A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER X

  Lily did not sleep very well that night. She was repentant, for onething, for her mother's evening alone, and for the anxiety in her facewhen she arrived.

  "I've been so worried," she said, "I was afraid your grandfather wouldget back before you did."

  "I'm sorry, mother dear. I know it was selfish. But I've had a wonderfulevening."

  "Wonderful?"

  "All sorts of talk," Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her motherwould not understand, and it would only make her uneasy. "I suppose itis rank hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle."

  "I detest him."

  "But you don't know him, do you?"

  "I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us. Lily, I want youto promise not to go back there."

  There was a little silence. A small feeling of rebellion was rising inthe girl's heart.

  "I don't see why. She is my own aunt."

  "Will you promise?"

  "Please don't ask me, mother. I--oh, don't you understand? It isinteresting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to go. And the moment youforbid it you make me want to go back."

  "Were there any other people there to dinner?" Grace asked, with suddensuspicion.

  "Only one man. A lawyer named Akers."

  The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew.

  "A young man?"

  "Not very young. In his thirties, I should think," Lily hesitated again.She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the next day, butGrace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meetLouis Akers at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond thefact that she had met him at the Doyle house, seemed absurd.

  "A gentleman?"

  "I hardly know," Lily said frankly. "In your sense of the word, perhapsnot, mother. But he is very clever."

  Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book. She never retired untilHoward came in. And Lily went upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant.She must live her own life, somehow; have her own friends; think her ownthoughts. The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down onher. It would squeeze her dry, in the end, as it had her mother and AuntElinor.

  She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city. Behind herwas her warm, luxurious room, her deep, soft bed. Yet all throughthe city there were those who did not sleep warm and soft. Close by,perhaps, in that deteriorated neighborhood, there were children thatvery night going to bed hungry.

  Because things had always been like that, should they always be so?Wasn't Mr. Doyle right, after all? Only he went very far. You couldn't,for instance, take from a man the thing he had earned. What about thepeople who did not try to earn?

  She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to WillyCameron.

  She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft whitenight-gown, passionately in revolt against the injustice which gave toher so much and to others so little. And against that quiet domestictyranny which was forcing her to her first deceit.

  Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough. Louis Akers met herthere, and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea,and chose a quiet tea-room, and a corner.

  "I'll tell you something, now it's over," he said, his bold eyes fixedon hers. "I loathe galleries and pictures. I wanted to see you again.That's all. You see, I am starting in by being honest with you."

  She was rather uncomfortable.

  "Why don't you like pictures?"

  "Because they are only imitations of life. I like life." He pushedhis teacup away. "I don't want tea either. Tea was an excuse, too." Hesmiled at her. "Perhaps you don't like honesty," he said. "If you don'tyou won't care for me."

  She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness andeffrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy. He knew so many things, andyet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense ofthe word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. Hemade her insistently conscious of her sex.

  And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. Shethought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very terribleif he loved any one. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind hissuavity.

  But he interested her, and he was undeniably handsome, not in herfather's way but with high-colored, almost dramatic good looks. Therecould be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely tookhis eyes off hers. Afterwards she was to know well that bold possessivelook of his.

  It was just before they left that he said:

  "I am going to see you again, you know. May I come in some afternoon?"

  Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments, and she raised frankeyes to his.

  "I am afraid not," she said. "You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's,and you must know that my people and Aunt Elinor's husband are on badterms."

  "What has that got to do with you and me?" Then he laughed. "Might beunpleasant, I suppose. But you go to the Doyles'."

  She was very earnest.

  "My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew."

  "And you put up with that sort of thing?" He leaned closer to her. "Youare not a baby, you know. But I will say you are a good sport to do it,anyhow."

  "I'm not very comfortable about it."

  "Bosh," he said, abruptly. "You go there as often as you can. ElinorDoyle's a lonely woman, and Jim is all right. You pick your own friends,my child, and live your own life. Every human being has that right."

  He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her rathermore assistance than she required, and then standing bare-headed inthe March wind until the car had moved away. Lily, sitting back in hercorner, was both repelled and thrilled. He was totally unlike the menshe knew, those carefully repressed, conventional clean-cut boys, likePink Denslow. He was raw, vigorous and possibly brutal. She did notquite like him, but she found herself thinking about him a great deal.

