A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "There must be some other way. That is no reason for marriage."

  "But--suppose I care for him?" Lily said, shyly.

  "You wouldn't live with him a year. There are different ways of caring,Lily. There is such a thing as being carried away by a man's violentdevotion, but it isn't the violent love that lasts."

  Lily considered that carefully, and she felt that there was some truthin it. When Louis Akers came to take her home that night he found herunresponsive and thoughtful.

  "Mrs. Doyle's been talking to you," he said at last. "She hates me, youknow."

  "Why should she hate you?"

  "Because, with all her vicissitudes, she's still a snob," he saidroughly. "My family was nothing, so I'm nothing."

  "She wants me to be happy, Louis."

  "And she thinks you won't be with me."

  "I am not at all sure that I would be." She made an effort then to throwoff the strange bond that held her to him. "I should like to have threemonths, Louis, to get a--well, a sort of perspective. I can't thinkclearly when you're around, and--"

  "And I'm always around? Thanks." But she had alarmed him. "You'rehurting me awfully, little girl," he said, in a different tone. "I can'tlive without seeing you, and you know it. You're all I have in life.You have everything, wealth, friends, position. You could play for threemonths and never miss me. But you are all I have."

  In the end she capitulated

  Jim Doyle was very content those days. There had been a time when JimDoyle was the honest advocate of labor, a flaming partizan of those whoworked with their hands. But he had traveled a long road since then,from dreamer to conspirator. Once he had planned to build up; now heplotted to tear down.

  His weekly paper had enormous power. To the workers he had begun topreach class consciousness, and the doctrine of being true to theirclass. From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.Ostensibly he stood for a vast equality, world wide and beneficent;actually he preached an inflammable doctrine of an earth where thelast shall be first. He advocated the overthrow of all centralizedgovernment, and considered the wages system robbery. Under it workerswere slaves, and employers of workers slave-masters. It was withsuch phrases that he had for months been consistently inflaming theinflammable foreign element in and around the city, and not the foreignelement only. A certain percentage of American-born workmen fell beforethe hammer-like blows of his words, repeated and driven home each week.

  He had no scruples, and preached none. He preached only revolt, and inthat revolt defiance of all existing laws. He had no religion; Christto him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system thatstill crucified those who fought the established order. In his new worldthere would be no churches and no laws. He advocated bloodshed, arson,sabotage of all sorts, as a means to an end.

  Fanatic he was, but practical fanatic, and the more dangerous for that.He had viewed the failure of the plan to capture a city in the northwestin February with irritation, but without discouragement. They had actedprematurely there and without sufficient secrecy. That was all. Theplan in itself was right. And he had watched the scant reports of theuprising in the newspapers with amusement and scorn. The very stepstaken to suppress the facts showed the uneasiness of the authorities andleft the nation with a feeling of false security.

  The people were always like that. Twice in a hundred years France hadexperienced the commune. Each time she had been warned, and each timeshe had waited too long. Ever so often in the life of every nation camethese periodic outbursts of discontent, economic in their origin, andran their course like diseases, contagious, violent and deadly.

  The commune always followed long and costly wars. The people woulddance, but they revolted at paying the piper.

  The plan in Seattle had been well enough conceived; the city light plantwas to have been taken over during the early evening of February 6, andat ten o'clock that night the city was to have gone dark. But the reignof terrorization that was to follow had revolted Jim Osborne, oneof their leaders, and from his hotel bedroom he had notified theauthorities. Word had gone out to "get" Osborne.

  If it had not been for Osborne, and the conservative element behind him,a flame would have been kindled at Seattle that would have burnt acrossthe nation.

  Doyle watched Gompers cynically.. He considered his advocacy ofpatriotic cooperation between labor and the Government during the warthe skillful attitude of an opportunist. Gompers could do better withpublic opinion behind him than without it. He was an opportunist, ridingthe wave which would carry him farthest. Playing both ends against themiddle, and the middle, himself. He saw Gompers, watching the releaseof tension that followed the armistice and seeing the great child hehad fathered, grown now and conscious of its power,--watching it, fullyaware that it had become stronger than he.

  Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become afollower, into strange and difficult paths.

  The war had made labor's day. No public move was made without consultingorganized labor, and a certain element in it had grown drunk with power.To this element Doyle appealed. It was Doyle who wrote the carefullyprepared incendiary speeches, which were learned verbatim by hisagents for delivery. For Doyle knew one thing, and knew it well. Labor,thinking along new lines, must think along the same lines. Be taught thesame doctrines. Be pushed in one direction.

  There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting his outrageousdoctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a small circle ofthe intelligentsia, and too openly heterodox to be dangerous. And theother, secretly plotting against the city, wary, cautious, practical anddeadly, waiting to overthrow the established order and substitute for itchaos. It was only incidental to him that old Anthony should go with therest.

  But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. Hemeant to be that. He steadily widened the breach between Lily and herfamily, and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers withrelish. He had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate hadthrust it into his hands, and he meant to be worthy of the opportunity.

  He was in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather likedsitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was likechess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then satback waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell,with slow agonizing, into the trap.

  A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a way towiden the gulf between Lily and her grandfather. Elinor seldom left thehouse, and Lily had done some shopping for her. The two women were inElinor's bedroom, opening small parcels, when he knocked and came in.

  "I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group," hesaid, "but I am inclined to think that a certain gentleman, standing notfar from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a certain departmentof our great city government. And from his unflattering lack of interestin me, that he--"

  Elinor half rose, terrified.

  "Not the police, Jim?"

  "Sit down," he said, in a tone Lily had never heard him use before. Andto Lily, more gently: "I am not altogether surprised. As a matter offact, I have known it for some time. Your esteemed grandfather seems totake a deep interest in your movements these days."

  "Do you mean that I am being followed?"

  "I'm afraid so. You see, you are a very important person, and if youwill venture in the slums which surround the Cardew Mills, you should beprotected. At any time, for instance, Aunt Elinor and I may despoil youof those pearls you wear so casually, and--"

  "Don't talk like that, Jim," Elinor protested. She was very pale. "Areyou sure he is watching Lily?"

  He gave her an ugly look.

  "Who else?" he inquired suavely.

  Lily sat still, frozen with anger. So this was her grandfather's methodof dealing with her. He could not lock her up, but he would know, dayby day, and hour by hour, what she was doing. She could see him readingcarefully his wicked little notes on her day. Perha
ps he was watchingher mail, too. Then when he had secured a hateful total he would go toher father, and together they would send her away somewhere. Away fromLouis Akers. If he was watching her mail too he would know that Louiswas in love with her. They would rake up all the things that belongedin the past he was done with, and recite them to her. As though theymattered now!

  She went to the window and looked out. Yes, she had seen thedetective before. He must have been hanging around for days, his faceunconsciously impressing itself upon her. When she turned:

  "Louis is coming to dinner, isn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "If you don't mind, Aunt Nellie, I think I'll dine out with himsomewhere. I want to talk to him alone."

  "But the detective--"

  "If my grandfather uses low and detestable means to spy on me, AuntNellie, he deserves what he gets, doesn't he?"

  When Louis Akers came at half-past six, he found that she had beencrying, but she greeted him calmly enough, with her head held high.Elinor, watching her, thought she was very like old Anthony himself justthen.