A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER V

  Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily's return, took a walk.From his boarding house near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residencewas a half-hour's walk. There were a number of things he had meant to dothat evening, with a view to improving his mind, but instead he took awalk. He had made up a schedule for those evenings when he was offduty, thinking it out very carefully on the train to the city. And theschedule ran something like this:

  Monday: 8-11. Read History. Wednesday: 8-11. Read Politics andEconomics. Friday: 8-9:30. Travel. 9:30-11. French. Sunday: Hear variousprominent divines.

  He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because travel was withhim an indulgence rather than a study. The longest journey he had evertaken in his life was to Washington. That was early in the war, whenit did not seem possible that his country would not use him, a boy whocould tramp incredible miles in spite of his lameness and who couldshoot a frightened rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for aslight deflection to the right in the barrel of his old rifle.

  But they had refused him.

  "They won't use me, mother," he had said when he got home, home beinga small neat house on a tidy street of a little country town. "I triedevery branch, but the only training I've had--well, some smart kid saidthey weren't planning to serve soda water to the army. They didn't wantcripples, you see."

  "I wish you wouldn't, Willy."

  He had been frightfully sorry then and had comforted her at some length,but the fact remained.

  "And you the very best they've ever had for mixing prescriptions!" shehad said at last. "And a graduate in chemistry!"

  "Well," he said, "that's that, and we won't worry about it. There's morethan one way of killing a cat."

  "What do you mean, Willy? More than one way?"

  There was no light of prophecy in William Wallace Cameron's gray eyes,however, when he replied: "More than one way of serving my country.Don't you worry. I'll find something."

  So he had, and he had come out of his Red Cross work in the camp withone or two things in his heart that had not been there before. One wasa knowledge of men. He could not have put into words what he felt aboutmen. It was something about the fundamental simplicity of them, for onething. You got pretty close to them at night sometimes, especially whenthe homesick ones had gone to bed, and the phonograph was playing in acorner of the long, dim room. There were some shame-faced tears hiddenunder army blankets those nights, and Willy Cameron did some blinking onhis own account.

  Then, under all the blasphemy, the talk about women, the surfacesordidness of their daily lives and thoughts, there was one instinctcommon to all, one love, one hidden purity. And the keyword to thosedepths was "home."

  "Home," he said one day to Lily Cardew. "Mostly it's the home they'veleft, and maybe they didn't think so much of it then. But they do now.And if it isn't that, it's the home they want to have some day." Helooked at Lily. Sometimes she smiled at things he said, and if she hadnot been grave he would not have gone on. "You know," he continued,"there's mostly a girl some place. All this talk about the nation,now--" He settled himself on the edge of the pine table where oldAnthony Cardew's granddaughter had been figuring up her week's accounts,and lighted his pipe, "the nation's too big for us to understand. Butwhat is the nation, but a bunch of homes?"

  "Willy dear," said Lily Cardew, "did you take any money out of the cigarbox for anything this week?"

  "Dollar sixty-five for lard," replied Willy dear. "As I was saying,we've got to think of this country in terms of homes. Not palaces likeyours--"

  "Good gracious!" said Lily, "I don't live in a palace. Get mypocket-book, will you? I'm out three dollars somehow, and I'd rathermake it up myself than add these figures over again. Go on and talk,Willy. I love hearing you."

  "Not palaces like yours," repeated Mr. Cameron, "and not hovels. Butmostly self-respecting houses, the homes of the plain people. The middleclass, Miss Cardew. My class. The people who never say anything, butare squeezed between capital, represented by your grandfather, with itsparasites, represented by you, and--"

  "You represent the people who never say anything," observed the slightlyflushed parasite of capital, "about as adequately as I represent theidle rich."

  Yet not even old Anthony could have resented the actual relationshipbetween them. Lily Cardew, working alone in her hut among hundreds ofmen, was as without sex consciousness as a child. Even then her flaminginterest was in the private soldiers. The officers were able to amusethemselves; they had money and opportunity. It was the doughboys sheloved and mothered. For them she organized her little entertainments.For them she played and sang in the evenings, when the field range inthe kitchen was cold, and her blistered fingers stumbled sometimes overthe keys of the jingling camp piano.

  Gradually, out of the chaos of her early impressions, she began todivide the men in the army into three parts. There were the Americanborn; they took the war and their part in it as a job to be done, withas few words as possible. And there were the foreigners to whom Americawas a religion, a dream come true, whose flaming love for their newmother inspired them to stuttering eloquence and awkward gestures. Andthen there was a third division, small and mostly foreign born, butwith a certain percentage of native malcontents, who hated the war andsneered among themselves at the other dupes who believed that it was awar for freedom. It was a capitalists' war. They considered the state asan instrument of oppression, as a bungling interference with libertyand labor; they felt that wealth inevitably brought depravity. Theycommitted both open and overt acts against discipline, and found intheir arrest and imprisonment renewed grievances, additional oppression,tyranny. And one day a handful of them, having learned Lily's identity,came into her hut and attempted to bait her.

