The spirit of commercialism that dominated America during the nineties and the first years of the new century never got hold of Jeff. The air and the light of his land were often the creation of a poet's dream. The delight of life stabbed him, so, too, did its tragedy. Not anchored to conventions, his mind was forever asking questions, seeking answers.
He would come out from a theater into a night that was a flood of illumination. Electric signs poured a glare of light over the streets. Motor cars and electrics whirled up to take away beautifully gowned women and correctly dressed men. The windows of the department stores were filled with imported luxuries. And he would sometimes wonder how much of misery and trouble was being driven back by that gay blare of wealth, how many men and women and children were giving their lives to maintain a civilization that existed by trampling over their broken hearts and bodies.
Preventable poverty stared at him from all sides. He saw that our social fabric is thrown together in the most haphazard fashion, without scientific organization, with the greatest waste, in such a way that non-producers win all the prizes while the toilers do without. Yet out of this system that sows hate and discontent, that is a practical denial of brotherhood, of God, springs here and there love like a flower in a dunghill.
He felt that art and learning, as well as beauty and truth, ought to walk hand in hand with our daily lives. But this is impossible so long as disorder and cruelty and disease are in the world unnecessarily. He heard good people, busy with effects instead of causes, talk about the way out, as if there could be any way out which did not offer an equality of opportunity refused by the whole cruel system of to-day.
But Jeff could be in revolt without losing his temper. The men who profited by present conditions were not monsters. They were as kind of heart as he was, effects of the system just as much as the little bootblack on the corner. No possible good could come of a blind hatred of individuals.
His Bohemian instinct sent Jeff ranging far in those days. He made friends out of the most unlikely material. Some of the most radical of these were in the habit of gathering informally in his rooms about once a week. Sometimes the talk was good and pungent. Much of it was merely wild.
His college friend, Sam Miller, now assistant city librarian, was one of this little circle. Another was Oscar Marchant, a fragile little Socialist poet upon whom consumption had laid its grip. He was not much of a poet, but there burnt in him a passion for humanity that disease and poverty could not extinguish.
One night James Farnum dropped in to borrow some money from his cousin and for ten minutes listened to such talk as he had never heard before. His mind moved among a group of orthodox and accepted ideas. A new one he always viewed as if it were a dynamite bomb timed to go off shortly. He was not only suspicious of it; he was afraid of it.
James was, it happened, in evening dress. He took gingerly the chair his cousin offered him between the hectic Marchant and a little Polish Jew.
The air was blue with the smoke from cheap tobacco. More than one of those present carried the marks of poverty. But the note of the assembly was a cheerful at-homeness. James wondered what the devil his cousin meant by giving this heterogeneous gathering the freedom of his rooms.
Dickinson, the single-taxer, was talking bitterly. He was a big man with a voice like a foghorn. His idea of emphasis appeared to be pounding the table with his blacksmith fist.
“I tell you society doesn't want to hear about such things,” he was declaiming. “It wants to go along comfortably without being disturbed. Ignore everything that's not pleasant, that's liable to harrow the feelings. The sins of our neighbors make spicy reading. Fill the papers with 'em. But their distresses and their poverty! That's different. Let's hear as little about them as possible. Let's keep it a well-regulated world.”
Nearly everybody began to talk at once. James caught phrases here and there out of the melee.
“... Democratic institutions must either decay or become revitalized....To hell with such courts. They're no better than anarchy....In Verden there are only two classes: those who don't get as much as they earn and those who get more.... Tell you we've got to get back to the land, got to make it free as air. You can't be saved from economic slavery till you have socialism. ...”
Suddenly the hubbub subsided and Marchant had the floor. “All of life's a compromise, a horrible unholy giving up as unpractical all the best things. It's a denial of love, of Christ, of God.”
A young preacher who was conducting a mission for sailors on the water front cut in. “Exactly. The church is radically wrong because—”
“Because it hasn't been converted to Christianity yet. Mr. Moneybags in the front pew has got a strangle hold on the parson. Begging your pardon, Mifflin. We know you're not that kind.”
