A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XI

  Going home that night Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd, and accompanied herfor a block or two. At his corner he stopped.

  "How's your mother, Edith?"

  It was Mr. Hendricks' business to know his ward thoroughly.

  "About the same. She isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks. She's just lowspirited, but that's enough. I hate to go home."

  Hendricks hesitated.

  "Still, home's a pretty good place," he said. "Especially for a prettygirl." There was unmistakable meaning in his tone, and she threw up herhead.

  "I've got to get some pleasure out of life, Mr. Hendricks."

  "Sure you have," he agreed affably. "But playing around with Louis Akersis like playing with a hand-grenade, Edith." She said nothing. "I'd cuthim out, little girl. He's poor stuff. Mind, I'm not saying he's a fool,but he's a bad actor. Now if I was a pretty girl, and there was a nicefellow around like this Cameron, I'd be likely to think he was allright. He's got brains." Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration forbrains.

  "I'm sick of men."

  He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply.

  "Well, don't judge them all by Akers. This is my corner. Good-night. Notafraid to go on by yourself, are you?"

  "If I ever was I've had a good many chances to get over it."

  He turned the corner, but stopped and called after her.

  "Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith. Haven't seen him since hecame back from France."

  "All right."

  She went on, her steps lagging. She hated going home. When she reachedthe little house she did not go in at once. The March night was notcold, and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light go out inthe second-story front windows. But it continued to burn steadily, andat last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and unlocked the door.

  Almost at once she heard footsteps above, and a peevish voice.

  "That you, Edie?"

  "Yes."

  "D'you mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back?"

  "I'll bring it, mother."

  She found it on the wainscoting in the untidy kitchen. She could hearthe faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor,and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her,and something crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That newclerk at the store was always talking about homes. What did he knowof squalid city houses, with their insects and rats, their damp, moldycellars, their hateful plumbing? A thought struck her. She lighted thegas and stared around. It was as she had expected. The dishes had notbeen washed. They were piled in the sink, and a soiled dish-towel hadbeen thrown over them.

  She lowered the gas and went upstairs. The hardness had, somehow, goneout of her when she thought of Willy Cameron.

  "Back bad again, is it?" she asked.

  "It's always bad. But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down myarm that's driving me crazy. I couldn't wash the dishes."

  "Never mind the dishes. I'm not tired. Now crawl into bed and let me rubyou."

  Mrs. Boyd complied. She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties,who had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it. Thehopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by theincident of her widowhood, and stretched ahead hopelessly. She hadaccepted Dan's going to France resignedly, with neither protest norundue anxiety. She had never been very close to Dan, although sheloved him more than she did Edith. She was the sort of woman who hasno fundamental knowledge of men. They had to be fed and mended for, andthey had strange physical wants that made a great deal of trouble in theworld. But mostly they ate and slept and went to work in the morning,and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer.

  There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life,however. And through it she had seen Edith well married, with perhapsa girl to do the house work, and a room where Edith's mother could foldher hands and sit in the long silences without thought that were hersanctuary against life.

  "Is that the place, mother?"

  "Yes." Edith's unwonted solicitude gave her courage.

  "Edie, I want to ask you something."

  "Well?" But the girl stiffened.

  "Lou hasn't been round, lately."

  "That's all over, mother."

  "You mean you've quarreled? Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a nicehome and everything."

  "He never meant to marry me, if that's what you mean."

  Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently.

  "You could have had him. He was crazy about you. Trouble is with you,you think you've got a fellow hard and fast, and you begin acting up.Then, first thing you know--"

  Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl. "Listen,mother," she said. "I give you my word, Lou'd run a mile if he thoughtany girl wanted to marry him. I know him better than you do. If any oneever does rope him in, he'll stick about three months, and then beatit."

  "I don't know why we have to have men, anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie.No, don't open the window. The night air makes me cough."

  Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Somethingwould have to be done about the house. Dan was taking to staying outat nights, because the untidy rooms repelled him. And there was thequestion of food. Her mother had never learned to cook, and recentlymore and more of the food had been something warmed out of a tin. Ifonly they could keep a girl, one who would scrub and wash dishes. Therewas a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidyharborings of years, that might be used for a servant. Or she could moveup there, and they could get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman tocome in now and then to clean up.

  She had played with that thought before, and the roomer she had had inmind was Willy Cameron. But the knowledge that he knew the Cardewshad somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from thissordid house to the Cardew mansion, and worse still, returning to itafterwards. She saw him there, at the Cardews, surrounded by bowingflunkies--a picture of wealth gained from the movies--and by womenwho moved indolently, trailing through long vistas of ball room andconservatory in low gowns without sleeves, and draped with ropes ofpearls. Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge formoney.

  She hated the Cardews.

  On her way to her room she paused at her mother's door.

  "Asleep yet, mother?"

  "No. Feel like I'm not going to sleep at all."

  "Mother," she said, with a desperate catch in her voice, "we've got tochange things around here. It isn't fair to Dan, for one thing. We'vegot to get a girl to do the work. And to do that we'll have to rent aroom."

  She heard the thin figure twist impatiently.

  "I've never yet been reduced to taking roomers, and I'm not going to letthe neighbors begin looking down on me now."

  "Now, listen, mother--"

  "Go on away, Edie."

  "But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out allbut three evenings a week. I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the storeisn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog, and they haven't any yard.We've got a yard."

  "I won't be bothered with any dog," said the querulous voice, from thedarkness.

  With a gesture of despair the girl turned away. What was the use,anyhow? Let them go on, then, her mother and Dan. Only let them let hergo on, too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, thewhole rotten mess. But they wouldn't let her.

  Her mood of disgust continued the next morning. When, at eleven o'clock,Louis Akers sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at himsomberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did itmatter? So long as something took her for a little while away fromthe sordidness of home, its stale odors, its untidiness, its querulousinmates.

  "What's got into you lately, Edith?" he inquired, lowering his voice."You used to be the best little pal ever. Now the other day, when Icalled up--"

  "Had the headache," she said laconically. "Well?"

  "Want to p
lay around this evening?"

  She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willy Cameron would be thatnight, and her face hardened. Had any one told Edith that she wasbeginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room, withhis exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home, and hissentimental whistling, she would have laughed. But he gave her somethingthat the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect. Itwas perhaps not so much that she cared for him, as that he enabled herto care more for herself.

  But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew.

  "I might, depending on what you've got to offer."

  "I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outsidework, and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months.We can have a ride, and supper somewhere. How's the young man with thewooden leg?"

  "If you want to know I'll call him out and let him tell you."

  "Quick, aren't you?" He smiled down at where she stood, firmlyentrenched behind a show case. "Well, don't fall in love with him.That's all. I'm a bad man when I'm jealous."

  He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He didnot know, nor would have cared had he known, that her acceptance of hisinvitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, andof the fact that Willy Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night.