when they were walking over the crisp snow in the woods—now deserted, for hotel guests and peasants alike were at the long midday meal—he resumed the subject. her vivid sympathy and interest had brought back the bitter struggle of the past two years with a rush.
“how i wish you had been with me when we made our graft fight,” he said, looking at her with fond eager eyes. “what a mate you would have been. when the whole town is howling at a man because he is trying to do the right thing, he needs just such a woman as you to keep the courage in him. the concerted opinion of the majority has an insidious power! sometimes we wondered if we could be right, if we were not all dreamers, unpractical, doing our city more harm than good. the whole country was aghast at our exposures, business was almost dead, capital refused to come our way; the poor old city that had been wrecked by the most fearful natural calamity of modern times—$500,000,000 went up in smoke—seemed to cry out against us for holding her down, to beg for a chance to limp out of her bog. but we looked ahead, convinced that there could be no permanent prosperity for san francisco until the sore was scraped to the bone and sterilized; in other words, until the political scoundrels and the get-rich-quick element, that obtained their crushing franchises by corrupting a packed board of supervisors, and bought everybody, from the boss and the mayor down to the man in the street with a vote to sell, were either gaoled or so discredited that they would be forced into private life or out of the state. we unseated the boss and the mayor, the supervisors having come through, and we were able to indict several of what we call the higher-ups—the men that had done the buying. i never had much hope of convicting these men, for in california, in its present state of moral development, it is next to impossible to convict a rich man. if you get an honest judge, there are always men in the jury that have got in for no purpose but to be bribed. but we won out in another way. the long trial aired the abominable practices of these corporations, and, together with the many sensational episodes—the shooting of the prosecuting attorney in court, and the suicide of the would-be murderer in prison before he could be put on the stand, the kidnapping of the only editor that fought with us,—woke up the state; it talked of little else, and talking, thought, and was ashamed. the city machine got ahead of us, for the mayor we had managed to seat was too virtuous to build up a machine of his own; but we hope for great things in the state itself when our reform candidate runs for the office of governor this year. perhaps it was unreasonable to hope for more at the beginning, and it was a tough fight to get that much.
“oh, god!” he cried bitterly, “the rottenness of young communities with potentialities of wealth. human nature in the raw, when it is still in the ingenuous stage of greed, is a damnable thing. it has never shown any originality since the world began. socialism may clip its wings, if it ever gets control, but—here is the cursed anomaly: you can’t hope for socialism until a miracle eliminates greed from the nature of man; for it is men that must grant socialism, and socialism means the balking of greed. even if some unforeseen set of circumstances forced it upon us, i doubt if it would last. you can no more eliminate greed from men than you could eliminate sex by forcing men and women to dress alike, shave their heads, and say their prayers three times a day. but the world is better in some respects than it was a century ago, and this is primarily due to the untiring efforts of the minority. but, again, the work must be done by a few men—the few that are awake and can see farther than their noses. well, my dear, i hope and pray that i am one of those men. there you have my program, so far as a mere finite mind can project it.”
“now i know why i have been permitted to love you,” said julia, softly, and looking at him with glowing eyes. “hadji sadr? told me that he should watch over me, and that if i dared love a man who would pull me down, instead of being far greater than i could ever hope to be, he would blast me, transform me into a mere commonplace female, but haunted by the memory of what i had been?—”
“how much of all that do you believe?”
“ah! i saw marvellous exhibitions of power. they are common enough in the east, but one would hardly dare relate them in this part of the world. if i longed with all the concentrated powers of my mind for hadji sadr?, he would come to me in a flash—with that secondary material body they call the astral, and we call the ghost. if i were terribly perplexed, i should send for him?—”
“i want no go-betweens, particularly mohammedan ghosts.”
but julia had no intention of letting him down.
