Part 32

"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."

They talked on and on, she detaining him without seeming to do so. She felt proud of her adroitness. But the truth was that his stopping on for nearly two hours was almost altogether a tribute to her physical charm--though Victor was unconscious of it. When the afternoon was drawing on toward the time for her father to come, she reluctantly let him go. She said:

"But you'll come again?"

"I can't do that," replied he regretfully. "I could not come to your father's house and continue free. I must be able to say what I honestly think, without any restraint."

"I understand," said she. "And I want you to say and to write what you believe to be true and right. But--we'll see each other again. I'm sure we are going to be friends."

His expression as he bade her good-by told her that she had won his respect and his liking. She had a suspicion that she did not deserve either; but she was full of good resolutions, and assured herself she soon would be what she had pretended--that her pretenses were not exactly false, only somewhat premature.

At dinner that evening she said to her father:

"I think I ought to do something beside enjoy myself. I've decided to go down among the poor people and see whether I can't help them in some way."

"You'd better keep away from that part of town," advised her father. "They live awful dirty, and you might catch some disease. If you want to do anything for the poor, send a check to our minister or to the charity society. There's two kinds of poor--those that are working hard and saving their money and getting up out of the dirt, and those that haven't got no spunk or get-up. The first kind don't need help, and the second don't deserve it."

"But there are the children, popsy," urged Jane. "The children of the no-account poor ought to have a chance."

"I don't reckon there ever was a more shiftless, do-easy pair than my father and mother," rejoined Martin Hastings. "They were what set me to jumping."

She saw that his view was hopelessly narrow--that, while he regarded himself justly as an extraordinary man, he also, for purposes of prejudice and selfishness, regarded his own achievements in overcoming what would have been hopeless handicaps to any but a giant in character and in physical endurance as an instance of what any one could do if he would but work. She never argued with him when she wished to carry her point. She now said:

"It seems to me that, in our own interest, we ought to do what we can to make the poor live better. As you say, it's positively dangerous to go about in the tenement part of town--and those people are always coming among us. For instance, our servants have relatives living in Cooper Street, where there's a pest of consumption."

Old Hastings nodded. "That's part of Davy Hull's reform programme," said he. "And I'm in favor of it. The city government ought to make them people clean up."

"Victor Dorn wants that done, too--doesn't he?" said Jane.

"No," replied the old man sourly. "He says it's no use to clean up the slums unless you raise wages--and that then the slum people'd clean themselves up. The idea of giving those worthless trash more money to spend for beer and whisky and finery for their fool daughters. Why, they don't earn what we give 'em now."

Jane couldn't resist the temptation to say, "I guess the laziest of them earn more than Davy Hull or I."

"Because some gets more than they earn ain't a reason why others should." He grinned. "Maybe you and Davy ought to have less, but Victor Dorn and his riff-raff oughtn't to be pampered.... Do you want me to cut your allowance down?"

She was ready for him. "If you can get as satisfactory a housekeeper for less, you're a fool to overpay the one you have."

The old man was delighted. "I've been cheating you," said he. "I'll double your pay."

"You're doing it just in time to stop a strike," laughed the girl.

After a not unknown fashion she was most obedient to her father when his commands happened to coincide with her own inclinations.

Her ardor for an excursion into the slums and the tenements died almost with Victor Dorn's departure. Her father's reasons for forbidding her to go did not impress her as convincing, but she felt that she owed it to him to respect his wishes. Anyhow, what could she find out that she did not know already? Yes, Dorn and her father were right in the conclusion each reached by a different road. She would do well not to meddle where she could not possibly accomplish any good. She could question the servants and could get from them all the facts she needed for urging her father at least to cut down the hours of labor.

The more she thought about Victor Dorn the more uneasy she became. She had made more progress with him than she had hoped to make in so short a time. But she had made it at an unexpected cost. If she had softened him, he had established a disquieting influence over her. She was not sure, but she was afraid, that he was stronger than she--that, if she persisted in her whim, she would soon be liking him entirely too well for her own comfort. Except as a pastime, Victor Dorn did not fit into her scheme of life. If she continued to see him, to yield to the delight of his magnetic voice, of his fresh and original mind, of his energetic and dominating personality, might he not become aroused--begin to assert power over her, compel her to--to--she could not imagine what; only, it was foolish to deny that he was a dangerous man. "If I've got good sense," decided she, "I'll let him alone. I've nothing to gain and everything to lose."

Her motor--the one her father had ordered as a birthday present--came the next day; and on the following day two girl friends from Cincinnati arrived for a long visit. So, Jane Hastings had the help she felt she perhaps needed in resisting the temptings of her whim.

To aid her in giving her friends a good time she impressed Davy Hull, in spite of his protests that his political work made social fooling about impossible. The truth was that the reform movement, of which he was one of the figureheads, was being organized by far more skillful and expert hands than his--and for purposes of which he had no notion. So, he really had all the time in the world to look after Ellen Clearwater and Josie Arthur, and to pose as a serious man bent upon doing his duty as an upper class person of leisure. All that the reform machine wished of him was to talk and to pose--and to ride on the show seat of the pretty, new political wagon.

The new movement had not yet been "sprung" upon the public. It was still an open secret among the young men of the "better element" in the Lincoln, the Jefferson and the University clubs.