The Conflict Part 11

"You ARE in," said Hastings, who knew when to yield. "Hasn't Barker been to see you? I'll attend to it, myself."

"Thank you, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly--dry and brief as always when receipting with a polite phrase for pay for services rendered. "I've been a good friend to your people."

"Yes, you have, d.i.c.k," said the old man heartily. "And I want you to jump in and take charge."

Hastings more than suspected that Kelly, to bring him to terms and to force him to employ directly the high-priced Kelly or Republico-Democratic machine as well as the State Republico-Democratic machine, which was cheaper, had got together the inside information and had ordered one of his henchmen to convey it to Dorn. But of what use to quarrel with Kelly? Of course, he could depose him; but that would simply mean putting another boss in his place--perhaps one more expensive and less efficient. The time had been when he--and the plutocracy generally--were compelled to come to the political bosses almost hat in hand. That time was past, never to return. But still a competent political agent was even harder to find than a competent business manager--and was far more necessary; for, while a big business might stagger along under poor financial or organizing management within, it could not live at all without political favors, immunities, and licenses. A band of pickpockets might as well try to work a town without having first "squared" the police. Not that Mr. Hastings and his friends THEMSELVES compared themselves to a band of pickpockets.

No, indeed. It was simply legitimate business to blackjack your compet.i.tors, corner a supply, create a monopoly and fix prices and wages to suit your own notions of what was your due for taking the "hazardous risks of business enterprise."

"Leave everything to me," said Kelly briskly. "I can put the thing through. Just tell your lawyer to apply late this afternoon to Judge Lansing for an injunction forbidding the strikers to a.s.semble anywhere within the county. We don't want no more of this speechifying. This is a peaceable community, and it won't stand for no agitators."

"Hadn't the lawyers better go to Judge Freilig?" said Hastings.

"He's shown himself to be a man of sound ideas."

"No--Lansing," said Kelly. "He don't come up for re-election for five years. Freilig comes up next fall, and we'll have hard work to pull him through, though House is going to put him on the ticket, too.

Dorn's going to make a hot campaign--concentrate on judges."

"There's nothing in that Dorn talk," said Hastings. "You can't scare me again, d.i.c.k, as you did with that Populist mare's nest ten years ago."

That had been Kelly's first "big killing" by working on the fears of the plutocracy. Its success had put him in a position to buy a carriage and a diamond necklace for Mrs. Kelly and to make first payments on a large block of real estate. "It was no mare's nest, Mr.

Hastings," gravely declared the boss. "If I hadn't 'a knowed just how to use the money we collected, there'd 'a been a crowd in office for four years that wouldn't 'a been easy to manage, I can tell you. But they was nothing to this here Dorn crowd. Dorn is----"

"We must get rid of him, d.i.c.k," interrupted Hastings.

The two men looked at each other--a curious glance--telegraphy. No method was suggested, no price was offered or accepted. But in the circ.u.mstances those matters became details that would settle themselves; the bargain was struck.

"He certainly ought to be stopped," said Kelly carelessly. "He's the worst enemy the labor element has had in my time." He rose. "Well, Mr.

Hastings, I must be going." He extended his heavy, strong hand, which Hastings rose to grasp. "I'm glad we're working together again without any hitches. You won't forget about that there stock?"

"I'll telephone about it right away, d.i.c.k--and about Judge Lansing.

You're sure Lansing's all right? I didn't like those decisions of his last year--the railway cases, I mean."

"That was all right, Mr. Hastings," said Kelly with a wave of the hand.

"I had to have 'em in the interests of the party. I knowed the upper court'd reverse. No, Lansing's a good party man--a good, sound man in every way."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Hastings.

Before going into his private room to think and plan and telephone, he looked out on the west veranda. There sat his daughter; and a few feet away was David Hull, his long form stretched in a hammock while he discoursed of his projects for a career as a political reformer. The sight immensely pleased the old man. When he was a boy David Hull's grandfather, Brainerd Hull, had been the great man of that region; and Martin Hastings, a farm hand and the son of a farm hand, had looked up at him as the embodiment of all that was grand and aristocratic. As Hastings had never travelled, his notions of rank and position all centred about Remsen City. Had he realized the extent of the world, he would have regarded his ambition for a match between the daughter and granddaughter of a farm hand and the son and grandson of a Remsen City aristocrat as small and ridiculous. But he did not realize.

Davy saw him and sprang to his feet.

"No--no--don't disturb yourselves," cried the old man. "I've got some things to 'tend to. You and Jenny go right ahead."

And he was off to his own little room where he conducted his own business in his own primitive but highly efficacious way. A corps of expert accountants could not have disentangled those crabbed, criss-crossed figures; no solver of puzzles could have unravelled the mystery of those strange hieroglyphics. But to the old man there wasn't a difficult--or a dull--mark in that entire set of dirty, dog-eared little account books. He spent hours in poring over them.

Just to turn the pages gave him keen pleasure; to read, and to reconstruct from those hints the whole story of some agitating and profitable operation, made in comparison the delight of an imaginative boy in Monte Cristo or Crusoe seem a cold and tame emotion.