“i wonder i could remember him, or any one else! it was only because i suddenly realized what all this means—that i may have another and far greater part to play?—”
“you see that at last! perhaps i should have appealed to you before. but—it is only to-day that i have felt really close to you—really loved you, perhaps. i fancy i was merely infatuated before.” he took her in his arms, and she looked up at him with the deepest sympathy a woman can express, particularly when gifted with eyes that are the dazzling headlights of a finished and powerful machine behind. “oh, if you could only know,” he continued in tones of intense feeling, “what it will mean to me to have you, not only to love, but to work with! i really want with all my soul to be of use to my country, to be one of the few that are willing to work for her unselfishly, to leave a decent name behind me. it is thankless work, fighting the majority, battling for an ideal nobody wants, to be the butt of the press, accused of sordid motives, balked at every turn. the only sort of patriotism the average american understands is sounding promises by ambitious politicians and huge donations from repentant millionnaires. to raise the morale of a people, and in the process prevent them from growing too rich, may mean the respect of posterity, but it also means the hatred of your contemporaries. the big voice! it confuses the mind and the standards. the constant failures, the recurring sense of hopelessness, of futility, the inevitable contempt for the masses you are striving to emancipate from themselves,—many a man that has started out with the loftiest and most selfless ideals loses courage, shrugs his shoulders, and falls back. i am no better and stronger than many of them. i have dreamed one minute, the next wondered how far i would go, how long my enthusiasm would last. material success is easy enough, and always rewarded by approbation and respect! what is the use? i am young still, but i asked myself that question more than once, for even my family were all against me. my father was furious. he is honest, but his business has been his god. i left home and went to a hotel—to avoid the everlasting discussions at table. my old friends cut me on the street. i was regarded as an enemy of society, and society cast me out. the rest of our little group shared the same fate. we were obliged to keep one another’s courage up. that we carried our lives in our hands and were liable to assassination at any moment was the least of our trials. the big voice! we felt as if we were at the foot of an avalanche, or some other inexorable enemy in nature herself, trying to push it back with our hands. inevitably there were black moments when we felt we were fools, especially when we faced certain defeat. and it’s all to do again, not once, but many times. do you wonder that the light side of my nature has given me many cynical moments, or that i have seethed with disgust, or wondered if i would last? but with you—ah! if i had ever dreamed you lived, i believe i never should have despaired for a moment. but my only memory of you was of a charming and lovely child. and it is only to-day, here, that i have realized what it means for any of us to stand alone. with your faith and your brain, with you always beside me, sympathizing, helping—i never shall lose courage for a moment. i could accomplish anything—everything?—”
this sudden vehement disclosure of the serious depths of his nature under its surface gayety, with more than one glimpse of heights and powers she had barely divined, had thrilled julia even more than his passionate love-making. all her own greatness responded, and for a moment or two she had been swept irresistibly on that tide of self-revealing words. she had a vision of the complete passion, the perfect union. but her brain remained cool. she never lost sight of her purpose.
she sprang from him suddenly and flung out her arms. her eyes looked black. her skin shone with a peculiar radiance like white fire. so she had looked more than once on the platform during her last moments of irresistible appeal; when her bewildered audiences had felt as if dissolving in a crucible from which there was no escape. “oh,” she cried in low vibrating tones of intense passion, “now i know you—the real you! i’ll never fail you. you are wonderful, and i worship you! i believe we can be happier than any two mortals have ever been. but, dan, i must go to you free, with a conscience as clean as your own. you must see that. you are too great not to see it. i must be tormented with no regrets, no remorse. if i should leave at this moment—‘rat’ like any scoundrelly selfish politician—desert these women publicly while all the world is watching them, make them ridiculous—oh, i don’t mean that i am indispensable; there are too many great women among them for that— but don’t you see that if i threw them over to follow an american to the other side of the world, now, while their fate hangs in the balance—why, it would amount to nothing less than a cynical declaration that we are all alike when it comes to a man—that we fight for a great impersonal cause only so long as no man comes along to play the old tune on our passions—why—good god!—they would be the butt of every malicious wit in the kingdom. their cause would be set back a generation. and i? i should be execrated by women the world over. i, who am now a sort of goddess. my immense following is due as much to the youth and beauty which i have appeared to immolate so indifferently, as to all my talents put together. what use should i be to you if i scuttled the ship and deserted it? what place could i take among the women of your country? do you think they would listen to me, that i could teach them, help them? they would laugh in my face!”
she caught him by the shoulders, her eyes piercing into his, which stared at her full of sombre perplexity. she went on in a rapid monotonous voice, which fell on his brain like a rain of fire: “why didn’t you come for me, as you promised? i should have gone. four years ago! i was free. something was always knocking at my mind. i knew that i had useful energies of some sort. they were always groping to find vent. if you had come, if you had told me then what you have told me to-day, i should not have hesitated a moment. i should have known that my work was to be done with you. but you forgot your promise. the bond was not strong enough. why did you wait until i had become a public figure, written about daily—until i had hopelessly compromised myself? oh, can’t you see that you have made me the most tragic figure among women? i love you so that i long with all those other and far greater forces within me—that you have brought to life—to go, to be happy, to give you all you want and deserve, to become truly great—with you! oh, i am the most unhappy woman on earth—and the happiest!”
tay had tried to interrupt her several times. but he was dazed. she looked like a sibyl. he felt disjointedly that he had less desire to claim her as a woman than to ascend with her to the plane whither she seemed to have borne herself. he had been shaken out of his own reserve and bared his soul for the first time in his life; his defences were down, she seemed to have entered his mind and taken possession. human passion would appear to have fallen to ashes. his senses felt numb, he was vaguely conscious of a material dissolution that left his soul free to mingle with hers.
she gave him no chance to speak. her words flowed on with the same fiery monotony.
