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Updated: May 2, 2025
Gradually Jane became aware of a sinister undercurrent. She found herself dealing with forces that threatened her. There were men who came into her shop to buy, and who stayed to say things that set her cheeks flaming. She mentioned none of these things to Henry or Atwood or Tommy. But she spoke once to O-liver. "Tillotson must be at the bottom of it.
Tillotson's supporters kept the thing stirring. If the meeting could end in a brawl the odds would be in favor of Tillotson. The effect of O-liver's uplift would be lost. Even his friends couldn't sway a fighting crowd back to him. But they had forgotten to reckon with Jane! She had seen in a sudden crystal flash the thing which might happen. A fight would end it all for O-liver.
She had jumped from fifty dollars a week to a thousand. After that O-liver could give her nothing. He had an allowance from his mother of three thousand a year. Fluffy Hair made as much as that in three weeks. Where he had been king of his own domain he became a sort of gentleman footman, carrying her sables and her satchels. But that was not the worst of it.
He had not yet tried his fate with Jane, but he still dreamed of her as lovely in his long car and a fur coat. And he hoped to make his dreams come true. Tommy had set aside all selfish hopes. He had a feeling that Jane liked O-liver. He loved them both. If he could not have Jane he wanted O-liver to have her. He kept a wary eye therefore on Henry and Atwood.
Yet she resented his watching. From her stairway she had seen him, and when a rest was granted she came down to him. "I'll be through presently," she said. "We can go to my hotel." Her rooms in the hotel overlooked the sea. There was a balcony, and they sat on it in long lazy chairs and had iced things to drink. O-liver drank lemonade. His wife had something stronger.
Her son had been born in the East, he had spent his holidays and vacations with his Eastern relatives. He had gone to an Eastern school to prepare for an Eastern college. Except for this one obsession with regard to her son's education his mother was self-centered. She was an idolized wife, a discontented woman she had shown O-liver no heights to which to aspire. And so he had not aspired.
"How do you know?" "I'm not sure how I know. But you haven't found the thing yet that you like the incentive." "Tommy wants me to go into politics. He and Henry Bittinger. Henry says I ought to be President." O-liver chuckled. But she took it seriously. "Why not? You've the brains and the magnetism. Can't you see how the crowd draws to you on Saturday nights?" "Like bees round a honey pot? Yes."
"How do you know that everything is ahead?" "I shall make it come" securely. They sat in silence for a while; then O-liver said: "I have brought you a book." It was an old copy of Punch. "I shall like it," she said. "Sometimes the evenings are dull when my work is over." "Dullness comes for me when work begins." Her straight gaze met his. "You say that with your lips; you don't mean it."
"The thing about Jane" Henry was very seriously trying to say the thing as he saw it "the thing about Jane is that she sees things straight. And she makes other people see." Well, Tillotson was beaten, and the men who supported O-liver came out of the fight feeling as if they had killed something unclean. And the morning after the election O-liver had a little note from Jane.
"They are worse than bees. There are at least some drones in the hive." "Poor drones," said Jane. "Why?" quickly. "To miss the best." "Is work the best?" She said "Yes," adding after a little: "I don't just mean making sandwiches. That's just a beginning. There's everything ahead." She said it as if the world were hers. O-liver, in spite of himself, was thrilled.
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