The Conflict Part 46

"Jane, I was entirely too glad to see you to-day. I had----"

"Don't say that," she pleaded. "Victor, it isn't a weakness----"

His hand resting upon the table clenched into a fist and his brows drew down. "There can be no question but that it is a weakness and a folly," he pushed on. "I will not spoil your life and mine. You are not for me, and I am not for you. The reason we hang on to this is because each of us has a streak of tenacity. We don't want each other, but we are so made that we can't let go of an idea once it has gotten into our heads."

"There is another reason," she said gently. "We are, both of us, alone--and lonesome, Victor."

"But I'm not alone. I'm not lonesome----" And there he abruptly halted, to gaze at her with the expression of awakening and astonishment. "I believe I'm wrong. I believe you're right," he exclaimed. "I had never thought of that before."

"You've been imagining your work, your cause was enough," she went on in a quiet rational way that was a revelation--and a self-revelation--of the real Jane Hastings. "But it isn't. There's a whole other side of your nature--the--the--the private side--that's the expression--the private side. And you've been denying to it its rights."

He reflected, nodded slowly. "I believe that's the truth," he said.

"It explains a curious feeling I've had--a sort of shriveling sensation." He gazed thoughtfully at her, his face gradually relaxing into a merry smile.

"What is it?" asked she, smiling in turn.

"We've both got to fall in love and marry," said he. "Not with each other, of course--for we're not in any way mated. But love and marriage and the rest of it--that's the solution. I don't need it quite as much as you do, for I've got my work. But I need it. Now that I see things in the right light I wonder that I've been so stupidly blind. Why do we human beings always overlook the obvious?"

"It isn't easy to marry," said Jane, rather drearily. "It isn't easy to find some one with whom one would be willing to pa.s.s one's life.

I've had several chances--one or two of them not entirely mercenary, I think. But not one that I could bring myself to accept."

"Vanity--vanity," said Victor. "Almost any human being is interesting and attractive if one will stop thinking about oneself and concentrate on him or her."

She smiled. "It's evident you've never tried to fall in love."

"The nearest I ever came to it was with you," replied he. "But that was, of course, out of the question."

"I don't admit that," said she, with an amusing kind of timid obstinacy.

"Let's be honest and natural with each other," urged he. "Now, Jane, admit that in your heart of hearts you feel you ought not to marry me."

Her glance avoided his.

"Come--own up!" cried he.

"I have thought of that side of it," she conceded.

"And if I hadn't piqued you by thinking of it, too, you'd never have lingered on any other side of it," said he. "Well! Now that we've cleared the ground--there's Davy. He's to be nominated by the Republicans for Governor next week."

"Davy? I had almost forgotten him. I'll think of Davy--and let you know ... And you? Who is there for you?"

"Oh--no one you know. My sister has recommended several girls from time to time. I'll see."

Jane gave the freest and heartiest laugh that had pa.s.sed her lips in more than a year. It was thus free and unrestrained because he had not said what she was fearing he would say--had not suggested the woman nearest him, the obvious woman. So eager was she to discover what he thought of Selma, that she could hardly restrain herself from suggesting her. Before they could say anything more, two men came to talk with him. Jane could not but leave.

She dined that night at Mrs. Sherlock's--Mrs. Sherlock was Davy's oldest sister. Davy took her in, they talked--about his career--through dinner, and he walked home with her in the moonlight.

He was full of his approaching nomination. He had been making what is known as a good record, as mayor. That is, he had struck out boldly at sundry petty abuses practised by a low and comparatively uninfluential cla.s.s of exploiters of the people. He had been so busy with these showy trifles that there had been no time for the large abuses. True, he had publicly warned the gas company about its poor gas, and the water company about its unwholesome water for the low-lying tenement districts, and the traction company about the fewness and filthiness of its cars. The gas company had talked of putting in improved machinery; the water company had invited estimates on a filtration plant; the traction company had said a vague something about new cars as soon as car manufacturers could make definite promises as to delivery. But nothing had been done--as yet. Obviously a corporation, a large investment of capital, must be treated with consideration. It would not do for a conservative, fair minded mayor to rush into demagogery.

So, Davy was content to point proudly to his record of having "made the big corporations awaken to a sense of their duty." An excellent record, as good as a reform politician, with a larger career in prospect, could be expected to make. People spoke well of Mayor Hull and the three daily papers eulogized him. Davy no longer had qualms of conscience. He read the eulogies, he listened to the flatteries of the conservative leading citizens he met at the Lincoln and at the University, and he felt that he was all that he in young enthusiasm had set out to be.

When he went to other cities and towns and to county fairs to make addresses he was introduced as the man who had redeemed Remsen City, as a s.h.i.+ning example of the honest SANE man in politics, as a man the bosses were afraid of, yet dared not try to down. "You can't fool the people." And were not the people, notably those who didn't live in Remsen City and had only read in their newspapers about the reform Republican mayor--weren't they clamorous for Mayor Hull for governor!

