The Conflict Part 40

"How narrow you are!" cried Jane, derisive but even more angry.

"It's different--entirely different--with a man, even in our cla.s.s.

But a woman of our cla.s.s--she's a lady or she's nothing at all. And a lady couldn't be so lacking in refinement as to descend to a man socially beneath her."

"I can see how ANY woman might fall in love with Victor Dorn."

"You're just saying that to be argumentative," said Davy with conviction. "Take yourself, for example."

"I confess I don't see any such contrast between Victor and you--except where the comparison's altogether in his favor," said Jane pleasantly.

"You don't know as much as he does. You haven't the independence of character--or the courage--or the sincerity. You couldn't be a real leader, as he is. You have to depend on influence, and on trickery."

A covert glance at the tall, solemn-looking young man riding silently beside her convinced her that he was as uncomfortable as she had hoped to make him.

"As for manners--and the things that go to make a gentleman," she went on, "I'm not sure but that there, too, the comparison is against you.

You always suggest to me that if you hadn't the pattern set for men of our cla.s.s and didn't follow it, you'd be absolutely lost, Davy, dear.

While Victor--he's a fine, natural person, with the manners that grow as naturally out of his personality as oak leaves grow out of an oak."

Jane was astonished and delighted by this eloquence of hers about the man she loved--an eloquence far above her usual rather commonplace mode of speech and thought. Love was indeed an inspirer! What a person she would become when she had Victor always stimulating her. She went on:

"A woman would never grow tired of Victor. He doesn't talk stale stuff such as all of us get from the stale little professors and stale, dreary text-books at our colleges."

"Why don't you fall in love with him?" said Davy sourly.

"I do believe you're envious of Victor Dorn," retorted Jane.

"What a disagreeable mood you're in to-day," said Davy.

"So a man always thinks when a woman speaks well of another man in his presence."

"I didn't suspect you of being envious of Selma. Why should you suspect me of feeling ungenerously about Victor? Fall in love with him if you like. Heaven knows, I'd do nothing to stop it."

"Perhaps I shall," said Jane, with unruffled amiability. "You're setting a dangerous example of breaking down cla.s.s lines."

"Now, Jane, you know perfectly well that while, if I married Selma she'd belong to my cla.s.s, a woman of our cla.s.s marrying Victor Dorn would sink to his cla.s.s. Why quarrel about anything so obviously true?"

"Victor Dorn belongs to a cla.s.s by himself," replied Jane. "You forget that men of genius are not regarded like you poor ordinary mortals."

Davy was relieved that they had reached the turning at which they had to separate. "I believe you are in love with him," said he as a parting shot.

Jane, riding into her lane, laughed gayly, mockingly. She arrived at home in fine humor. It pleased her that Davy, for all his love for Selma, could yet be jealous of Victor Dorn on her account. And more than ever, after this talk with him--the part of it that preceded the quarrel--she felt that she was doing a fine, brave, haughtily aristocratic thing in loving Victor Dorn. Only a woman with a royal soul would venture to be thus audacious.

Should she encourage or discourage the affair between Davy and Selma?

There was much to be said for this way of removing Selma from her path; also, if a man of Davy Hull's position married beneath him, less would be thought of her doing the same thing. On the other hand, she felt that she had a certain property right in David Hull, and that Selma was taking what belonged to her. This, she admitted to herself, was mean and small, was unworthy of the woman who was trying to be worthy of Victor Dorn, of such love as she professed for him. Yes, mean and small. She must try to conquer it.

But--when she met Selma in the woods a few mornings later, her dominant emotions were anything but high-minded and generous. Selma was looking her most fascinating--wild and strange and unique. They caught sight of each other at the same instant. Jane came composedly on--Selma made a darting movement toward a by-path opening near her, hesitated, stood like some shy, lovely bird of the deep wilderness ready to fly away into hiding.

"h.e.l.lo, Selma!" said Jane carelessly.

Selma looked at her with wide, serious eyes.

"Where have you been keeping yourself of late? Busy with the writing, I suppose?"

"I owe you an apology," said Selma, in a queer, suppressed voice. "I have been hating you, and trying to think of some way to keep you and Victor Dorn apart. I thought it was from my duty to the cause. I've found out that it was a low, mean personal reason."

