way:

“It seemed to me that you have an instinct for the right that’s unusual in men of your class. At least, I think it’s unusual. I confess I’ve not known any man of your class except you–and I know you very slightly. It was I that persuaded Victor to go to you. He believes that a man’s class feeling controls him– makes his moral sense–compels his actions. But I thought you were an exception–and he yielded after I urged him a while.”

“I don’t know WHAT I am,” said Hull gloomily. “I think I want to do right. But–what is right? Not theoretical right, but the practical, workable thing?”

“That’s true,” conceded Selma. “We can’t always be certain what’s right. But can’t we always know what’s wrong? And, Mr. Hull, it is wrong–altogether wrong–and YOU know it’s wrong–to lend your name and your influence and your reputation to that crowd. They’d let you do a little good–why? To make their professions of reform seem plausible. To fool the people into trusting them again. And under cover of the little good you were showily doing, how much mischief they’d do! If you’ll go back over the history of this town–of any town–of any country–you’ll find that most of the wicked things–the things that pile the burdens on the shoulders of the poor–the masses– most of the wicked things have been done under cover of just such men as you, used as figureheads.”

“But I want to build up a new party–a party of honest men, honestly led,” said Davy.

“Led by your sort of young men? I mean young men of your class.

Led by young lawyers and merchants and young fellows living on inherited incomes? Don’t you see that’s impossible,” cried Selma. “They are all living off the labor of others. Their whole idea of life is exploiting the masses–is reaping where they have not sown or reaping not only what they’ve sown but also what others have sown–for they couldn’t buy luxury and all the so-called refinements of life for themselves and their idle families merely with what they themselves could earn. How can you build up a really HONEST party with such men? They may mean well. They no doubt are honest, up to a certain point. But they will side with their class, in every crisis. And their class is the exploiting class.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Davy. “You are not fair to us.”

“How!” demanded Selma.

“I couldn’t argue with you,” replied Hull. “All I’ll say is that you’ve seen only the one side–only the side of the working class.”

“That toils without ceasing–its men, its women, its children–” said the girl with heaving bosom and flashing eyes–“only to have most of what it earns filched away from it by your class to waste in foolish luxury!”

“And whose fault is that?” pleaded Hull.

“The fault of my class,” replied she. “Their ignorance, their stupidity–yes, and their foolish cunning that overreaches itself. For they tolerate the abuses of the present system because each man–at least, each man of the ones who think themselves `smart’–imagines that the day is coming when he can escape from the working class and gain the ranks of the despoilers.”

“And you ask ME to come into the party of those people!” scoffed Davy.

“Yes, Mr. Hull,” said she–and until then he had not appreciated how lovely her voice was. “Yes–that is the party for you–for all honest, sincere men who want to have their own respect through and through. To teach those people–to lead them right–to be truthful and just with them–that is the life worth while.”

“But they won’t learn. They won’t be led right. They are as ungrateful as they are foolish. If they weren’t, men like me trying to make a decent career wouldn’t have to compromise with the Kellys and the Houses and their masters. What are Kelly and House but leaders of your class? And they lead ten to Victor Dorn’s one. Why, any day Dorn’s followers may turn on him–and you know it.”

“And what of that?” cried Selma. “He’s not working to be their leader, but to do what he thinks is right, regardless of consequences. Why is he a happy man, as happiness goes? Why has he gone on his way steadily all these years, never minding setbacks and failures and defeats and dangers? I needn’t tell you why.”

“No,” said Hull, powerfully moved by her earnestness. “I understand.”

“The finest sentence that ever fell from human lips,” Selma went on, “was `Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.’ Forgive them–forgive us all– for when we go astray it is because we are in the dark. And I want you to come with us, Mr. Hull, and help to make it a little less dark. At least, you will then be looking toward the light–and every one turned in that direction counts.”

After a long pause, Hull said:

“Miss Gordon, may I ask you a very personal question?”

“Yes,” said she.

“Are you in love with Victor Dorn?”

Selma laughed merrily. “Jane Hastings had that same curiosity,” said she. “I’ll answer you as I answered her–though she didn’t ask me quite so directly. No, I am not in love with him. We are too busy to bother about those things. We have too much to do to think about ourselves.”

