The Conflict Part 45

She caught his glance, which was inclined to avoid hers. She gave him a pleading look. "I'll walk with you part of the way," she said.

He seemed to be searching for an excuse to get away. Whether because he failed to find it or because he changed his mind, he said: "You'll not mind going at a good gait?"

"I'll ride," said she. "It's not comfortable, walking fast in these boots."

He stood by to help her, but let her get into the saddle alone. She smiled down at him with a little coquetry. "Are you afraid to touch me--to-day?" she asked.

He laughed: "The bird IS merely an excuse," he admitted. "I've got back my self-control, and I purpose to keep it."

She flushed angrily. His frankness now seemed to her to be flavored with impertinent a.s.surance. "That's amusing," said she, with an unpleasant smile. "You have an extraordinary opinion of yourself, haven't you?"

He shrugged his shoulders as if the subject did not interest him and set off at a gait that compelled her horse to a rapid walk. She said presently:

"I'm going to live at the old place alone for the present. You'll come to see me?"

He looked at her. "No," he said. "As I told you a moment ago, that's over. You'll have to find some one else to amuse you--for, I understand perfectly, Jane, that you were only doing what's called flirting. That sort of thing is a waste of time--for me. I'm not competent to judge whether it's a waste for you."

She looked coldly down at him. "You have changed since I last saw you," she said. "I don't mean the change in your manner toward me. I mean something deeper. I've often heard that politics makes a man deteriorate. You must be careful, Victor."

"I must think about that," said he. "Thank you for warning me."

His prompt acceptance of her insincere criticism made her straightway repentant. "No, it's I that have changed," she said. "Oh, I'm horrid!--simply horrid. I'm in despair about myself."

"Any one who thinks about himself is bound to be," said he philosophically. "That's why one has to keep busy in order to keep contented." He halted. "I can save a mile and half an hour by crossing these fields." He held the wounded bird in one hand very carefully while he lifted his hat.

She colored deeply. "Victor," she said, "isn't there any way that you and I can be friends?"

"Yes," replied he. "As I told you before, by becoming one of us.

Those are impossible terms, of course. But that's the only way by which we could be of use to each other. Jane, if I, professing what I do profess, offered to be friends with you on any other terms, you'd be very foolish not to reject my offer. For, it would mean that I was a fraud. Don't you see that?"

"Yes," she admitted. "But when I am with you I see everything exactly as you represent it."

"It's fortunate for you that I'm not disposed to take advantage of that--isn't it?" said he, with good-humored irony.

"You don't believe me!"

"Not altogether," he confessed. "To be quite candid, I think that for some reason or other I rouse in you an irresistible desire to pose. I doubt if you realize it--wholly. But you'd be hard pressed just where to draw the line between the sincere and the insincere, wouldn't you--honestly?"

She sat moodily combing at her horse's mane.

"I know it's cruel," he went on lightly, "to deny anything, however small, to a young lady who has always had her own way. But in self-defense I must do it."

"Why DO I take these things from you?" she cried, in sudden exasperation. And touching her horse with her stick, she was off at a gallop.

IX

From anger against Victor Dorn, Jane pa.s.sed to anger against herself.

This was soon followed by a mood of self-denunciation, by astonishment at the follies of which she had been guilty, by shame for them. She could not scoff or scorn herself out of the infatuation. But at least she could control herself against yielding to it. Recalling and reviewing all he had said, she--that is, her vanity--decided that the most important remark, the only really important remark, was his declaration of disbelief in her sincerity. "The reason he has repulsed me--and a very good reason it is--is that he thinks I am simply amusing myself. If he thought I was in earnest, he would act very differently.

Very shrewd of him!"

Did she believe this? Certainly not. But she convinced herself that she believed it, and so saved her pride. From this point she proceeded by easy stages to doubting whether, if Victor had taken her at her word, she would have married him. And soon she had convinced herself that she had gone so far only through her pa.s.sion for conquest, that at the first sign of his yielding her good sense would have a.s.serted itself and she could have retreated.

"He knew me better than I knew myself," said she--not so thoroughly convinced as her pride would have liked, but far better content with herself than in those unhappy hours of humiliation after her last talk with him.