Jane had stopped short, was regarding her with eyes that glowed in a pallid face. "Because you are in love with him?" she said.

Selma gave a quick, shamed nod. "Yes," she said--the sound was scarcely audible.

Selma's frank and generous--and confiding--self-sacrifice aroused no response in Jane Hastings. For the first time in her life she was knowing what it meant to hate.

"And I've got to warn you," Selma went on, "that I am going to do whatever I can to keep you from hindering him. Not because I love him, but because I owe it to the cause. He belongs to it, and I must help him be single-hearted for it. You could only be a bad influence in his life. I think you would like to be a sincere woman; but you can't.

Your cla.s.s is too strong for you. So--it would be wrong for Victor Dorn to love and to marry you. I think he realizes it and is struggling to be true to himself. I intend to help him, if I can."

Jane smiled cruelly. "What hypocrisy!" she said, and turned and walked away.

VIII

In America we have been bringing up our women like men, and treating them like children. They have active minds with nothing to act upon.

Thus they are driven to think chiefly about themselves. With Jane Hastings, self-centering took the form of self-a.n.a.lysis most of the time. She was intensely interested in what she regarded as the new development of her character. This definite and apparently final decision for the narrow and the ungenerous. In fact, it was no new development, but simply a revelation to herself of her own real character. She was seeing at last the genuine Jane Hastings, inevitable product of a certain heredity in a certain environment. The high thinking and talking, the idealistic aspiration were pose and pretense. Jane Hastings was a selfish, self-absorbed person, ready to do almost any base thing to gain her ends, ready to hate to the uttermost any one who stood between her and her object.

"I'm certainly not a lovely person--not a lovable person," thought she, with that gentle tolerance wherewith we regard our ownselves, whether in the dress of pretense or in the undress of deformed humanness.

"Still--I am what I am, and I've got to make the best of it."

As she thought of Selma's declaration of war she became less and less disturbed about it. Selma neither would nor could do anything sly.

Whatever she attempted in the open would only turn Victor Dorn more strongly toward herself. However, she must continue to try to see him, must go to see him in a few days if she did not happen upon him in her rides or walks. How poorly he would think of her if he knew the truth about her! But then, how poor most women--and men, too--would look in a strong and just light. Few indeed could stand idealizing; except Victor, no one she knew. And he was human enough not to make her uncomfortable in his presence.

But it so happened that before she could see Victor Dorn her father disobeyed Dr. Charlton and gave way to the appet.i.te that was the chief cause of his physical woes. He felt so well that he ate the family dinner, including a peach cobbler with whipped cream, which even the robust Jane adventured warily. Martha was dining with them. She abetted her father. "It's light," said she. "It couldn't harm anybody."

"You mustn't touch it, popsy," said Jane.

She unthinkingly spoke a little too commandingly. Her father, in a perverse and reckless mood, took Martha's advice. An hour later Dr.

Charlton was summoned, and had he not arrived promptly----

"Another fifteen or twenty minutes," said he to the old man when he had him out of immediate danger, "and I'd have had nothing to do but sign a certificate of natural death."

"Murder would have been nearer the truth," said Martin feebly. "That there fool Martha!"

"Come out from behind that petticoat!" cried Charlton. "Didn't I spend the best part of three days in giving you the correct ideas as to health and disease--in showing you that ALL disease comes from indigestion--ALL disease, from falling hair and sore eyes to weak ankles and corns? And didn't I convince you that you could eat only the things I told you about?"

"Don't hit a man when he's down," groaned Hastings.

"If I don't, you'll do the same idiotic trick again when I get you up--if I get you up."

Hastings looked quickly at him. This was the first time Charlton had ever expressed a doubt about his living. "Do you mean that?" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Or are you just trying to scare me?"

"Both," said Charlton. "I'll do my best, but I can't promise. I've lost confidence in you. No wonder doctors, after they've been in practice a few years, stop talking food and digestion to their patients. I've never been able to convince a single human being that appet.i.te is not the sign of health, and yielding to it the way to health. But I've made lots of people angry and have lost their trade.