  "Gentlemen," said one of them, "we have here an example of one of theidle rich, sacrificing herself to make us happy. Now, boys, be happy.Are we all happy?" He surveyed the group. "Here, you," he addressed asullen-eyed squat Hungarian. "Smile when I tell you. You're a slave inone of old Cardew's mills, aren't you? Well, aren't you grateful to him?Here he goes and sends his granddaughter--"

  Willy Cameron had entered the room with a platter of doughnuts in hishand, and stood watching, his face going pale. Quite suddenly therewas a crash, and the gang leader went down in a welter of porcelain andfried pastry. Willy Cameron was badly beaten up, in the end, and thebeaters were court-martialed. But something of Lily's fine faith inhumanity was gone.

  "But," she said to him, visiting him one day in the base hospital, wherehe was still an aching, mass of bruises, "there must be something behindit. They didn't hate me. They only hated my--well, my family."

  "My dear child," said Willy Cameron, feeling very old and experienced,and, it must be confessed, extremely happy, "of course there's somethingbehind it. But the most that's behind it is a lot of fellows who wantwithout working what the other fellow's worked to get."

  It was about that time that Lily was exchanged into the town near thecamp, and Willy Cameron suddenly found life a stale thing, and ashes inthe mouth. He finally decided that he had not been such a hopeless foolas to fall in love with her, but that it would be as well not to see hertoo much.

  "The thing to do," he reasoned to himself, "is, first of all, not tosee her. Or only on Friday nights, because she likes the movies, and itwould look queer to stop." Thus Willy Cameron speciously to himself, anddeliberately ignoring the fact that some twenty-odd officers stood readyto seize those Friday nights. "And then to work hard, so I'll sleepbetter, and not lie awake making a fool of myself. And when I get a bitof idiocy in the daytime, I'd better just walk it off. Because I've gotto live with myself a long time, probably, and I'm no love-sick Romeo."

  Which excellent practical advice had cost him considerable shoe-leatherat first. In a month or two, however, he considered himself quite cured,and pretended to himself that he was surprised to find it Friday again.But when, after retreat, the band marched back again to its quartersplaying, for instanc
e, "There's a Long, Long Trail," there was somethinginside him that insisted on seeing the years ahead as a long, longtrail, and that the trail did not lead to the lands of his dreams.

  He got to know that very well indeed during the winter that followed thearmistice. Because there was work to do he stayed and finished up, asdid Lily Cardew. But the hut was closed and she was working in the town,and although they kept up their Friday evenings, the old intimacy wasgone. And one night she said:

  "Isn't it amazing, when you are busy, how soon Friday night comesalong?"

  And on each day of the preceding week he had wakened and said tohimself: "This is Monday--"--or whatever it might be--"and in four moredays it will be Friday."

  In February he was sent home. Lily stayed on until the end of March. Hewent back to his little village of plain people, and took up life againas best he could. But sometimes it seemed to him that from behind everyfire-lit window in the evenings--he was still wearing out shoe-leather,particularly at nights--somebody with a mandolin was wailing about thelong, long trail.

  His mother watched him anxiously. He was thinner than ever, and oddlyolder, and there was a hollow look about his eyes that hurt her.

  "Why don't you bring home a bottle of tonic from the store, Willy," shesaid, one evening when he had been feverishly running through the citynewspaper. He put the paper aside hastily.

  "Tonic!" he said. "Why, I'm all right, mother. Anyhow, I wouldn't takeany of that stuff." He caught her eye and looked away. "It takes alittle time to get settled again, that's all, mother."

  "The Young People's Society is having an entertainment at the churchto-night, Willy."

  "Well, maybe I'll go," he agreed to her unspoken suggestion. "If youinsist on making me a society man--"

  But some time later he came downstairs with a book.

  "Thought I'd rather read," he explained. "Got a book here on the historyof steel. Talk about romances! Let me read some of it to you. You sitthere and close your eyes and just listen to this: 'The first Cardewfurnace was built in 1868. At that time--'"

  Some time later he glanced up. His mother was quietly sleeping, herhands folded in her lap. He closed the book and sat there, fightingagain his patient battle with himself. The book on his knee seemed tosymbolize the gulf between Lily Cardew and himself. But the real gulf,the unbridgeable chasm, between Lily and himself, was neither social norfinancial.

  "As if that counted, in America," he reflected scornfully.

  No. It was not that. The war had temporarily broken down the old socialbarriers. Some of them would never be erected again, although it was thetendency of civilization for men to divide themselves, rather than tobe divided, into the high, the middle and the low. But in his generationyoung Cameron knew that there would be no uncrossable bridge between oldAnthony's granddaughter and himself, were it not for one thing.

