The Conflict Part 18

"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 friends.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s and forced to adopt it as your own. Even then you'd probably remain what you are. Only a small part of the working cla.s.s as yet is at heart of the working cla.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+fts 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 s.e.x instinct that determines the thoughts and actions of practically the entire female s.e.x.

"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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s? 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d-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 att.i.tude of your cla.s.s 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."