Marchant won the floor again. “Here's the nub of it. A man's a slave so long as his means of livelihood is dependent on some other man. I don't care whether it's lands or railroads or mines. Abolish private property and you abolish poverty.”
They were all at it again, like dogs at a bone. Across the Babel James caught Jeff's gay grin at him.
By sheer weight Dickinson's voice boomed out of the medley.
“... just as Henry George says: 'Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.' We're just beginning to see the effect of private property in land. Within a few years....”
“What we need is to get back to Democracy. Individualism has run wild....”
“Trouble is we can't get anywhere under the Constitution. Every time we make a move—check. It was adopted by aristocrats to hold back the people and that's what it's done. Law—”
Apparently nobody got a chance to finish his argument. The Polish Jew broke in sharply. “Law! There iss no law.”
“Plenty of it, Sobieski, Go out on the streets and preach your philosophic anarchy if you don't believe it. See what it will do to you. Law's a device to bolster up the strong and to hammer down the weak.”
James had given a polite cynical indulgence to views so lost to reason and propriety. But he couldn't quite stand any more. He made a sign to Jeff and they adjourned to the next room.
“Your friends always so—so enthusiastic?” he asked with the slightest lift of his upper lip.
“Not always. They're a little excited to-night because Harshaw imprisoned those fourteen striking miners for contempt of court.”
“Don't manufacture bombs here, do you?”
Jeff laughed. “We're warranted harmless.”
James offered him good advice. “That sort of talk doesn't lead to anything—except trouble. Men who get on don't question the fundamentals of our social system. It doesn't do, you know. Take the constitution. Now I've studied it. A wonderful document. Gladstone said.”
“Yes, I know what Gladstone said. I don't agree with him. The constitution was devised by men with property as a protection against those who had none.”
“Why shouldn't it have been?”
“It should, if vested interests are the first thing to consider. In there”—with a smiling wave of his hand—“they think people are more important than things. A most unsettling notion!”
“Mean to say you believe all that rant they talk?”
“Not quite,” Jeff laughed.
“Well, I'd cut that bunch of anarchists if I were you,” his cousin suggested. “Say, Jeff, can you let me have fifty dollars?”
Jeff considered. He had been thinking of a new spring overcoat, but his winter one would do well enough. From the office he could get an advance of the balance he needed to make up the fifty.
“Sure. I'll bring it to your rooms to-morrow night.”
“Much obliged. Hate to trouble you,” James said lightly. “Well, I won't keep you longer from your anarchist friends. Good-night.”
“The cure for the evils of Democracy is more Democracy.”—De Tocqueville.
THE REBEL HUMBLY ASSISTS AT THE UNVEILING OF A HERO'S STATUE
On the occasion when his cousin was graduated with the highest honors from the law school of Verden University Jeff sat inconspicuously near the rear of the chapel. James, as class orator, rose to his hour. From the moment that he moved slowly to the front of the platform, handsome and impassive, his calm gaze sweeping over the audience while he waited for the little bustle of expectancy to subside, Jeff knew that the name of Farnum was going to be covered with glory.
The orator began in a low clear voice that reached to the last seat in the gallery. Jeff knew that before he finished its echoes would be ringing through the hall like a trumpet call to the emotions of those present.
It was not destined that Jeff should hear a word of that stirring peroration. His eye fell by chance upon a young woman seated in a box beside an elderly man whom he recognized as Peter C. Frome. From that instant he was lost to all sense perception that did not focus upon her. For he was looking at the dryad who had come upon him out of the ferns three years before. She would never know it, but Alice Frome had saved him from the weakness that might have destroyed him. From that day he had been a total abstainer. Now as he looked at her the vivid irregular beauty of the girl flowed through him like music. Her charm for him lay deeper than the golden gleams of imprisoned sunlight woven in her hair, than the gallant poise of the little head above the slender figure. Though these set his heart beating wildly, a sure instinct told him of the fine and exquisite spirit that found its home in her body.
She was leaning forward in her chair, her eyes fixed on James almost as if she were fascinated by his oratory. Her father watched her, a trifle amused at her eagerness. In her admiration she was frank as a boy. When Farnum's last period was rounded out and he made to leave the stage her gloved hands beat together in excited applause.