“Then–there is no reason why I should not ask you to be my wife–why I should not hope–and try?”

She looked at him with a peculiar smile. “Yes, there is a very good reason. I do not love you, and I shall not love you. I shall not have time for that sort of thing.”

“Don’t you believe in love?”

“I don’t believe in much else,” said she. “But–not the kind of love you offer me.”

“How do you know?” cried he. “I have not told you yet how I feel toward you. I have not—-”

“Oh, yes, you have,” interrupted she. “This is the second–no, the third time you have seen me. So, the love you offer me can only be of a kind it is not in the least flattering to a woman to inspire. You needn’t apologize,” she went on, laughingly. “I’ve no doubt you mean well. You simply don’t understand me–my sort of woman.”

“It’s you that don’t understand, Selma,” cried he. “You don’t realize how wonderful you are–how much you reveal of yourself at once. I was all but engaged to another woman when I saw you. I’ve been fighting against my love for you–fighting against the truth that suddenly came to me that you were the only woman I had ever seen who appealed to and aroused and made strong all that is brave and honest in me. Selma, I need you. I am not infatuated.

I am clearer- headed than I ever was in my life. I need you. You can make a man of me.”

She was regarding him with a friendly and even tender sympathy. “I understand now,” she said. “I thought it was simply the ordinary outburst of passion. But I see that it was the result of your struggle with yourself about which road to take in making a career.”

If she had not been absorbed in developing her theory she might have seen that Davy was not altogether satisfied with this analysis of his feelings. But he deemed it wise to hold his peace.

“You do need some one–some woman,” she went on. “And I am anxious to help you all I can. I couldn’t help you by marrying you. To me marriage means—-” She checked herself abruptly. “No matter. I can help you, I think, as a friend. But if you wish to marry, you should take some one in your own class– some one who’s in sympathy with you. Then you and she could work it out together–could help each other. You see, I don’t need you–and there’s nothing in one- sided marriages. . . . No, you couldn’t give me anything I need, so far as I can see.”

“I believe that’s true,” said Davy miserably.

She reflected, then continued: “But there’s Jane Hastings. Why not marry her? She is having the same sort of struggle with herself. You and she could help each other. And you’re, both of you, fine characters. I like each of you for exactly the same reasons. . . . Yes–Jane needs you, and you need her.” She looked at him with her sweet, frank smile like a breeze straight from the sweep of a vast plateau. “Why, it’s so obvious that I wonder you and she haven’t become engaged long ago. You ARE fond of her, aren’t you?”

“Oh, Selma,” cried Davy, “I LOVE you. I want YOU.”

She shook her head with a quaint, fascinating expression of positiveness. “Now, my friend,” said she, “drop that fancy. It isn’t sensible. And it threatens to become silly.” Her smile suddenly expanded into a laugh. “The idea of you and me married–of ME married to YOU! I’d drive you crazy. No, I shouldn’t stay long enough for that. I’d be of on the wings of the wind to the other end of the earth as soon as you tried to put a halter on me.”

He did not join in her laugh. She rose. “You will think again before you go in with those people–won’t you, David?” she said, sober and earnest.

“I don’t care what becomes of me,” he said boyishly.

“But _I_ do,” she said. “I want to see you the man you can be.”

“Then–marry me,” he cried.

Her eyes looked gentle friendship; her passionate lips curled in scorn. “I might marry the sort of man you could be,” she said, “but I never could marry a man so weak that, without me to bolster him up, he’d become a stool-pigeon.”

And she turned and walked away.

V.

A few days later, after she had taken her daily two hours’ walk, Selma went into the secluded part of Washington Park and spent the rest of the morning writing. Her walk was her habitual time for thinking out her plans for the day. And when it was writing that she had to do, and the weather was fine, that particular hillside with its splendid shade so restful for the eyes and so stimulating to the mind became her work-shop. She thought that she was helped as much by the colors of grass and foliage as by the softened light and the tranquil view out over hills and valleys.

When she had finished her article she consulted the little nickel watch she carried in her bag and discovered that it was only one o’clock. She had counted on getting through at three or half past. Two hours gained. How could she best use them. The part of the Park where she was sitting was separated from the Hastings grounds only by the winding highroad making its last reach for the top of the hill. She decided that she would go to see Jane Hastings–would try to make tactful progress in her project of helping Jane and David Hull by marrying them to each other. Once she had hit upon this project her interest in both of them had equally increased. Yes, these gained two hours was an opportunity not to be neglected.