From the beginning of her infatuation there had been only a few days, hardly more than a few hours, when the voice of prudence and good sense had been silenced. Yes, he was right; they were not suited to each other, and a marriage between them would have been absurd. He did belong to a different, to a lower cla.s.s, and he could never have understood her. Refinement, taste, the things of the life of luxury and leisure were incomprehensible to him. It might be unjust that the many had to toil in squalor and sordidness while the few were privileged to cultivate and to enjoy the graces and the beauties; but, unjust or in some mysterious way just, there was the fact. Her life was marked out for her; she was of the elect. She would do well to accept her good fortune and live as the G.o.ds had ordained for her.

If Victor had been different in that one respect! ... The infatuation, too, was a fact. The wise course was flight--and she fled.

That winter, in Chicago and in New York, Jane amused herself--in the ways devised by latter day impatience with the folly of wasting a precious part of the one brief life in useless grief or pretense of grief. In Remsen City she would have had to be very quiet indeed, under penalty of horrifying public sentiment. But Chicago and New York knew nothing of her grief, cared nothing about grief of any kind.

People in deep mourning were found in the theaters, in the gay restaurants, wherever any enjoyment was to be had; and very sensible it was of them, and proof of the sincerity of their sorrow--for sincere sorrow seeks consolation lest it go mad and commit suicide--does it not?

Jane, young, beautiful, rich, clever, had a very good time indeed--so good that in the spring, instead of going back to Remsen City to rest, she went abroad. More enjoyment--or, at least, more of the things that fill in the time and spare one the necessity of thinking.

In August she suddenly left her friends at St. Moritz and journeyed back to Remsen City as fast as train and boat and train could take her.

And on the front veranda of the old house she sat herself down and looked out over the familiar landscape and listened to the katydids lulling the woods and the fields, and was bored and wondered why she had come.

In a reckless mood she went down to see Victor Dorn. "I am cured," she said to herself. "I must be cured. I simply can't be small and silly enough to care for a country town labor agitator after all I've been through--after the attentions I've had and the men of the world I've met. I'm cured, and I must prove it to myself ."

In the side yard Alice Sherrill and her children and several neighbor girls were putting up pears and peaches, blackberries and plums. The air was heavy with delicious odors of ripe and perfect fruit, and the laughter, the bright healthy faces, the strong graceful bodies in all manner of poses at the work required made a scene that brought tears to Jane's eyes. Why tears she could not have explained, but there they were. At far end of the arbor, looking exactly as he had in the same place the year before, sat Victor Dorn, writing. He glanced up, saw her! Into his face came a look of welcome that warmed her chilled heart.

"Hel-LO!" he cried, starting up. "I AM glad to see you."

"I'm mighty glad to be back," said she, lapsing with keen pleasure into her native dialect.

He took both her hands and shook them cordially, then looked at her from head to foot admiringly. "The latest from the Rue de la Paix, I suppose?" said he.

They seated themselves with the table between them. She, under cover of commonplaces about her travels, examined him with the utmost calmness. She saw every point wherein he fell short of the men of her cla.s.s--the sort of men she ought to like and admire. But, oh, how dull and stale and narrow and petty they were, beside this man. She knew now why she had fled. She didn't want to love Victor Dorn, or to marry him--or his sort of man. But he, his intense aliveness, his keen, supple mind, had spoiled her for those others. One of them she could not marry. "I should go mad with boredom. One can no more live intimately with fas.h.i.+on than one can eat gold and drink diamonds. And, oh, but I am hungry and thirsty!"

"So you've had a good time?" he was saying.

"Superb," replied she. "Such scenery--such variety of people. I love Europe. But--I'm glad to be home again."

"I don't see how you can stand it," said Victor.

"Why?" inquired she in surprise.

"Unless I had an intense personal interest in the most active kind of life in a place like this, I should either fly or take to drink,"

replied he. "In this world you've either got to invent occupation for yourself or else keep where amus.e.m.e.nts and distractions are thrust at you from rising till bed-time. And no amus.e.m.e.nts are thrust at you in Remsen City."

"But I've been trying the life of being amused," said Jane, "and I've got enough."

"For the moment," said Victor, laughing. "You'll go back. You've got to. What else is there for you?"

Her eyes abruptly became serious. "That's what I've come home to find out," said she. Hesitatingly, "That's why I've come here to-day."

He became curiously quiet--stared at the writing before him on the table. After a while he said: