``These men are always edging you on against Victor Dorn--what's the matter with them?'' pursued Jane.``_I_ saw, when Davy Hull talked about him.They're envious and jealous of him, father.
They're afraid he'll distance them.And they don't want you to realize what a useful man he could be--how he could help you if you helped him--made friends with him-- roused the right kind of ambition in him.''
``When a man's ambitious,'' observed Hastings, out of the fullness of his own personal experience, ``it means he's got something inside him, teasing and nagging at him--something that won't let him rest, but keeps pushing and pulling--and he's got to keep fighting, trying to satisfy it--and he can't wait to pick his ground or his weapons.''
``And Victor Dorn,'' said Jane, to make it clearer to her father by putting his implied thought into words, ``Victor Dorn is doing the best he can--fighting on the only ground that offers and with the only weapons he can lay hands on.''
The old man nodded.``I never have blamed him-- not really,''
declared he.``A practical man--a man that's been through things--he understands how these things are,'' in the tone of a philosopher.``Yes, I reckon Victor's doing the best he can--getting up by the only ladder he's got a chance at.''
``The way to get him off that ladder is to give him another,''
said Jane.
A long silence, the girl letting her father thresh the matter out in his slow, thorough way.Finally her young impatience conquered her restraint.``Well-- what do you think, popsy?''
inquired she.
``That I've got about as smart a gel as there is in Remsen City,'' replied he.
``Don't lay it on too thick,'' laughed she.
He understood why she was laughing, though he did not show it.
He knew what his much-traveled daughter thought of Remsen City, but he held to his own provincial opinion, nevertheless.Nor, perhaps, was he so far wrong as she believed.A cross section of human society, taken almost anywhere, will reveal about the same quantity of brain, and the quality of the mill is the thing, not of the material it may happen to be grinding.
She understood that his remark was his way of letting her know that he had taken her suggestion under advisement.This meant that she had said enough.And Jane Hastings had made herself an adept in the art of handling her father--an accomplishment she could by no means have achieved had she not loved him; it is only when a woman deeply and strongly loves a man that she can learn to influence him, for only love can put the necessary sensitiveness into the nerves with which moods and prejudices and whims and such subtle uncertainties can be felt out.
The next day but one, coming out on the front veranda a few minutes before lunch time she was startled rather than surprised to see Victor Dorn seated on a wicker sofa, hat off and gaze wandering delightedly over the extensive view of the beautiful farming country round Remsen City.She paused in the doorway to take advantage of the chance to look at him when he was off his guard.Certainly that profile view of the young man was impressive.It is only in the profile that we get a chance to measure the will or propelling force behind a character.In each of the two main curves of Dorn's head--that from the top of the brow downward over the nose, the lips, the chin and under, and that from the back of the head round under the ear and forward along the lower jaw--in each of these curves Dorn excelled.
She was about to draw back and make a formal entry, when he said, without looking toward her:
``Well--don't you think it would be safe to draw near?''
The tone was so easy and natural and so sympathetic --the tone of Selma Gordon--the tone of all natural persons not disturbed about themselves or about others --that Jane felt no embarrassment whatever.``I've heard you were very clever,'' said she, advancing.``So, I wanted to have the advantage of knowing you a little better at the outset than you would know me.''
``But Selma Gordon has told me all about you,'' said he--he had risen as she advanced and was shaking hands with her as if they were old friends.``Besides, I saw you the other day--in spite of your effort to prevent yourself from being seen.''
``What do you mean?'' she asked, completely mystified.
``I mean your clothes,'' explained he.``They were unusual for this part of the world.And when anyone wears unusual clothes, they act as a disguise.Everyone neglects the person to center on the clothes.''
``I wore them to be comfortable,'' protested Jane, wondering why she was not angry at this young man whose manner ought to be regarded as presuming and whose speech ought to be rebuked as impertinent.
``Altogether?'' said Dorn, his intensely blue eyes dancing.
In spite of herself she smiled.``No--not altogether,'' she admitted.
``Well, it may please you to learn that you scored tremendously as far as one person is concerned.My small nephew talks of you all the time--the `lady in the lovely pants.' ''
Jane colored deeply and angrily.She bent upon Victor a glance that ought to have put him in his place --well down in his place.
But he continued to look at her with unchanged, laughing, friendly blue eyes, and went on: ``By the way, his mother asked me to apologize for HIS extraordinary appearance.I suppose neither of you would recognize the other in any dress but the one each had on that day.He doesn't always dress that way.His mother has been ill.He wore out his play-clothes.If you've had experience of children you'll know how suddenly they demolish clothes.She wasn't well enough to do any tailoring, so there was nothing to do but send Leonard forth in his big brother's unchanged cast-offs.''
Jane's anger had quite passed away before Dorn finished this simple, ingenuous recital of poverty unashamed, this somehow fine laying open of the inmost family secrets.``What a splendid person your sister must be!'' exclaimed she.