She put her papers into her shopping bag and went straight up the steep hill. She arrived at the top, at the edge of the lawn before Jane’s house, with somewhat heightened color and brightened eyes, but with no quickening of the breath. Her slim, solid little body had all the qualities of endurance of those wiry ponies that come from the regions her face and walk and the careless grace of her hair so delightfully suggested. As she advanced toward the house she saw a gay company assembled on the wide veranda. Jane was giving a farewell luncheon for her visitors, had asked almost a dozen of the most presentable girls in the town. It was a very fashionable affair, and everyone had dressed for it in the best she had to wear at that time of day.

Selma saw the company while there was still time for her to draw back and descend into the woods. But she knew little about conventionalities, and she cared not at all about them. She had come to see Jane; she conducted herself precisely as she would have expected any one to act who came to see her at any time. She marched straight across the lawn. The hostess, the fashionable visitors, the fashionable guests soon centered upon the extraordinary figure moving toward them under that blazing sun. The figure was extraordinary not for dress–the dress was plain and unconspicuous–but for that expression of the free and the untamed, the lack of self-consciousness so rarely seen except in children and animals. Jane rushed to the steps to welcome her, seized her extended hands and kissed her with as much enthusiasm as she kissed Jane. There was sincerity in this greeting of Jane’s; but there was pose, also. Here was one of those chances to do the unconventional, the democratic thing.

“What a glorious surprise!” cried Jane. “You’ll stop for lunch, of course?” Then to the girls nearest them: “This is Selma Gordon, who writes for the New Day.”

Pronouncing of names–smiles–bows–veiled glances of curiosity–several young women exchanging whispered comments of amusement. And to be sure, Selma, in that simple costume, gloveless, with dusty shoes and blown hair, did look very much out of place. But then Selma would have looked, in a sense, out of place anywhere but in a wilderness with perhaps a few tents and a half-tamed herd as background. In another sense, she seemed in place anywhere as any natural object must.

“I don’t eat lunch,” said Selma. “But I’ll stay if you’ll put me next to you and let me talk to you.”

She did not realize what an upsetting of order and precedence this request, which seemed so simple to her, involved. Jane hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. “Why, certainly,” said she. “Now that I’ve got you I’d not let you go in any circumstances.”

Selma was gazing around at the other girls with the frank and pleased curiosity of a child. “Gracious, what pretty clothes!” she cried–she was addressing Miss Clearwater, of Cincinnati. “I’ve read about this sort of thing in novels and in society columns of newspapers. But I never saw it before. ISN’T it interesting!”

Miss Clearwater, whose father was a United States Senator–by purchase–had had experience of many oddities, male and female. She also was attracted by Selma’s sparkling delight, and by the magnetic charm which she irradiated as a rose its perfume. “Pretty clothes are attractive, aren’t they?” said she, to be saying something.

“I don’t know a thing about clothes,” confessed Selma. “I’ve never owned at the same time more than two dresses fit to wear–usually only one. And quite enough for me. I’d only be fretted by a lot of things of that kind. But I like to see them on other people. If I had my way the whole world would be well dressed.”

“Except you?” said Ellen Clearwater with a smile.

“I couldn’t be well dressed if I tried,” replied Selma. “When I was a child I was the despair of my mother. Most of the people in the tenement where we lived were very dirty and disorderly–naturally enough, as they had no knowledge and no money and no time. But mother had ideas of neatness and cleanliness, and she used to try to keep me looking decent. But it was of no use. Ten minutes after she had smoothed me down I was flying every which way again.”

“You were brought up in a tenement?” said Miss Clearwater. Several of the girls within hearing were blushing for Selma and were feeling how distressed Jane Hastings must be.

“I had a wonderfully happy childhood,” replied Selma. “Until I was old enough to understand and to suffer. I’ve lived in tenements all my life–among very poor people. I’d not feel at home anywhere else.”

“When I was born,” said Miss Clearwater, “we lived in a log cabin up in the mining district of Michigan.”