Thus, Davy was high in his own esteem, was in that mood of profound responsibility to righteousness and to the people wherein a man can get the enthusiastic endors.e.m.e.nt of his conscience for any act he deems it expedient to commit in safeguarding and advancing his career. His person had become valuable to his country. His opponents were therefore anathema maranatha.

As he and Jane walked side by side in the tender moonlight, Jane said:

"What's become of Selma Gordon?"

A painful pause; then Davy, in a tone that secretly amused Jane: "Selma? I see her occasionally--at a distance. She still writes for Victor Dorn's sheet, I believe. I never see it."

Jane felt she could easily guess why. "Yes--it is irritating to read criticisms of oneself," said she sweetly. Davy's self-complacence had been most trying to her nerves.

Another long silence, then he said: "About--Miss Gordon. I suppose you were thinking of the things I confided to you last year?"

"Yes, I was," confessed Jane.

"That's all over," said Mayor and prospective Governor Hull. "I found I was mistaken in her."

"Didn't you tell me that she refused you?" pressed Jane, most unkindly.

"We met again after that," said Davy--by way of proving that even the most devoted apostle of civic righteousness is yet not without his share of the common humanity, "and from that time I felt differently toward her.... I've never been able to understand my folly.... I wonder if you could forgive me for it?"

Davy was a good deal of a bore, she felt. At least, he seemed so in this first renewing of old acquaintance. But he was a man of purpose, a man who was doing much and would do more. And she liked him, and had for him that feeling of sympathy and comprehension which exists among people of the same region, brought up in much the same way. Instead of cutting him off, she temporized. Said she with a serenely careless laugh that might have let a man more expert in the ways of women into the secret of how little she cared about him: "You mean forgive you for dropping me so abruptly and running after her?"

"That's not exactly the way to put it," objected he.

"Put it any way you like," said Jane. "I forgive you. I didn't care at the time, and I don't care now."

Jane was looking entrancing in that delicate light. Davy was noting--was feeling--this. Also, he was reflecting--in a high-minded way--upon the many material, mental and spiritual advantages of a marriage with her. Just the woman to be a governor's wife--a senator's wife--a president's wife. Said he:

"Jane, my feeling for you has never changed."

"Really?" said Jane. "Why, I thought you told me at one time that you were in love with me?"

"And I always have been, dear--and am," said Davy, in his deepest, tenderest tones. "And now that I am winning a position worthy of you----"

"I'll see," cut in Jane. "Let's not talk about it tonight." She felt that if he kept on she might yield to the temptation to say something mocking, something she would regret if it drove him away finally.

He was content. The ice had been broken. The Selma Gordon business had been disposed of. The way was clear for straight-away love-making the next time they met. Meanwhile he would think about her, would get steam up, would have his heart blazing and his words and phrases all in readiness.

Every human being has his or her fundamental vanity that must be kept alive, if life is to be or to seem to be worth living. In man this vanity is usually some form of belief in his mental ability, in woman some form of belief in her physical charm. Fortunately--or, rather, necessarily--not much is required to keep this vanity alive--or to restore it after a shock, however severe. Victor Dorn had been compelled to give Jane Hastings' vanity no slight shock. But it recovered at once. Jane saw that his failure to yield was due not to lack of potency in her charms, but to extraordinary strength of purpose in his character. Thus, not only was she able to save herself from any sense of humiliation, but also she was without any feeling of resentment against him. She liked him and admired him more than ever.

She saw his point of view; she admitted that he was right--IF it were granted that a life such as he had mapped for himself was better for him than the career he could have made with her help.

Her heart, however, was hastily, even rudely thrust to the background when she discovered that her brother had been gambling in wheat with practically her entire fortune. With an adroitness that irritated her against herself, as she looked back, he had continued to induce her to disregard their father's cautionings and to ask him to take full charge of her affairs. He had not lost her fortune, but he had almost lost it. But for an accidental stroke, a week of weather destructive to crops all over the country, she would have been reduced to an income of not more than ten or fifteen thousand a year--twenty times the income of the average American family of five, but for Miss Hastings straitened subsistence and a miserable state of shornness of all the radiance of life. And, pus.h.i.+ng her inquiries a little farther, she learned that her brother would still have been rich, because he had taken care to settle a large sum on his wife--in such a way that if she divorced him it would pa.s.s back to him.

In the course of her arrangings to meet this situation and to prevent its recurrence she saw much of Doctor Charlton. He gave her excellent advice and found for her a man to take charge of her affairs so far as it was wise for her to trust any one. The man was a bank cas.h.i.+er, Robert Headley by name--one of those rare beings who care nothing for riches for themselves and cannot invest their own money wisely, but have a genius for fidelity and wise counsel.

"It's a pity he's married," said Charlton. "If he weren't I'd urge you to take him as a husband."

Jane laughed. A plainer, duller man than Headley it would have been hard to find, even among the respectabilities of Remsen City.