  She did not love him. It hurt his pride to realize that she had neverthought of him in any terms but that of a pleasant comradeship. Hardlyeven as a man. Men fought, in war time. They did not fry doughnuts andwrite letters home for the illiterate. Any one of those boys in theranks was a better man than he was. All this talk about a man's soulbeing greater than his body, that was rot. A man was as good as theweakest part of him, and no more.

  His sensitive face in the lamplight was etched with lines of tragedy.He put the book on the table, and suddenly flinging his arms across it,dropped his head on them. The slight movement wakened his mother.

  "Why, Willy!" she said.

  After a moment he looked up. "I was almost asleep," he explained, moreto protect her than himself. "I--I wish that fool Nelson kid would breakhis mandolin--or his neck," he said irritably. He kissed her and wentupstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive,occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the long, long trail.

  There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a highcourage of sacrifice, and an exceedingly shrewd brain. She lay awakethat night, carefully planning, and when everything was arranged inorderly fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and carried it to thedoor of Willy's room. He lay diagonally across his golden-oak bed, forhe was very long, and sleep had rubbed away the tragic lines about hismouth. She closed his door and went back to her bed.

  "I've seen too much of it," she reflected, without bitterness. Shestared around the room. "Too much of it," she repeated. And crawledheavily back into bed, a determined little figure, rather chilled.

  The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with herbrother in California.

  "I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu," she explained, "andJames has been wanting me this long time. I don't want to leave you,that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different."

  He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He nomore suspected her of design than of crime.

  "Of course you are going," he said, heartily. "It's the very thing. ButI like the way you desert your little son!"

  "I've been thinking about that, too," she said, pouring his coffee."I--if you were in the city, now, there would always be something todo."

  He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence ofguile.

  "What would I do in the city?"

  "They use chemists in the mills, don't they?"

  "A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job," he scoffed. "No city forme, mother."

  But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pauseof the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened. He would go.

  "I'd think about it, anyhow, Willy."

  But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in herrocking chair in the bay window of the sitting room. It was a familiarattitude of hers, homely, middle-class, and in a way symbolic. Had oldAnthony Cardew ever visualized so imaginative a thing as a Nemesis,he would probably have summoned a vision of a huddled figure in hisstable-yard, dying, and cursing him as he died. Had Jim Doyle, cunninglyplotting the overthrow of law and order, been able in his arroganceto conceive of such a thing, it might have been Anthony Cardew hesaw. Neither of them, for a moment, dreamed of it as an elderly ScotchCovenanter, a plain little womanly figure, rocking in a cane-seatedrocking chair, and making the great sacrifice of her life.

  All of which simply explains how, on a March Wednesday evening of thegreat year of peace after much tribulation, Mr. William Wallace Cameron,now a clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy, after an hour of Politics, and noEconomics at all, happened to be taking a walk toward the Cardewhouse. Such pilgrimages has love taken for many years, small uncertainramblings where the fancy leads the feet and far outstrips them, andwhere heart-hunger hides under various flimsy pretexts; a fine night, apaper to be bought, a dog to be exercised.

  Not that Willy Cameron made any excuses to himself. He had a sort ofidea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would throughher sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himselfwith a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, headdressed it now and then.

  "Even a cat can look at a king," he said once. And again, following somevague train of thought, on a crowded street: "The People's voice isa queer thing. 'It is, and it is not, the voice of God.' The people'svoice, old man. Only the ones that count haven't got a voice."

  There were, he felt, two Lily Cardews. One lived in an army camp,and wore plain clothes, and got a bath by means of calculation andpersistency, and went to the movies on Friday nights, and was quiteapt to eat peanuts at those times, carefully putting the shells in herpocket.

  And another one lived inside this great pile of brick,--he was standingacross from it, by the park railing, by that time--where motor cars drewup, and a footman with an umbrella against a light rain ushered to theirlimousines draped women and men in evening clothes, their strong blacksand whites revealed in the light of the street door. And this LilyCardew lived in state, bowed to by flunkeys in livery, dressed andundressed--his Scotch sense of decorum resented this--by serving women.Th
is Lily Cardew would wear frivolous ball-gowns, such things as he sawin the shop windows, considered money only as a thing of exchange, andhad traveled all over Europe a number of times.

  He took his station against the park railings and reflected that it wasa good thing he had come, after all. Because it was the first Lily whomhe loved, and she was gone, with the camp and the rest, including war.What had he in common with those lighted windows, with their heavy lacesand draperies?

  "Nothing at all, old man," he said cheerfully to the dog, "nothing atall."

  But although the ache was gone when he turned homeward, the dog still athis heels, he felt strangely lonely without it. He considered that verydefinitely he had put love out of his life. Hereafter he would travelthe trail alone. Or accompanied only by History, Politics, Economics,and various divines on Sunday evenings.