Selma showed the astonishment the other girls were feeling. But while their astonishment was in part at a girl of Ellen Clearwater’s position making such a degrading confession, hers had none of that element in it. “You don’t in the least suggest a log cabin or poverty of any kind,” said she. “I supposed you had always been rich and beautifully dressed.”

“No, indeed,” replied Ellen. She gazed calmly round at the other girls who were listening. “I doubt if any of us here was born to what you see. Of course we– some of us–make pretenses–all sorts of silly pretenses. But as a matter of fact there isn’t one of us who hasn’t near relatives in the cabins or the tenements at this very moment.”

There was a hasty turning away from this dangerous conversation. Jane came back from ordering the rearrangement of her luncheon table. Said Selma:

“I’d like to wash my hands, and smooth my hair a little.”

“You take her up, Ellen,” said Jane. “And hurry. We’ll be in the dining-room when you come down.”

Selma’s eyes were wide and roving as she and Ellen went through the drawing-room, the hall, up stairs and into the very prettily furnished suite which Ellen was occupying. “I never saw anything like this before!” exclaimed Selma. “It’s the first time I was ever in a grand house. This is a grand house, isn’t it?”

“No–it’s only comfortable,” replied Ellen. “Mr. Hastings–and Jane, too, don’t go in for grandeur.”

“How beautiful everything is–and how convenient!” exclaimed Selma. “I haven’t felt this way since the first time I went to the circus.” She pointed to a rack from which were suspended thin silk dressing gowns of various rather gay patterns. “What are those?” she inquired.

“Dressing gowns,” said Ellen. “Just to wear round while one is dressing or undressing.”

Selma advanced and felt and examined them. “But why so many?” she inquired.

“Oh, foolishness,” said Ellen. “Indulgence! To suit different moods.”

“Lovely,” murmured Selma. “Lovely!”

“I suspect you of a secret fondness for luxury,” said Ellen slyly.

Selma laughed. “What would I do with such things?” she inquired. “Why, I’d have no time to wear them. I’d never dare put on anything so delicate.”

She roamed through dressing-room, bedroom, bath- room, marveling, inquiring, admiring. “I’m so glad I came,” said she. “This will give me a fresh point of view. I can understand the people of your class better, and be more tolerant about them. I understand now why they are so hard and so indifferent. They’re quite removed from the common lot. They don’t realize; they can’t. How narrow it must make one to have one’s life filled with these pretty little things for luxury and show. Why, if I lived this life, I’d cease to be human after a short time.”

Ellen was silent.

“I didn’t mean to say anything rude or offensive,” said Selma, sensitive to the faintest impressions. “I was speaking my thoughts aloud. . . . Do you know David Hull?”

“The young reformer?” said Ellen with a queer little smile. “Yes–quite well.”

“Does he live like this?”

“Rather more grandly,” said Ellen.

Selma shook her head. A depressed expression settled upon her features. “It’s useless,” she said. “He couldn’t possibly become a man.”

Ellen laughed. “You must hurry,” she said. “We’re keeping everyone waiting.”

As Selma was making a few passes at her rebellious thick hair–passes the like of which Miss Clearwater had never before seen–she explained:

“I’ve been somewhat interested in David Hull of late–have been hoping he could graduate from a fake reformer into a useful citizen. But–” She looked round expressively at the luxury surrounding them– “one might as well try to grow wheat in sand.”

“Davy is a fine fraud,” said Ellen. “Fine–because he doesn’t in the least realize that he’s a fraud.”

“I’m afraid he is a fraud,” said Selma setting on her hat again. “What a pity? He might have been a man, if he’d been brought up properly.” She gazed at Ellen with sad, shining eyes. “How many men and women luxury blights!” she cried.

“It certainly has done for Davy,” said Ellen lightly. “He’ll never be anything but a respectable fraud.”

“Why do YOU think so?” Selma inquired.

“My father is a public man,” Miss Clearwater explained. “And I’ve seen a great deal of these reformers. They’re the ordinary human variety of politician plus a more or less conscious hypocrisy. Usually they’re men who fancy themselves superior to the common run in birth and breeding. My father has taught me to size them up.”