After the ceremonies were over James came straight to her. Jeff missed no detail of their meeting. The young lawyer was swimming on a tide of triumph, but it was easy to see that Alice Frome's approval was the thing he most desired. His cousin had never seen him so gay, so handsome, so altogether irresistible. For the first time a little spasm of envy shot through Jeff, That the girl liked James was plain enough. How could any girl help liking him?
The orator was so much the center of attention that Jeff postponed his congratulations till evening. He called on his cousin after midnight at his rooms. James had just returned from a class banquet where he had been the toastmaster. He was still riding the big wave.
“It's been a great day for me, Jeff,” he broke out after his cousin had congratulated him. “I've earned it, too. For seven years I've worked toward this day as a climax. Did you see me talking to P. C. Frome and his daughter? I'm going to be accepted socially in the best houses of the city. I'll make them all open to me.”
“I don't doubt it.”
“And the best of it is that I've made my own success.”
“Yes, you've worked hard,” Jeff admitted with a little gleam of humor in his eyes. He would not remind his cousin that he had lent him most of the money to see him through law school.
“Oh, worked!” James was striding up and down the room to get rid of some of his nervous energy. “I've done more than work. I've made opportunities... grabbed them coming and going. Young as I am Verden expects big things of me. And I'll deliver the goods, too.”
“What's the program?” Jeff asked, much amused.
“Don't know yet. I'm going into politics and I mean to get ahead. I'll make a big splash and keep in the public eye.”
His cousin could not help laughing. “You always were a pretty good press agent for J. K. Farnum.”
“Why shouldn't I be?”
“I don't know why you shouldn't. A man who gets ahead puts himself in a position where he can bring about reforms.”
“That's it exactly. I mean to make myself a power.”
“Get hold of one good practical reform and back it. Pound away on it until the people identify you with it. Take direct legislation as your text, say. There's going to be a strong drift that way in the next ten years. Machines and bosses are going to be swept to the junk heap.”
“How do you know?”
Jeff could give no adequate justification for the faith that was in him. It would be no answer to tell James that he knew the plain people of the state better than the politicians did. However, he mentioned a few facts.
“It's all very well for you to be a radical, but I have to conserve my influence,” James objected. “I've got to be practical. If I were just going to be a reporter it would be different.”
“Don't be too practical, James. You've got to have some vision if you're going to lead the people. Nobody is so blind to the future as practical politicians and business men.” He stopped, smiling quizzically. “But you're the orator of the family. I don't want to infringe on your copyright. Only you have the personality to be a real leader. Get started right. Remember that America faces forward, and that we're going to move with seven league boots to better conditions.”
James mused out loud. “If a man could be a Lincoln to save the people from industrial slavery it would be worth while.”
Jeff did not laugh at his conceit. “Go to it. I'll promise you the backing of theWorld.”
“What have you to do with theWorld?”
“Beginning with next Monday I'm to be managing editor.”
“You!”
“Even so. Captain Chunn has bought the paper.”
“Chunn, the man who made millions in a lucky strike in Alaska?”
“Same man.”
James was still incredulous. “How did Chunn happen to pick you for the editor?”
“He's an old friend of mine. 'Member the day I had the fight with Ned Merrill. Captain Chunn was the man who stood up for me.”
“And you've known him ever since?”
“I've always corresponded with him.”
“Well, I'll be hanged. Talk about luck.” James looked his cousin over with increased respect. He always took off his hat to success, but he had been so long accustomed to thinking of Jeff as a failure that he could not adjust his mind to the situation. “Why, you can't run a paper. Can you?”
Jeff smiled. “I told Captain Chunn he was taking a big chance.”
“If he's as rich as they say he is he can afford to lose some money.”
James took the news of his cousin's good fortune a little peevishly. He did not grudge Jeff's advancement, but he resented that it had befallen him to-day of all days. The promotion of the reporter took the edge off his own achievements.
As James understood his own genius, it was as a statesman that he was fitted preeminently to shine. He had the urbanity, the large impassive manner, and the magnetic eloquence of the old-style congressman. All he needed was the chance.
With the passing months he grew more restless at the delay. There were moments in the night when he trembled lest some stroke of evil fate might fall upon him before he had carved his name in the niche of fame. To sit in an empty law office and wait for clients took more patience than he could summon. He wanted an opportunity to make speeches in the campaign that was soon to open. That he finally went to Big Tim himself about it instead of to his ward committeeman was characteristic of James K.
After he sent his card in the young lawyer was kept waiting for thirty-five minutes in an outer office along with a Jew peddler, a pugilist ward heeler, an Irish saloonkeeper, and a brick contractor. Naturally he was exceedingly annoyed. O'Brien ought to know that James K. Farnum did not rank with this riff-raff.
When at last James got into the holy of holies he found Big Tim lolling back in his swivel chair with a fat cigar in his mouth. The boss did not take the trouble to rise as he waved his visitor to a chair.
Farnum explained that he was interested in the political situation and that he was prepared to take an active part in the campaign about to open. The big man listened, watching him out of half shut attentive eyes. He had never yet seen a kid glove politician that was worth the powder to blow him up. Moreover, he had special reasons for disliking this one. His cousin was editor of theWorld, and that paper was becoming a thorn in his side.
O'Brien took the cigar from his mouth. “Did youse go to the primary last night?” he asked.
James did not even know there had been one. He had in point of fact been at a Country Club dance.
“Can youse tell me what the vote of your precinct was at the last city election?”
The budding statesman could not.
“What precinct do youse live in?”
Farnum was not quite sure. He explained that he had moved recently.
Big Tim grunted scornfully. He was pleased to have a chance to take down the cheek of any Farnum.
“What do youse think you can do?”
“I can make speeches. I'm the best orator that ever came out of Verden University.”
“Tommyrot! How do youse stand in your precinct? Can youse get the vote out to go down the line for us? That's what counts. Oratory be damned!”
James was pale with rage. The manner of the boss was nothing less than insulting.
“Then you decline to give me a chance, Mr. O'Brien?”
“I do not. In politics a man makes his own chance. He gets along by being so useful we can't get along without him. See? He learns the game. You don't know the A B C of it. It's my opinion youse never will.”
O'Brien's hard cold eye triumphed over him as a principal does over a delinquent schoolboy.
His vanity stung, the lawyer sprang to his feet. “Very well, Mr. O'Brien. I'll show you a thing or two about what I can and can't do.”
For just an instant a notion flitted across Big Tim's mind that he might be making a mistake. He was indulging an ugly temper, and he knew it. This was a luxury he rarely permitted himself. Now he decided to “go the whole hog,” as he phrased it to himself later. His lips set to an ugly snarl.
“It's like the nerve of ye to come to me. Want to begin at the top instid of at the bottom. Go to Billie Gray if youse want to have some wan learn youse the game. If you're any good he'll find it out.”
James got himself out of the office with all the dignity of which he was capable. Go to Billie Gray, the notorious ballot box stuffer! Take orders from the little rascal who had shaved the penitentiary only because of his pull! James saw himself doing it. He was sore in every outraged nerve of him. Never before in his life had anybody sat and sneered at him openly before his eyes. He would show the big boss that he had been a fool to treat him so. And he would show P. C. Frome and Ned Merrill that he was a very valuable man.
How? Why, by fighting the corporations! Wasn't that the way that all the big men got their start nowadays as lawyers? As soon as they discovered his value Frome and his friends would be after his services fast enough. James was no radical, but he believed Jeff knew what he was talking about when he predicted an impending political change, one that would carry power back from the machine bosses to the people. The young lawyer decided to ride that wave as far as it would take him. He would be a tribune of the people, and they in turn would make of him their hero. With the promised backing of theWorldhe would go a long way. He knew that Jeff would fling him at once into the limelight. And he would make good. He would be the big speaker for the reform movement. Nobody in the state could sway a crowd as he could. James had not the least doubt about that. It was glory and applause he wanted, not the drudgery of dirty ward politics.
Under Jeff's management theWorldhad at once taken the leadership in the fight for political reform in the state. He made it the policy of the paper to tell the truth as to corruption both in and out of his own party. Nor would he allow the business office, as influenced by the advertisers, to dictate the policy of the paper. The result was that at the end of the first year he went to the owner with a report of a deficit of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for the twelve months just ended.
Captain Chunn only laughed. “Keep it up, son. I've had lots of fun out of it. You've given this town one grand good shaking up. The whole state is getting its fighting clothes on. We've got Merrill and Frome scared stiff about their supreme court judges. Looks to me as if we were going to lick them.”
The political campaign was already in progress. Hitherto the public utility corporations of Verden had controlled and practically owned the machinery of both parties. TheWorldhad revolted, rallied the better sentiment in the party to which it belonged, and forced the convention to declare for a reform platform and to nominate a clean ticket composed of men of character.
Jeff agreed. “I think we're going to win. The people are with us. TheWorldis booming.” It's the advertising troubles me. Frome and Merrill have got at the big stores and they won't come in with any space worth mentioning.”
“Damn the big advertisers,” exploded Chunn. “I've got two million cold and I'm going to see this thing out, son. That's what I told Frome last week when he had the nerve to have me nominated to the Verden Club. Wanted to muzzle me. Be a good fellow and quit agitating. That was the idea. I sent back word I'd stuck by Lee to Appomattox and I reckoned I was too old a dog to learn the new trick of deserting my flag.”
“If you're satisfied I ought to be,” Jeff laughed. “As for the advertising, the stores will come back soon. The managers all want to take space, but they are afraid of spoiling their credit at the banks while conditions are so unsettled.”
“Oh, well. We'll stick to our guns. You fire'em and I'll supply the ammunition.” The little man put his hand on Jeff's shoulder with a chuckle. “We're both rebels—both irreconcilables, son. I reckon we're going to be well hated before we get through with this fight.”
“Yes. They're going about making people believe we're cranks and agitators who are hurting business for our own selfish ends.”
“I reckon we can stand it, David.” Chunn had no children of his own and he always called Jeff son or David. “By the way, how's that good looking cousin of yours coming out? I see you're giving his speeches lots of space.”
A light leaped to the eyes of the younger man. “He's doing fine. James is a born orator. Wherever he goes he gets a big ovation.”
Chunn grunted. “Humph! That'll please him. He's as selfish as the devil, always looking out for James Farnum.”
“He wins the people, Captain.”
“You talk every evening yourself, but I don't see reports of any of your speeches.”
“I don't talk like James. There's not a man in the state to equal him, young as he is.”
“Humph!”
Captain Chunn grumbled a good deal about the way Jeff was always pushing his cousin forward and keeping in the background himself. In his opinion “David” was worth a hundred of the other.
“Spirits of old that bore me,And set me, meek of mind,Between great deeds before me,And deeds as great behind,Knowing Humanity my starAs forth of old I ride,O help me wear with every scarHonor at eventide.”
THE REBEL DISCOVERS THAT ADHESION IS A PROPERTY OF MUD; ALSO THAT A SOLDIER MUST SOMETIMES TURN HIS BACK AND BURN THE BRIDGES BEHIND HIM
The fight for the control of the state developed unprecedented bitterness. The big financial interests back of the political machines poured out money like water to elect a ticket that would be friendly to capital. An eight-hour-day bill to apply to miners and underground workers had been passed by the last legislature and a supreme court must be elected to declare this law unconstitutional. Moreover, a United States senator was to be chosen, so that the personnel of the assembly was a matter of great importance.
Through the subsidized columns of theAdvocateand theHeraldall the venom of outraged public plunder was emptied on the heads of Jeff Farnum and Captain Chunn. They were rebels, blackmailers, and anarchists. Jeff's life was held up to public scorn as dissolute and licentious. He had been expelled from college and consorted only with companions of the lowest sort. A free thinker and an atheist, he wanted to tear down the pillars which upheld society. Unless Verden and the state repudiated him and his gang of trouble breeders the poison of their opinions would infect the healthy fabric of the community.
There was about Jeff a humility, a sort of careless generosity, that could take with a laugh a hit at himself. But in the days that followed he was often made to wince when good men drew away from him as from a moral pervert. Twice he was hissed from the stage when he attempted to talk, or would have been, if he had not quietly waited until the indignant protesters were exhausted. It amused him to see that his old college acquaintance “Sissie” Thomas and Billy Gray, the ballot box stuffer of the Second Ward, were among the most vehement of those who thus scorned him. So do the extremes of virtue and vice find common ground when the blasphemer raises his voice against intrenched capital.
The personal calumny of the enemy showed how hard hit the big bosses were, how beneath their feet they felt the ground of public opinion shift. It had been only a year since Big Tim O'Brien, boss of the city by permission of the public utility corporations, had read Jeff's first editorial against ballot box stuffing. In it the editor of theWorldhad pledged that paper never to give up the fight for the people until such crookedness was stamped out. Big Tim had laughed until his paunch shook at the confidence of this young upstart and in impudent defiance had sent him a check for fifty dollars for the Honest Election League.
Neither Big Tim nor the respectable buccaneers back of him were laughing now. They were fighting with every ounce in them to sweep back the wave of civic indignation theWorldhad gathered into a compact aggressive organization.
Young Ned Merrill, who represented the interests of the allied corporations, had Big Tim on the carpet. The young man had not been out of Harvard more than three years, but he did not let any nonsense about fair play stand in his way. In spite of the clean-cut look of him—he was broadshouldered and tall, with an effect of decision in the square cleft chin that would some day degenerate into fatness—Ned Merrill played the game of business without any compunctions.
“You're making a bad fight of it, O'Brien. Old style methods won't win for us. These crank reformers have got the people stirred up. Keep your ward workers busy, but don't expect them to win.” He leaned forward and brought his fist down heavily on the desk. “We've got to smash Farnum—discredit him with the bunch of sheep who are following him.”
“What more do youse want? We're callin' him ivery black name under Hiven.”
Merrill shook his head decisively. “Not enough. Prove something. Catch him with the goods.”
“If youse'll show me how?”
“I don't care how, You've got detectives, haven't you? Find out all about him, where he comes from, who his people were. Rake his life with a fine tooth comb from the day he was born. He's a bad egg. We all know that. Dig up facts to prove it.”
Within the hour detectives were set to work. One of them left next day for Shelby. Another covered the neighborhoods where Jeff had lived in Verden. Henceforth wherever he went he was shadowed.
It was about this time that Samuel Miller lost his place in the city library on account of his political opinions. For more than a year he and Jeff had roomed together at a private boarding house kept by a Mrs. Anderson. Within twenty-four hours of his dismissal Miller was on the road, sent out by the campaign committee of his party to make speeches throughout the state.
Jeff himself was speaking nearly every night now that the day of election was drawing near. This, together with the work of editing the paper and the strain of the battle, told heavily on a vitality never too much above par. He would come back to his rooms fagged out, often dejected because some friend had deserted to the enemy.
One cold rainy evening he met Nellie Anderson in the hall. She had been saying good-bye to some friends who had been in to call on her.
“You're wet, Mr. Farnum,” the young woman said.
“A little.”
She stood hesitating in the doorway leading to the apartment of herself and her mother, then yielded shyly to a kindly impulse.
“We've been making chocolate. Won't you come in and have some? You look cold.”
Jeff glimpsed beyond her the warm grate fire in the room. He, too, yielded to an impulse. “Since you're so good as to ask me, Miss Nellie.”
She took charge of his hat and overcoat, making him sit down in a big armchair before the fire. He watched her curiously as she moved lightly about waiting on him. Nellie was a soft round little person with constant intimations of a childhood not long outgrown. Jeff judged she must be nineteen or twenty, but she had moments of being charmingly unsure of herself. The warm color came and went in her clear cheeks at the least provocation.
“Mother's gone to bed. She always goes early. You don't mind,” she asked naively.
Jeff smiled. She was, he thought, about as worldly wise as a fluffy kitten. “No, I don't mind at all,” he assured her.
Nor did he in the least. His weariness was of the spirit rather than the body, and he found her grace, her shy sweetness, grateful to the jaded senses. It counted in her favor that she was not clever or ultra-modern. The dimpling smiles, the quick sympathy of this innocent, sensuous young creature, drew him out of his depression. When he left the pleasant warmth of the room half an hour later it was with a little glow at the heart. He had found comfort and refreshment.
How it came to pass Jeff never quite understood, but it soon was almost a custom for him to drop into the living room to get a cup of chocolate when he came home. He found himself looking forward to that half hour alone with Nellie Anderson. Whoever else criticized him, she did not. The manner in which she made herself necessary to his material comfort was masterly. She would be waiting, eager to help him off with his overcoat, hot chocolate and sandwiches ready for him in the cozy living-room. To him, who for years had lived a hand-to-mouth boarding house existence, her shy wholesome laughter made that room sing of home, one which her personality fitted to a dot. She was always in good humor, always trim and neat, always alluring to the eye. And she had the pretty little domestic ways that go to the head of a bachelor when he eats alone with an attractive girl.
Their intimacy was not exactly a secret. Mrs. Anderson, who was rather deaf and admitted to being a heavy sleeper, knew that Jeff dropped in occasionally. He suspected she did not know how regularly, but she was one of that large class of American mothers who let their daughters arrange their own love affairs and would not have interfered had she known.
Once or twice it flashed upon Jeff that this ought not to go on. Since he had no intention of marrying Nell he must not let their relationship reach the emotional climax toward which he guessed it was racing. But his experience in such matters was limited. He did not know how to break off their friendship without hurting her, and he was eager to minimize the possibility of danger. His modesty made this last easy. Out of her kindness she was good to him, but it was not to be expected that so pretty a girl would fall in love with a man like him.
The most potent argument for letting things drift was his own craving for her. She was becoming necessary to him. Whenever he thought of her it was with a tender glow. Her soft long-lashed eyes would come between him and the editorial he was writing. A dozen times a day he could see a picture of the tilted little coaxing mouth. The gurgle of her laughter called to him for hours before he left the office.
He got into the habit of talking to her about the things that were troubling him—the tactics of the enemy, the desertion of friends, the dubious issue of the campaign. Curled up in a big chair, her whole attention absorbed in what he was saying Nellie made a good listener. If she did not show a full understanding of the situation, he could always sense her ready sympathy. Her naive, indignant loyalty was touching.
“I read what theAdvocatesaid about you today,” she told him one night, a tide of color in her cheeks. “It was horrid. As if anybody would believe it.”
“I'm afraid a good many people do,” he said gravely.
“Nobody who knows you,” she protested stoutly.
“Yes, some who know me.”
He let his eyes dwell on her. It was easy to see how undisciplined of life she was, save where its material aspects had come into impact with her on the economic side.
“None of your real friends.”
“How many real friends has a man—friends who will stand by him no matter how unpopular he is?”
“I don't know. I should think you'd have lots of them.”
He shook his head, a hint of a smile in his eyes. “Not many. They keep their chocolate and sandwiches for folks whose trolley do'esn't fly the wire.”
“What wire?” she asked, her forehead knitted to a question.
“Oh, the wire that's over the tracks of respectability and vested interests and special privilege.”
She had been looking at him, but now her gaze went to the fire with that slow tilt of the chin he liked. Another color wave swept the oval of the soft cheeks.
“You've got more friends than you think,” she said in a low voice.
“I've got one little friend I wouldn't like to lose.”
She did not speak and his hand moved forward to cover hers. Instantly a wild and insurgent emotion tingled through him. He felt himself trembling and could not steady his nerves.
Without a word Nellie looked up and their eyes met. Something electric flashed from one to another. Her shy fear of him was adorable.
“Oh, don't, don't!” she murmured. “What will you think of me now?”
He had leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.
Jeff sprang to his feet, the muscles in his lean cheeks standing out. Some bell of warning was ringing in him. He was a man, young and desirous, subject to all the frailties of his sex, holding experiences in his past that had left him far from a puritan. And she was a woman, of unschooled impulses, with unsuspected banked passions, an innocent creature in whom primeval physical life rioted.
He moved toward the door, his left fist beating into the palm of his right hand. He must protect her, against himself—and against her innocent affection for him.
She fluttered past him, barring the way. Her cheeks were flaming with shame.
“You despise me. Why did I let you?” A sob swelled up into her soft round throat.
“You blessed lamb,” he groaned.
“You're going to leave me. You—you don't want me for a friend any longer.”
Her lips trembled—the red little lips that always reminded him of a baby's with its Cupid's bow. She was on the verge of breaking down. Jeff could not stand that. He held out his hands, intending to take hers and explain that he was not angry or disappointed at her. But somehow he found her in his arms instead, supple and warm, vital youth flowing in the soft cheeks' rich coloring and in the eyes quick and passionate with the tender abandon of her sex.
He set his teeth against the rush of desire that flooded him as her soft body clung to his. The emotional climax he had vaguely feared had leaped upon them like an uncaged tiger. He fought to stamp down the fires that blazed up in him. Time to think—he must have time to think.
“You don't despise me then,” she cried softly, a little catch in her breath.
“No,” he protested, and again “No.”
“But you think I've done wrong.”
“No. I've been to blame. You're a dear girl—and I've abused your kindness. I must go away—now.”
“Then you—you do hate me,” she accused with a quivering lip.
“No... no. I'm very fond of you.”
“But you're going to leave me. It's because I've done wrong.”
“Don't blame yourself, dear. It has been all my fault. I ought to have known.”
Her hands fell from him. The life seemed to die out of her whole figure. “You do despise me.”
Desire of her throbbed through him, but he spoke very quietly. “Listen, dear. There is nobody I respect more... and none I like so much. I can't tell you how... fond of you I am. But I must go now. You don't understand.”
She bit her lip to repress the sobs that would come and turned away to hide her shame. Jeff caught her in his arms, kissed her passionately on the lips, the eyes, the soft round throat.
“You do... like me,” she purred happily.
Abruptly he pushed her from him. Where were they drifting? He must get his anchors down before it was too late.
Somehow he broke away, leaving her there hurt and bewildered at his apparent fickleness, at the stiffness with which he had beaten back the sweet delight inviting them.
Jeff went to his rooms, his mind in a blind chaotic surge. He sat before the table for hours, fighting grimly to persuade himself he need not put away this joy that had come to him. Surely friendship was a good thing... and love. A man ought not to turn his back on them.
It was long past midnight when he rose, took his father's sword from the wall where it hung, and unsheathed it. A vision of an open fireplace in a log house rose before him, his father in the foreground looking like a picture of Stonewall Jackson. The kind brave eyes that were the soul of honor gazed at him.
“You damned scoundrel! You damned scoundrel!” Jeff accused himself in a low voice.
He knew his little friend was good and innocent, but he knew too she had inherited a temperament that made her very innocence a anger to her. Every instinct of chivalry called upon him to protect her from the weakness she did not even guess. She had given him her kindness and her friendship, the dear child! It was up to him to be worthy of them. If he failed her he would be a creature forever lost to decency.
There was a sob in his throat as Jeff pushed the blade back into the worn scabbard and rehung the sword upon the wall. But the eyes in his lifted face were very bright. He too would keep his sword unstained and the flag of honor flying.
All through the next day and the next his resolution held. He took pains not to see her alone, though there was not an hour of the day when he could get away from the thought of her. The uneasy consciousness was with him that the issue was after all only postponed, that decisions of this kind must be made again and again so long as opportunity and desire go together. And there were moments of reaction when his will was like a rope of sand, when the longing for her swept over him like a great wave.
As Jeff slipped quietly into the hall the door of her room opened. Their eyes met, and presently hers fell. She was troubled and ashamed at what she had done, but plainly eager in her innocence to be forgiven.
Jeff spoke gently. “Nellie.”
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “Aren't we ever going to be friends again?”
Through the open door he could see the fire glowing in the grate and the chocolate set on the little table. He knew she had prepared for his coming and how greatly she would be hurt if he rejected her advances.
“Of course we're friends.”
“Then you'll come in, just for a few minutes.”
He hesitated.
“Please,” she whispered. “Or I'll know you don't like me any more.”
Jeff followed her into the room and closed the door behind him.