THE CONFLICT
by
David Graham Phillips
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
I
Four years at Wellesley; two years about equally divided among Paris, Dresden and Florence. And now Jane Hastings was at home again. At home in the unchanged houseâ spacious, old-fashionedâ looking down from its steeply sloping lawns and terraced gardens upon the sooty, smoky activities of Remsen City, looking out upon a charming panorama of hills and valleys in the heart of South Central Indiana. Six years of striving in the East and abroad to satisfy the restless energy she inherited from her father; and here she was, as restless as everâ yet with everything done that a woman could do in the way of an active career. She looked back upon her years of elaborate preparation; she looked forward uponâ nothing. That is, nothing but marriageâ dropping her name, dropping her personality, disappearing in the personality of another. She had never seen a man for whom she would make such a sacrifice; she did not believe that such a man existed.
She meditated bitterly upon that cruel arrangement of Nature's whereby the father transmits his vigorous qualities in twofold measure to the daughter, not in order that she may be a somebody, but solely in order that she may transmit them to sons. âI don't believe it, â she decided. âThere's something for ME to do. â But what? She gazed down at Remsen City, connected by factories and pierced from east, west and south by railways. She gazed out over the fields and woods. Yes, there must be something for her besides merely marrying and breedingâ just as much for her as for a man. But what? If she should marry a man who would let her rule him, she would despise him. If she should marry a man she could respectâ a man who was of the master class like her fatherâ how she would hate him for ignoring her and putting her in her ordained inferior feminine place. She glanced down at her skirts with an angry sense of enforced masquerade. And then she laughedâ for she had a keen sense of humor that always came to her rescue when she was in danger of taking herself too seriously.
Through the foliage between her and the last of the stretches of highroad winding up from Remsen City she spied a man climbing in her directionâ a long, slim figure in cap, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers. Instantlyâ and long before he saw herâ there was a grotesque whisking out of sight of the serious personality upon which we have been intruding. In its stead there stood ready to receive the young man a woman of the type that possesses physical charm and knows how to use itâ and does not scruple to use it. For a woman to conquer man by physical charm is far and away the easiest, the most fleeting and the emptiest of victories. But for woman thus to conquer without herself yielding anything whatsoever, even so little as an alluring glance of the eyeâ that is quite another matter. It was this sort of conquest that Jane Hastings delighted inâ and sought to gain with any man who came within range. If the men had known what she was about, they would have denounced her conduct as contemptible and herself as immoral, even brazen. But in their innocence they accused only their sophisticated and superbly masculine selves and regarded her as the soul of innocence. This was the more absurd in them because she obviously excelled in the feminine art of inviting display of charm. To glance at her was to realize at once the beauty of her figure, the exceeding grace of her long back and waist. A keen observer would have seen the mockery lurking in her light-brown eyes, and about the corners of her full red lips.
She arranged her thick dark hair to make a secret, half-revealed charm of her fascinating pink ears and to reveal in dazzling unexpectedness the soft, round whiteness of the nape of her neck.
Because you are thus let into Miss Hastings' naughty secret, so well veiled behind an air of earnest and almost cold dignity, you must not do her the injustice of thinking her unusually artful. Such artfulness is common enough; it secures husbands by the thousand and by the tens of thousands. No, only in the skill of artfulness was Miss Hastings unusual.
As the long strides of the tall, slender man brought him rapidly nearer, his face came into plain view. A refined, handsome face, dark and serious. He had dark-brown eyesâ and Miss Hastings did not like brown eyes in a man. She thought that men should have gray or blue or greenish eyes, and if they were cruel in their love of power she liked it the better.
âHello, Dave, â she cried in a pleasant, friendly voice. She was posedâ in the most unconscious of attitudesâ upon a rustic bench so that her extraordinary figure was revealed at its most attractive.
The young man halted before her, his breath coming quicklyâ not altogether from the exertion of his steep and rapid climb. âJen, I'm mad about you, â he said, his brown eyes soft and luminous with passion. âI've done nothing but think about you in the week you've been back. I didn't sleep last night, and I've come up here as early as I dared to tell youâ to ask you to marry me. â
He did not see the triumph she felt, the joy in having subdued another of these insolently superior males. Her eyes were discreetly veiled; her delightful mouth was arranged to express sadness.
âI thought I was an ambition incarnate, â continued the young man, unwittingly adding to her delight by detailing how brilliant her conquest was. âI've never cared a rap about womenâ until I saw you. I was all for politicsâ for trying to do something to make my fellow men the better for my having lived. Nowâ it's all gone. I want you, Jen. Nothing else matters. â
As he paused, gazing at her in speechless longing, she lifted her eyesâ simply a glance. With a stifled cry he darted forward, dropped beside her on the bench and tried to enfold her in his arms. The veins stood out in his forehead; the expression of his eyes was terrifying.
She shrank, sprang up. His baffled hands had not even touched her. âDavid Hull! â she cried, and the indignation and the repulsion in her tone and in her manner were not simulated, though her artfulness hastened to make real use of them. She loved to rouse men to frenzy. She knew that the sight of their frenzy would chill herâ would fill her with an emotion that would enable her to remain mistress of the situation.
At sight of her aversion his eyes sank. âForgive me, â he muttered. âYou make meâ CRAZY. â
âI! â she cried, laughing in angry derision. âWhat have I ever done to encourage you to beâ impertinent? â
âNothing, â he admitted. âThat is, nothing but just being yourself. â
âI can't help that, can I? â
âNo, â said he, adding doggedly: âBut neither can men help going crazy about you. â
She looked at him sitting there at once penitent and impenitent; and her mind went back to the thoughts that had engaged it before he came into view. Marriageâ to marry one of these men, with their coarse physical ideas of women, with their pitiful weakness before an emotion that seemed to her to have no charm whatever. And these were the creatures who ruled the world and compelled women to be their playthings and mere appendages! Wellâ no doubt it was the women's own fault, for were they not a poor, spiritless lot, trembling with fright lest they should not find a man to lean on and then, having found the man, settling down into fat and stupid vacuity or playing the cat at the silly game of social position? But not Jane Hastings! Her bosom heaved and her eyes blazed scorn as she looked at this person who had dared think the touch of his coarse hands would be welcome. Welcome!
âAnd I have been thinking what a delightful friendship ours was, â said she, disgustedly. âAnd all the time, your talk about your ambitionâ the speeches you were going to makeâ the offices you were going to holdâ the good you were going to do in purifying politicsâ it was all a blind! â
âAll a blind, â admitted he. âFrom the first night that you came to our house to dinnerâ Jen, I'll never forget that dress you woreâ or the way you looked in it. â
Miss Jane had thought extremely well of that toilet herself. She had heard how impervious this David Hull, the best catch in the town, was to feminine charm; and she had gone prepared to give battle. But she said dejectedly, âYou don't know what a shock you've given me. â
âYes, I do, â cried he. âI'm ashamed of myself. Butâ I love you, Jen! Can't you learn to love me? â
âI hadn't even thought of you in that way, â said she. âI haven't bothered my head about marriage. Of course, most girls have to think about it, because they must get some one to support themâ â â
âI wish to God you were one of that sort, â interrupted he. âThen I could have some hope. â
âHope of what, â said she disdainfully. âYou don't mean that you'd marry a girl who was marrying you because she had to have food, clothing and shelter? â
âI'd marry the woman I loved. Thenâ I'd MAKE her love me. She simply couldn't help it. â
Jane Hastings shuddered. âThank heaven, I don't have to marry! â Her eyes flashed. âBut I wouldn't, even if I were poor. I'd rather go to work. Why shouldn't a woman work, anyhow? â
âAt what? â inquired Hull. âExcept the men who do manual labor, there are precious few men who can make a living honestly and self-respectingly. It's fortunate the women can hold aloof and remain pure. â
Jane laughed unpleasantly. âI'm not so sure that the women who live with men just for shelter are pure, â said she.
âJen, â the young man burst out, âyou're ambitiousâ aren't you? â
âRather, â replied she.
âAnd you like the sort of thing I'm trying to doâ like it and approve of it? â
âI believe a man ought to succeedâ get to the top. â
âSo do Iâ if he can do it honorably. â
Jane hesitatedâ dared. âTo be quite frank, â said she, âI worship success and I despise failure. Success means strength. Failure means weaknessâ and I abominate weakness. â
He looked quietly disapproving. âYou don't mean that. You don't understand what you're saying. â
âPerfectly, â she assured him. âI'm not a bit good. Education has taken all the namby-pamby nonsense out of me. â
But he was not really hearing; besides, what had women to do with the realities of life? They were made to be the property of menâ that was the truth, though he would never have confessed it to any woman. They were made to be possessed. âAnd I must possess this woman, â he thought, his blood running hot. He said:
âWhy not help me to make a career? I can do it, Jen, with you to help. â
She had thought of this beforeâ of making a career for herself, of doing the âsomethingâ her intense energy craved, through a man. The âsomethingâ must be big if it were to satisfy her; and what that was big could a woman do except through a man? Butâ this man. Her eyes turned thoughtfully upon himâ a look that encouraged him to go on:
âPolitics interest you, Jen. I've seen that in the way you listen and in the questions you ask. â
She smiledâ but not at the surface. In fact, his political talk had bored her. She knew nothing about the subject, and, so, had been as one listening to an unknown language. But, like all women, having only the narrowest range of interests herself and the things that would enable her to show off to advantage, she was used to being bored by the conversational efforts of men and to concealing her boredom. She had listened patiently and had led the conversation by slow, imperceptible stages round to the interesting personalâ to the struggle for dominion over this difficult male.
âAnyhow, â he went on, âno intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some thingsâ and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain stealing unless we give some service in return. For instance, you and Iâ what have we done, what are we doing that entitles us to draw so much? Somebody must earn by hard labor all that is produced. We are not earning. Soââ he was looking handsome now in his manly earnestnessâ âJen, it's up to us to do our shareâ to stop stealingâ isn't it? â
She was genuinely interested. âI hadn't thought of these things, â said she.
âVictor Dorn says we ought to go to work like laborers, â pursued David. âBut that's where he's a crank. The truth is, we ought to give the service of leadershipâ especially in politics. And I'm going to do it, Jane Hastings! â
For the first time she had an interest in him other than that of conquest. âJust what are you going to do? â she asked.
âNot upset everything and tear everything to pieces, as Victor Dorn wants to do, â replied he. âBut reform the abuses and wrongsâ make it so that every one shall have a fair chanceâ make politics straight and honest. â
This sounded hazy to her. âAnd what will you get out of it? â asked she.
He colored and was a little uneasy as he thus faced a direct demand for his innermost secretâ the secret of selfishness he tried to hide even from himself. But there was no evading; if he would interest her he must show her the practical advantages of his proposal. âIf I'm to do any good, â said he, putting the best face, and really not a bad face, upon a difficult and delicate matterâ âif I'm to do any good I must win a commanding positionâ must get to be a popular leaderâ must hold hi...