They went down, and Selma, seated between Jane and Miss Clearwater, amused both with her frank comments on the scene so strange to her–the beautiful table, the costly service, the variety and profusion of elaborate food. In fact, Jane, reaching out after the effects got easily in Europe and almost as easily in the East, but overtaxed the resources of the household which she was only beginning to get into what she regarded as satisfactory order. The luncheon, therefore, was a creditable and promising attempt rather than a success, from the standpoint of fashion. Jane was a little ashamed, and at times extremely nervous– this when she saw signs of her staff falling into disorder that might end in rout. But Selma saw none of the defects. She was delighted with the dazzling spectacle–for two or three courses. Then she lapsed into quiet and could not be roused to speak.

Jane and Ellen thought she was overwhelmed and had been seized of shyness in this company so superior to any in which she had ever found herself. Ellen tried to induce her to eat, and, failing, decided that her refraining was not so much firmness in the two meals-a-day system as fear of making a “break.” She felt genuinely sorry for the silent girl growing moment by moment more ill-at-ease. When the luncheon was about half over Selma said abruptly to Jane:

“I must go now. I’ve stayed longer than I should.”

“Go?” cried Jane. “Why, we haven’t begun to talk yet.”

“Another time,” said Selma, pushing back her chair. “No, don’t rise.” And up she darted, smiling gayly round at the company. “Don’t anybody disturb herself,” she pleaded. “It’ll be useless, for I’ll be gone.”

And she was as good as her word. Before any one quite realized what she was about, she had escaped from the dining-room and from the house. She almost ran across the lawn and into the woods. There she drew a long breath noisily.

“Free!” she cried, flinging out her arms. “Oh–but it was DREADFUL!”

Miss Hastings and Miss Clearwater had not been so penetrating as they fancied. Embarrassment had nothing to do with the silence that had taken possession of the associate editor of the New Day.

She was never self-conscious enough to be really shy. She hastened to the office, meeting Victor Dorn in the street doorway. She cried:

“Such an experience!”

“What now?” said Victor. He was used to that phrase from the ardent and impressionable Selma. For her, with her wide-open eyes and ears, her vivid imagination and her thirsty mind, life was one closely packed series of adventures.

“I had an hour to spare,” she proceeded to explain. “I thought it was a chance to further a little scheme I’ve got for marrying Jane Hastings and David Hull.”

“Um!” said Victor with a quick change of expression –which, however, Selma happened not to observe.

“And,” she went on, “I blundered into a luncheon party Jane was giving. You never saw–you never dreamed of such style–such dresses and dishes and flowers and hats! And I was sitting there with them, enjoying it all as if it were a circus or a ballet, when– Oh, Victor, what a silly, what a pitiful waste of time and money! So much to do in the world–so much that is thrillingly interesting and useful–and those intelligent young people dawdling there at nonsense a child would weary of! I had to run away. If I had stayed another minute I should have burst out crying– or denouncing them–or pleading with them to behave themselves.”

“What else can they do?” said Victor. “They don’t know any better. They’ve never been taught. How’s the article?”

And he led the way up to the editorial room and held her to the subject of the article he had asked her to write. At the first opportunity she went back to the subject uppermost in her mind. Said she:

“I guess you’re right–as usual. There’s no hope for any people of that class. The busy ones are thinking only of making money for themselves, and the idle ones are too enfeebled by luxury to think at all. No, I’m afraid there’s no hope for Hull–or for Jane either.”

“I’m not sure about Miss Hastings,” said Victor.

“You would have been if you’d seen her to-day,” replied Selma. “Oh, she was lovely, Victor–really wonderful to look at. But so obviously the idler. And– body and soul she belongs to the upper class. She understands charity, but she doesn’t understand justice, and never could understand it. I shall let her alone hereafter.”

“How harsh you women are in your judgments of each other,” laughed Dorn, busy at his desk.

“We are just,” replied Selma. “We are not fooled by each other’s pretenses.”

Dorn apparently had not heard. Selma saw that to speak would be to interrupt. She sat at her own table and set to work on the editorial paragraphs. After perhaps an hour she happened to glance at Victor. He was leaning back in his chair, gazing past her out into the open; in his face was an expression she had never seen–a look in the eyes, a relaxing of the muscles round the mouth that made her think of him as a man instead of as a leader. She was saying to herself. “What a fascinating man he would have been, if he had not been an incarnate cause.”