“you have taught me what duty means. i believe i never was really capable of the sacrifice of self before. i worked to fill my time, to forget my depths. then because the greatness of that work really put my womanhood to sleep! but you! i have not a personal ambition left, not a want apart from you, but this terrible duty. i want to live in you, for you. you! you! you!” tay had a confused idea that he was turning into a demi-god. “but i must go to you free—that i may never look back—that i may know and give complete happiness. i must be all woman, not a mere brain, humiliated, ashamed, tortured by regrets. and you must go at once, at once, at once. if you stay, if you prove too strong for me, if you force me to go with you—and i love you so i might go—then we never shall know the meaning of happiness for a moment. i will follow you before long. if we don’t win the battle early this year, i will train some one to take my place. i shall speak, appear in public less and less, drop out by degrees. i shall soon be forgotten—long before i can marry you. but to leap from the front rank of these women straight into a divorce court in a city whose name is a synonym for vulgarity, that is never mentioned without a laugh or a sneer— oh, you see! you see! what an anticlimax to all these years on a pedestal! what a wife for you, a public man! oh, god! i should be the ruin of your own career?—”
“julia!” exclaimed tay, trying to get his breath.
she fell back limply against a tree, as if exhausted with her own passion, but neither voice nor eyes lost their power.
“oh, go! go! go! if you don’t, i shall be in the dust. i shall be incapable of love in my abasement. i know myself. to love, to be happy, i must be free. i must have my self-respect. i can’t love, tortured by shame and remorse. i want love and you more than anything on earth, but i want them utterly. oh, go!”
for a moment or two tay had been conscious of an angry struggle in the depths of his mind. he suddenly became master of himself. he shot a glance at julia as piercing as her own, and she gasped and flung herself face downward on the snow and began to sob. he made no attempt to pick her up for the moment.
“you have strange powers, julia,” he said. “if i were weaker than i am,—and god knows i am weak enough,—i should be slinking through the woods with my tail between my legs, hypnotized out of my manhood, and ready to lick your hand for the rest of my life.” julia stopped sobbing and listened intently. tay walked up and down before he spoke again. “but mind you, i don’t question your sincerity, your love, whatever the devilish arts you tried to practise on me. every leader of a great revolution is a fanatic and a jesuit. and, methods aside, every word you spoke was sound common-sense. i don’t care to assume the responsibility of injuring those women, and i believe you would be incapable of happiness if you handed their enemies another weapon—a pretty deadly one it would be!”
he picked her up and dusted her off. “i am going,” he went on grimly, “and i shall wait exactly six months. or rather—” he caught her hands in his powerful grip, his eyes blazing into hers. “i shall never see you again, not even with your royal consent, unless you swear to me here that you’ll not try that on again. that you’ll be woman to my man from this time forth—that and nothing more. i’ll be damned if i’ll live with a woman who doesn’t play a square game. swear it.”
“oh, i do, i do! oh, dan!” the tears were running down her face, honest tears, for she was frightened, while rejoicing. “do believe that i was only doing my best—i knew that you wouldn’t listen—i had only one object?—”
“oh, as i told you, i have never questioned your queer complicated honesty. only, being a perfectly normal person myself, i prefer to postpone occult trickery until i reach the next world. no doubt it will be all in the day’s work there. but i’ve got my job cut out in this, matching my earthly wits against the next man’s. now, you’ve given me your word! if you ever go back on it?—”
“oh, never!” julia was now really limp, and looked wholly feminine. tay took her in his arms once more and dried her tears. “it’s my fate to love you,” he said, with a sigh. “and that’s about the size of it. i’m sorry you ever went to your east, but live in the hope i can make you forget it.”
“and do you love me as much as ever?” asked julia, unintellectually.
tay laughed outright, the ancient formula almost routing the memory of those moments when the same woman that uttered them automatically had launched her ruthless will into his relaxing brain. “oh, yes,” he said, “i love you, all right, and for good and all. now, we’ll be practical. i shall leave england the day i wind up my affairs in london. that should be in less than a week. i am going to ask you to stay here until i sail. i am resigned to going without you, am willing to admit that a separation of a few months is inevitable—but, all the same, the less temptation, the better. besides, i shall need all my wits in london— if you were there?—”
“oh, i’d rather stay, far, far rather! i don’t think i could stand it, either. here, at least, i can keep out of doors, exercise until i am past thought?—”
“well, don’t change your mind. i insist that you stay here. if you return to london while i am there—well, i’ll not say just what i won’t do. enough that i should not return to america alone. come, let’s get back to the hotel.”