  The old life was reaching out its friendly, idle hands toward her. Thenext day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay little affairof color, chatter and movement. But Lily found herself with littleto say. Her year away had separated her from the small community ofinterest that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening tothem in her sitting room later, what they would all talk about when theyhad exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. Itwould all be said so soon. And what then?

  Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle,carefully guarded. They belonged together, they and the men wholikewise belonged. Now and then there would be changes. A new man, ofirreproachable family connections would come to live in the city, andcause a small flurry. Then in time he would be appropriated. Or a girlwould come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would comeback later, permanently. Always the same faces, the same small talk.Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocksat dinners and dances. Golf at the country club. Travel, in the Cardewprivate car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting.Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picturestars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand. One never had achance to meet them.

  And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut awayin his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their lives as aspider clutches the diverging filaments of its web.

  "Get in on this, Lily," said a clear young voice. "We're talking aboutthe most interesting men we met in our war work. You ought to have knowna lot of them."

  "I knew a lot of men. They were not so very interesting. There was alittle nurse--"

  "Men, Lily dear."

  "There was one awfully nice boy. He wasn't a soldier, but he was verykind to the men. They adored him."

  "Did he fall in love with your?"

  "Not a particle."

  "Why wasn't he a soldier?"

  "He is a little bit lame. But he is awfully nice."

  "But what is extraordinary
about him, then?"

  "Not a thing, except his niceness."

  But they were surfeited with nice young men. They wanted somethingdramatic, and Willy Cameron was essentially undramatic. Besides, it wasquite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap madehim unacceptable to them.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're hiding some one behind this kindperson. You must have met somebody worth while."

  "Not in the camp. I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not inthe army. Not a Socialist, really. Much worse. He believes in having arevolution."

  That stirred them somewhat. She saw their interested faces turned towardher.

  "With a bomb under his coat, of course, Lily."

  "He didn't bulge."

  "Good-looking?"

  "Well, rather."

  "How old is he, Lily?" one of them asked, suspiciously.

  "Almost fifty, I should say."

  "Good heavens!"

  Their interest died. She could have revived it, she knew, if shementioned Louis Akers; he would have answered to their prime requisitein an interesting man. He was both handsome and young. But she feltcuriously disinclined to mention him.

  The party broke up. By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figureswent down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the hall and thefootman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle,watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense ofcomfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it shouldbe. Lily would take up life again where she had left it off, and allwould be well.

  It was now the sixth day, and she had not yet carried out that absurdidea of asking Ellen's friend to dinner.

  Lily was, however, at that exact moment in process of carrying it out.

  "Telephone for you, Mr. Cameron."

  "Thanks. Coming," sang out Willy Cameron.

  Edith Boyd sauntered toward his doorway.

  "It's a lady."

  "Woman," corrected Willy Cameron. "The word 'lady' is now obsolete,since your sex has entered the economic world." He put on his coat.

  "I said 'lady' and that's what I mean," said Edith. "'May I speak to Mr.Cameron?'" she mimicked. "Regular Newport accent."

  Suddenly Willy Cameron went rather pale. If it should be LilyCardew--but then of course it wouldn't be. She had been home for sixdays, and if she had meant to call--

  "Hello," he said.

  It was Lily. Something that had been like a band around his heartsuddenly loosened, to fasten about his throat. His voice soundedstrangled and strange.

  "Why, yes," he said, in the unfamiliar voice. "I'd like to come, ofcourse."

  Edith Boyd watched and listened, with a slightly strained look in hereyes.

  "To dinner? But--I don't think I'd better come to dinner."

  "Why not, Willy?"

  Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around. There was no one about saveMiss Boyd, who was polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of theother.

  "May I come in a business suit?"

  "Why, of course. Why not?"

  "I didn't know," said Willy Cameron. "I didn't know what your peoplewould think. That's all. To-morrow at eight, then. Thanks."

  He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood lookingout and seeing nothing. She had not forgotten. He was going to see her.Instead of standing across the street by the park fence, waiting fora glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her.There would be--eight from eleven was three--three hours of her.

  What a wonderful day it was! Spring was surely near. He would like to beable to go and pick up Jinx, and then take a long walk through the park.He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt thathe might burst with it.

  "Eight o'clock!" said Edith. "I wish you joy, waiting until eight forsupper."

  He had to come back a long, long way to her.

  "'May I come in a business suit?'" she mimicked him. "My evening clotheshave not arrived yet. My valet's bringing them up to town to-morrow."

  Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist, hecaught the bitterness under her raillery. It puzzled him.

  "It's a young lady I knew at camp. I was in an army camp, you know."

  "Is her name a secret?"

  "Why, no. It is Cardew. Miss Lily Cardew."

  "I believe you--not."

  "But it is," he said, genuinely concerned. "Why in the world should Igive you a wrong name?"

  Her eyes were fixed on his face.

  "No. You wouldn't. But it makes me laugh, because--well, it was crazy,anyhow."

  "What was crazy?"

  "Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what willhappen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here about six weeks. Then you'll get ajob at the Cardew Mills. They use chemists there, and you will be--"

  She lifted her finger-tips and blew along them delicately.

  "Gone--like that," she finished.

  Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man,for instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did notcome any more. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had beendistinctly a grade above that competent young person, Edith Boyd, ifthere were such grades these days; fluent and prosperous-looking, andprobably able to offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over.He had heard her doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask herabout Akers she had cut him off curtly.

  "I was sick to death of him. That's all," she had said.

  But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of LouisAkers.

  It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at seven-thirty inthe morning and was off at six, and the next he came at ten and stayeduntil eleven at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Menwandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a tooth-brush, and sator stood around for an hour or so; clerks whose families had gone to themovies, bachelors who found their lodging houses dreary, a young doctoror two, coming in after evening office hours to leave a prescription,and remaining to talk and listen. Thus they satisfied their gregariousinstinct while within easy call of home.

  The wealthy had their clubs. The workmen of the city had their balls andsometimes their saloons. But in between was that vast, unorganized maleelement which was neither, and had neither. To them the neighborhoodpharmacy, open in the evening, warm and bright, gave them a rendezvous.They gathered there in thousands, the country over. During the war theyfought their daily battles there, with newspaper maps. After the war theLeague of Nations, local politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal, washeddown with soft drinks from the soda fountain, furnished the evening'sentertainment.

  The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with theadvent of Willy Cameron it was attaining a new popularity. The roundsmanon the beat dropped in, the political boss of the ward, named Hendricks,Doctor Smalley, the young physician who lived across the street, andothers. Back of the store proper was a room, with the prescription deskat one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three. Herewere a table and a half dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing withcolored pins the last positions before the great allied advance, and anancient hat-rack, which had held from time immemorial an umbrella withthree broken ribs and a pair of arctics of unknown ownership.

  "Going to watch this boy," Hendricks confided to Doctor Smalley a nightor two after Lily's return, meeting him outside. "He sure can talk."

  Doctor Smalley grinned.

  "He can read my writing, too, which is more than I can do myself. Whatdo you mean, watch him?"

  But whatever his purposes Mr. Hendricks kept them to himself. A big,burly man, with a fund of practical good sense a keen knowledge ofmen, he had gained a small but loyal following. He was a retired masterplumber, with a small income from careful investments, and he had acurious, almost fanatic love for the city.

  "I was born here," he would say, boastfully. "And I've seen it grow fromfifty thousand to what it's got now. Some f
olks say it's dirty, but it'shome to me, all right."

  But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drug store forum found WillyCameron extremely silent. He had been going over his weaknesses, for thethought of Lily always made him humble, and one of them was that he gotcarried away by things and talked too much. He did not intend to do thatthe next night, at the Cardew's.

  "Something's scared him off," said Mr. Hendricks to Doctor Smalley,after a half hour of almost taciturnity, while Willy Cameron smoked hispipe and listened. "Watch him rise to this, though." And aloud:

  "Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations, which none of youknows a damn about anyhow, and get to the thing that's coming in thiscountry?"

  "I'll bite," said Mr. Clarey, who sold life insurance in the daytime andsometimes utilized his evenings in a similar manner. "What's coming tothis country?"

  "Revolution."

  The crowd laughed.

  "All right," said Mr. Hendricks. "Laugh while you can. I saw the Chiefof Police to-day, and he's got a line of conversation that makes a manfeel like taking his savings out of the bank and burying them in theback yard."

  Willy Cameron took his pipe out of his mouth, but remained dumb.

  Mr. Hendricks nudged Doctor Smalley, who rose manfully to the occasion."What does he say?"

  "Says the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here. Not all Russianseither. Some of our Americans are in it. It's to begin with a generalstrike."

  "In this town?"

  "All over the country. But this is a good field for them. The crust'spretty thin here, and where that's the case there is likely to beearthquakes and eruptions. The Chief says they're bringing in a bunch ofgunmen, wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial town on the map.Did you get that, Cameron? Gunmen!"

  "Any of you men here dissatisfied with this form of government?"inquired Willy, rather truculently.

  "Not so you could notice it," said Mr. Clarey. "And once the Republicanparty gets in--"

  "Then there will never be a revolution."

  "Why?"

  "That's why," said Willy Cameron. "Of course you are worthless now. Youaren't organized. You don't know how many you are or how strong youare. You can't talk. You sit back and listen until you believe that thiscountry is only capital and labor. You get squeezed in between them. Yousee labor getting more money than you, and howling for still more. Yousee both capital and labor raising prices until you can't live on whatyou get. There are a hundred times as many of you as represent capitaland labor combined, and all you do is loaf here and growl about thingsbeing wrong. Why don't you do something? You ought to be running thiscountry, but you aren't. You're lazy. You don't even vote. You leaverunning the country to men like Mr. Hendricks here."

  Mr. Hendricks was cheerfully unirritated.

  "All right, son," he said, "I do my bit and like it. Go on. Don't stopto insult me. You can do that any time."

  "I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came," said Willy Cameron."It's preaching a revolution, all right. I'd like to see its foreignlanguage copies. They'll never overthrow the government, but they maytry. Why don't you fellows combine to fight them? Why don't you learnhow strong you are? Nine-tenths of the country, and milling like sheepwith a wolf around!"

  Mr. Hendricks winked at the doctor.

  "What'd I tell you?" whispered Hendricks. "Got them, hasn't he? Ifhe'd suggest arming them with pop bottles and attacking that gang ofanarchists at the cobbler's down the street, they'd do it this minute."

  "All right, son," he offered. "We'll combine. Anything you say goes.And we'll get the Jim Doyle-Woslosky-Louis Akers outfit first. I know afirst-class brick wall--"

  "Akers?" said Willy Cameron. "Do you know him?"

  "I do," said Hendricks. "But that needn't prejudice you against me any.He's a bad actor, and as smooth as butter. D'you know what their planis? They expect to take the city. This city! The--" Mr. Hendrick's voicewas lost in fury.

  "Talk!" said the roundsman. "Where'd the police be, I'm asking?"

  "The police," said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, "are as filled withsedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the army. Also the stateconstabulary."

  "The hell they are," said the roundsman aggressively. But Willy Cameronwas staring through the smoke from his pipe at the crowd.

  "They might do it, for a while," he said thoughtfully. "There's atremendous foreign population in the mill towns around, isn't there?Does anybody in the crowd own a revolver? Or know how to use it if hehas one."

  "I've got one," said the insurance agent. "Don't know how it would work.Found my wife nailing oilcloth with it the other day."

  "Very well. If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need abattery of eight-inch guns, would they?"

  A little silence fell on the group. Around them the city went about itsbusiness; the roar of the day had softened to muffled night sounds, asthough one said: "The city sleeps. Be still." The red glare of the millswas the fire on the hearth. The hills were its four protecting walls.And the night mist covered it like a blanket.

  "Here's one representative of the plain people," said Mr. Hendricks,"who is going home to get some sleep. And tomorrow I'll buy me a gun,and if I can keep the children out of the yard I'll learn to use it."

  For a long time after he went home that night Willy Cameron paced thefloor of his upper room, paced it until an irate boarder below hammeredon his chandelier. Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth,now and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willy Cameron's mind wasactive and not particularly coordinate. The Cardews and Lily; Edith Boydand Louis Akers; the plain people; an army marching to the city to lootand burn and rape, and another army meeting it, saying: "You shall notpass"; Abraham Lincoln, Russia, Lily.

  His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardew. He had neglected tocover Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on the bed and snuggled close tohim. He threw an end of the blanket over him and lay there, staring intothe darkness. He was frightfully lonely. At last he fell asleep, andthe March wind, coming in through the open window, overturned a paperleaning against his collar box, on which he had carefully written:

  Have suit pressed. Buy new tie. Shirts from laundry.