第36章

But she was not to be deflected from the main question, now that it had been brought to the front so unexpectedly and in exactly the way most favorable to her purposes.``You've made me uneasy,'' said she.``I don't in the least understand what you mean.I have wanted, and I still want, to be friends with you--good friends--just as you and Selma Gordon are--though of course I couldn't hope to be as close a friend as she is.I'm too ignorant--too useless.''

He shook his head--with him, a gesture that conveyed the full strength of negation.``We are on opposite sides of a line across which friendship is impossible.I could not be your friend without being false to myself.You couldn't be mine unless you were by some accident flung into the working class and forced to adopt it as your own.Even then you'd probably remain what you are.Only a small part of the working class as yet is at heart of the working class.Most of us secretly--almost openly--despise the life of work, and dream and hope a time of fortune that will put us up among the masters and the idlers.''

His expressive eyes became eloquent.``The false and shallow ideas that have been educated into us for ages can't be uprooted in a few brief years.''

She felt the admiration she did not try to conceal.She saw the proud and splendid conception of the dignity of labor--of labor as a blessing, not a curse, as a badge of aristocracy and not of slavery and shame.``You really believe that, don't you?'' she said.``I know it's true.I say I believe it--who doesn't SAYso? But I don't FEEL it.''

``That's honest,'' said he heartily.``That's some thing to build on.''

``And I'm going to build!'' cried she.``You'll help me--won't you? I know, it's a great deal to ask.Why should you take the time and the trouble to bother with one single unimportant person.''

``That's the way I spend my life--in adding one man or one woman to our party--one at a time.It's slow building, but it's the only kind that endures.There are twelve hundred of us now--twelve hundred voters, I mean.Ten years ago there were only three hundred.We'd expand much more rapidly if it weren't for the constant shifts of population.Our men are forced to go elsewhere as the pressure of capitalism gets too strong.And in place of them come raw emigrants, ignorant, full of dreams of becoming capitalists and exploiters of their fellow men and idlers.Ambition they call it.Ambition!'' He laughed.``What a vulgar, what a cruel notion of rising in the world! To cease to be useful, to become a burden to others!...Did you ever think how many poor creatures have to toil longer hours, how many children have to go to the factory instead of to school, in order that there may be two hundred and seven automobiles privately kept in this town and seventy-four chauffeurs doing nothing but wait upon their masters? Money doesn't grow on bushes, you know.

Every cent of it has to be earned by somebody--and earned by MANUAL labor.''

``I must think about that,'' she said--for the first time as much interested in what he was saying as in the man himself.No small triumph for Victor over the mind of a woman dominated, as was Jane Hastings, by the sex instinct that determines the thoughts and actions of practically the entire female sex.

``Yes--think about it,'' he urged.``You will never see it--or anything--until you see it for yourself.''

``That's the way your party is built--isn't it?'' inquired she.

``Of those who see it for themselves.''

``Only those,'' replied he.``We want no others.''

``Not even their votes?'' said she shrewdly.

``Not even their votes,'' he answered.``We've no desire to get the offices until we get them to keep.And when we shall have conquered the city, we'll move on to the conquest of the county--then of the district--then of the state.Our kind of movement is building in every city now, and in most of the towns and many of the villages.The old parties are falling to pieces because they stand for the old politics of the two factions of the upper class quarreling over which of them should superintend the exploiting of the people.Very few of us realize what is going on before our very eyes-- that we're seeing the death agonies of one form of civilization and the birth-throes of a newer form.''

``And what will it be?'' asked the girl.

She had been waiting for some sign of the ``crank,'' the impractical dreamer.She was confident that this question would reveal the man she had been warned against--that in answering it he would betray his true self.But he disappointed and surprised her.

``How can I tell what it will be?'' said he.``I'm not a prophet.All I can say is I am sure it will be human, full of imperfections, full of opportunities for improvements--and that Ihope it will be better than what we have now.Probably not much better, but a little--and that little, however small it may be, will be a gain.Doesn't history show a slow but steady advance of the idea that the world is for the people who live in it, a slow retreat of the idea that the world and the people and all its and their resources are for a favored few of some kind of an upper class? Yes--I think it is reasonable to hope that out of the throes will come a freer and a happier and a more intelligent race.''

Suddenly she burst out, apparently irrelevantly: ``But Ican't--I really can't agree with you that everyone ought to do physical labor.That would drag the world down--yes, I'm sure it would.''

``I guess you haven't thought about that,'' said he.``Painters do physical labor--and sculptors--and writers-- and all the scientific men--and the inventors-- and--'' He laughed at her--``Who doesn't do physical labor that does anything really useful? Why, you yourself--at tennis and riding and such things--do heavy physical labor.I've only to look at your body to see that.But it's of a foolish kind--foolish and narrowly selfish.''

``I see I'd better not try to argue with you,'' said she.