She felt that he was not thinking of his work. She longed to talk to him, but she did not venture to interrupt. Never in all the years she had known him had he spoken to her–or to any one–a severe or even an impatient word. His tolerance, his good humor were infinite. Yet–she, and all who came into contact with him, were afraid of him. There could come, and on occasion there did come–into those extraordinary blue eyes an expression beside which the fiercest flash of wrath would be easy to face.

When she glanced at him again, his normal expression had returned–the face of the leader who aroused in those he converted into fellow-workers a fanatical devotion that was the more formidable because it was not infatuated. He caught her eye and said:

“Things are in such good shape for us that it frightens me. I spend most of my time in studying the horizon in the hope that I can foresee which way the storm’s coming from and what it will be.”

“What a pessimist you are!” laughed Selma.

“That’s why the Workingmen’s League has a thick- and-thin membership of thirteen hundred and fifty,” replied Victor. “That’s why the New Day has twenty- two hundred paying subscribers. That’s why we grow faster than the employers can weed our men out and replace them with immigrants and force them to go to other towns for work.”

“Well, anyhow,” said the girl, “no matter what happens we can’t be weeded out.”

Victor shook his head. “Our danger period has just begun,” he replied. “The bosses realize our power. In the past we’ve been annoyed a little from time to time. But they thought us hardly worth bothering with. In the future we will have to fight.”

“I hope they will prosecute us,” said Selma. “Then, we’ll grow the faster.”

“Not if they do it intelligently,” replied Victor. “An intelligent persecution–if it’s relentless enough –always succeeds. You forget that this isn’t a world of moral ideas but of force. . . . I am afraid of Dick Kelly. He is something more than a vulgar boss. He SEES. My hope is that he won’t be able to make the others see. I saw him a while ago. He was extremely polite to me–more so than he ever has been before. He is up to something. I suspect—-”

Victor paused, reflecting. “What?” asked Selma eagerly.

“I suspect that he thinks he has us.” He rose, preparing to go out. “Well–if he has–why, he has. And we shall have to begin all over again.”

“How stupid they are!” exclaimed the girl. “To fight us who are simply trying to bring about peaceably and sensibly what’s bound to come about anyhow.”

“Yes–the rain is bound to come,” said Victor. “And we say, `Here’s an umbrella and there’s the way to shelter.’ And they laugh at OUR umbrella and, with the first drops plashing on their foolish faces, deny that it’s going to rain.”

The Workingmen’s League, always first in the field with its ticket, had been unusually early that year. Although it was only the first week in August and the election would not be until the third of October, the League had nominated. It was a ticket made up entirely of skilled workers who had lived all their lives in Remsen City and who had acquired an independence– Victor Dorn was careful not to expose to the falling fire of the opposition any of his men who could be ruined by the loss of a job or could be compelled to leave town in search of work. The League always went early into campaign because it pursued a much slower and less expensive method of electioneering than either of the old parties–or than any of the “upper class” reform parties that sprang up from time to time and died away as they accomplished or failed of their purpose–securing recognition for certain personal ambitions not agreeable to the old established bosses. Besides, the League was, like the bosses and their henchmen, in politics every day in every year. The League theory was that politics was as much a part of a citizen’s daily routine as his other work or his meals.

It was the night of the League’s great ratification meeting. The next day the first campaign number– containing the biographical sketch of Tony Rivers, Kelly’s right-hand man . . . would go upon the press, and on the following day it would reach the public.

Market Square in Remsen City was on the edge of the power quarter, was surrounded by cheap hotels, boarding houses and saloons. A few years before, the most notable citizens, market basket on arm, could have been seen three mornings in the week, making the rounds of the stalls and stands, both those in the open and those within the Market House. But customs had rapidly changed in Remsen City, and with the exception of a few old fogies only the poorer classes went to market. The masters of houses were becoming gentlemen, and the housewives were elevating into ladies–and it goes without saying that no gentleman and no lady would descend to a menial task even in private, much less in public.

Market Square had even become too common for any but the inferior meetings of the two leading political parties. Only the Workingmen’s League held to the old tradition that a political meeting of the first rank could be properly held nowhere but in the natural assembling place of the people–their market. So, their first great rally of the campaign was billed for Market