David talked on and on, fancying that Jane was listening and admiring, when in fact she was busy with her own entirely different train of thought. She kept the young man going because she did not wish to be bored with her own solitude, because a man about always made life at least a little more interesting than if she were alone or with a woman, and because Davy was good to look at and had an agreeable voice.

"Why, who's that?" she suddenly exclaimed, gazing off to the right.

Davy turned and looked. "I don't know her," he said. "Isn't she queer looking--yet I don't know just why."

"It's Selma Gordon," said Jane, who had recognized Selma the instant her eyes caught a figure moving across the lawn.

"The girl that helps Victor Dorn?" said Davy, astonished. "What's SHE coming HERE for? You don't know her--do you?"

"Don't you?" evaded Jane. "I thought you and Mr. Dorn were such pals."

"Pals?" laughed Hull. "Hardly that. We meet now and then at a workingman's club I'm interested in--and at a cafe' where I go to get in touch with the people occasionally--and in the street. But I never go to his office. I couldn't afford to do that. And I've never seen Miss Gordon."

"Well, she's worth seeing," said Jane. "You'll never see another like her."

They rose and watched her advancing. To the usual person, acutely conscious of self, walking is not easy in such circ.u.mstances. But Selma, who never bothered about herself, came on with that matchless steady grace which peasant girls often get through carrying burdens on the head. Jane called out:

"So, you've come, after all."

Selma smiled gravely. Not until she was within a few feet of the steps did she answer: "Yes--but on business." She was wearing the same linen dress. On her head was a sailor hat, beneath the brim of which her amazingly thick hair stood out in a kind of defiance. This hat, this further article of Western civilization's dress, added to the suggestion of the absurdity of such a person in such clothing. But in her strange Cossack way she certainly was beautiful--and as healthy and hardy as if she had never before been away from the high, wind-swept plateaus where disease is unknown and where nothing is thought of living to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five. Both before and after the introduction Davy Hull gazed at her with fascinated curiosity too plainly written upon his long, sallow, serious face. She, intent upon her mission, ignored him as the arrow ignores the other birds of the flock in its flight to the one at which it is aimed.

"You'll give me a minute or two alone?" she said to Jane. "We can walk on the lawn here."

Hull caught up his hat. "I was just going," said he. Then he hesitated, looked at Selma, stammered: "I'll go to the edge of the lawn and inspect the view."

Neither girl noted this abrupt and absurd change of plan. He departed.

As soon as he had gone half a dozen steps, Selma said in her quick, direct fas.h.i.+on:

"I've come to see you about the strike."

Jane tried to look cool and reserved. But that sort of expression seemed foolish in face of the simplicity and candor of Selma Gordon.

Also, Jane was not now so well pleased with her father's ideas and those of her own interest as she had been while she was talking with him. The most exasperating thing about the truth is that, once one has begun to see it--has begun to see what is for him the truth--the honest truth--he can not hide from it ever again. So, instead of looking cold and repellant, Jane looked uneasy and guilty. "Oh, yes--the strike,"

she murmured.

"It is over," said Selma. "The union met a half hour ago and revoked its action--on Victor Dorn's advice. He showed the men that they had been trapped into striking by the company--that a riot was to be started and blamed upon them--that the militia was to be called in and they were to be shot down."

"Oh, no--not that!" cried Jane eagerly. "It wouldn't have gone as far as that."

"Yes--as far as that," said Selma calmly. "That sort of thing is an old story. It's been done so often--and worse. You see, the respectable gentlemen who run things hire disreputable creatures. They don't tell them what to do. They don't need to. The poor wretches understand what's expected of them--and they do it. So, the respectable gentlemen can hold up white hands and say quite truthfully, 'No blood-no filth on these--see!"' Selma was laughing drearily. Her superb, primitive eyes, set ever so little aslant, were flas.h.i.+ng with an intensity of emotion that gave Jane Hastings a sensation of terror-much as if a man who has always lived where there were no storms, but such gentle little rains with restrained and refined thunder as usually visit the British Isles, were to find himself in the midst of one of those awful convulsions that come cras.h.i.+ng down the gorges of the Rockies. She marveled that one so small of body could contain such big emotions.

"You mustn't be unjust," she pleaded. "WE aren't THAT wicked, my dear."

Selma looked at her. "No matter," she said. "I am not trying to convert you--or to denounce your friends to you. I'll explain what I've come for. In his speech to-day and in inducing the union to change, Victor has shown how much power he has. The men whose plans he has upset will be hating him as men hate only those whom they fear."

"Yes--I believe that," said Jane. "So, you see, I'm not blindly prejudiced."

"For a long time there have been rumors that they might kill him----"

"Absurd!" cried Jane angrily. "Miss Gordon, no matter how prejudiced you may be--and I'll admit there are many things to justify you in feeling strongly--but no matter how you may feel, your good sense must tell you that men like my father don't commit murder."

"I understand perfectly," replied Selma. "They don't commit murder, and they don't order murder. I'll even say that I don't think they would tolerate murder, even for their benefit. But you don't know how things are done in business nowadays. The men like your father have to use men of the Kelly and the House sort--you know who they are?"