A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XXII

  The new movement was growing rapidly, and with a surprising catholicityof range. Already it included lawyers and doctors, chauffeurs, butchers,clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck gardeners from the surroundingcounty, railroad employees, and some of the strikers from the mills,men who had obeyed their union order to quit work, but had obeyed itunwillingly; men who resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks oflabor by the lawless element which was fomenting trouble.

  Dan had joined.

  On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Akers, oneof the cards of the new Vigilance Committee was being inspected withcynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices in theSearing Building. They studied it with interest, while the man who hadbrought it stood by.

  "Where'd you pick it up, Cusick?"

  "One of our men brought it into the store. Said you might want to seeit."

  The three men bent over it.

  The Myers Housecleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During theday two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a pretenseof business at such times as the door opened, or when an occasionalclient, seeing the name, came in to inquire for rates. At such times theclerks were politely regretful. The firm's contracts were all they couldhandle for months ahead.

  There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumablyprofessional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls,waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved tobe accomplished linguists. They talked, with more or less fluency, withCroats, Serbs, Poles and Slavs.

  There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pails andbrushes, soap and ladders. But there was a great safe also, and itscompartments were filled with pamphlets in many tongues, a supplyconstantly depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen, carrying out thepails of honest labor, carried them loaded down with the literature itwas their only business to circulate.

  Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrineof no God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscation ofprivate property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape, arson andpillage.

  And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatreswere crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classes of peoplewere spending money prodigally; women with shawls over their heads,women who in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove inautomobiles to order their winter supply of coal, and vast amounts ofliquors were being bought by the foreign element against the approachingprohibition law, and stored in untidy cellars.

  On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reactionfrom war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of thewealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Amongthe list of debutantes Lily's name always appeared.

  And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being groundthe professional and salaried men with families, the women clerks, thevast army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They wentthrough their days doggedly, with little anxious lines around theireyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations, bewildered, tortured withapprehension of to-morrow, and yet patiently believing that, as thingscould not be worse, they must soon commence to improve.

  "It's bound to clear up soon," said Joe Wilkinson over the back fenceone night late in June, to Willy Cameron. Joe supported a large familyof younger brothers and sisters in the house next door, and was employedin a department store. "I figure it this way--both sides need eachother, don't they? Something like marriage, you know. It'll all be overin six months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now it's summer, becauseour kids are hell on shoes."

  "I hope so," said Willy Cameron. "What are you doing over there,anyhow?"

  "Wait and see," said Joe, cryptically. "If you think you're going to bethe only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to think again." Hehesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searchingfor worms in the overturned garden mold. "How's Edith?" he asked.

  "She's all right, Joe."

  "Seeing anybody yet?"

  "Not yet. In a day or so she'll be downstairs."

  "You might tell her I've been asking about her."

  There was something in Joel's voice that caught Willy Cameron'sattention. He thought about Joe a great deal that night. Joe was anotherone who must never know about Edith's trouble. The boy had littleenough, and if he had built a dream about Edith Boyd he must keep hisdream. He was rather discouraged that night, was Willy Cameron, and hebegan to think that dreams were the best things in life. They were asort of sanctuary to which one fled to escape realities. Perhaps noreality was ever as beautiful as one's dream of it.

  Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes during hisrare leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night, and pastthe Doyle house, but he never saw her, and because it did not occur tohim that she might want to see him he never made an attempt to call.Always after those futile excursions he was inclined to long silences,and only Jinx could have told how many hours he sat in his room atnight, in the second-hand easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand andeyes on nothing in particular, lost in a dream world where the fieldsbore a strong resemblance to the parade ground of an army camp, andthrough which field he and Lily wandered like children, hand in hand.

  But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediateproblems, of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a little of hisfine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departed from him.The meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took on a politicalbearing, and Hendricks was generally the central figure. The ward feltthat Mr. Hendricks was already elected, and called him "Mr. Mayor." Atthe same time the steel strike pursued a course of comparative calm. AtFriendship and at Baxter there had been rioting, and a fatality or two,but the state constabulary had the situation well in hand. On a Sundaymorning Willy Cameron went out to Baxter on the trolley, and camehome greatly comforted. The cool-eyed efficiency of the state policereassured him. He compared them, disciplined, steady, calm with thecalmness of their dangerous calling, with the rabble of foreigners whoshuffled along the sidewalks, and he felt that his anxiety had beenrather absurd.

  He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned inthe newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent muchtime in searching for these notices, and then in painfully cutting themout and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothingabout him she felt thwarted, and was liable to sharp remarks onnewspapers in general, and on those of the city in particular.

  Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off likeother strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the field forsedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk withEdith.

  She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early inJuly, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, and he placedher, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Dan had brought herdown and had made a real effort to be kind, but his suspicion of thesituation made it difficult for him to dissemble, and soon he went out.Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the open window came the shrieksof numerous little Wilkinsons wearing out expensive shoe-leather on thebrick pavement.

  They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron talkingwith a sort of determined optimism. After a time he realized that shewas not even listening.

  "I wish you'd close the window," she said at last. "Those crazyWilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something."

  "All right." He closed the window and stood looking down at her. "Areyou sure you want me to hear it?" he asked gravely.

  "Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers whileI've been shut away up there, Willy. It kept me from thinking. And ifthings are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get intotrouble doing it. I will, probably. Murder's nothing to them."

  "Who are 'them'?"

  "You get the pol
ice to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in theSearing Building."

  "Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police willwant something definite to go on."

  She hesitated.

  "I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, at night.And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of the desk in theback room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell themto examine the safe, too. I don't know what's in it. Dynamite, maybe."

  "What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn'tmuch to go on."

  "When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk," she saidbriefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent. Aftera time he said:

  "You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?"

  "No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me." He got up and tooka restless turn or two about the little rooms. Edith's problem had begunto obsess him. Not for long would it be possible to keep her conditionfrom Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a loss for some course to pursue.

  "Have you ever thought," he said at last, "that this man, whoever he is,ought to marry you?"

  Edith's face set like a flint.

  "I don't want to marry him," she said. "I wouldn't marry him if he wasthe last man on earth."

  He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed onLouis Akers, but he could not be sure.

  "I won't tell you his name, either," Edith added, shrewishly. Then hervoice softened. "I will tell you this, Willy," she said wistfully. "Iwas a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out.It's the truth."

  "You're a good girl now," he said gravely.

  Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was going out.

  "I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks," he said. "And we maygo on and have a talk with the Chief of Police. If you are right it maybe important."

  After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now andthen looked in to see if she was comfortable.

  Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse atthat. But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the Searing Building?

  Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with herthe news of the family. At first she had sternly refused to talk aboutthe Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had been long andmonotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form, when shecould talk, of incessant questions.

  So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leavinghome, and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately she hadheard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be, soon.Now her motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wantedto tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wanted Lily to marry LouisAkers. She wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way,and--Willy was not like Dan; he did not seem to think her forever lost.He had always been thoughtful, but lately he had been very tender withher. Men did strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget,after a long time. She could board the child out somewhere, if it lived.Sometimes they didn't live.

  But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside like anold shoe.

  She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities she would notface.

  She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, movedto sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close. If thatwere life she did not want it, with its drab days and futile effort, itsincessant deprivations, its hands, gnarled with work that got nowhere,its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.

  She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.

  "I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother," she said from thedoorway. "How's the pain down your arm?"

  "Bring me the mucilage, Edie," requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped upin bed and surrounded by newspapers. "I've found Willy's name again.I've got fourteen now. Where's the scissors?"

  Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, and stillsit among her pillows, snipping?

  "I wonder," said Mrs. Boyd, "did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen is sosaving that she grudges him a bone."

  "He looks all right," said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lorddid that for people, when they reached a certain point. Maybe He tookaway the fear of death, by showing after years of it that life was notso valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity, andher dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first, because she wantedto have some place on the other side. She had prayed to be receivedyoung and whole and without child. And her mother--

  Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater thanlife, and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. That was whatthe eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the loveof her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because hishand was close by to hold to.

  For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw whatlove might be, and might do. She held out both hands in the darkness,but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. If she could onlyhave him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray paththat stretched ahead, years and years of it. Youth. Middle age. Old age.

  "I'd only drag him down," she muttered bitterly.

  Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story,and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Police at hishouse. Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watchon the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company and thus ultimatelygetting the heads of the organization. But the Chief was unwilling todelay.

  "Every day means more of their infernal propaganda," he said, "and ifthis girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get theoutfit now. Those clerks, for instance--we'll get some information outof them. That sort always squeals. They're a cheap lot."

  "Going to ball it up, of course," Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly, on theway home. "Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out, and he wantsto make a big strike first. I'll drop in to-morrow evening and tell youwhat's happened."

  He came into the pharmacy the next evening, with a bundle of red-boundpamphlets under his arm, and a look of disgust on his face.

  "What did I tell you, Cameron?" he demanded, breathing heavily. "Yes,they got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff so inflammable that,since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse thanthat first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks, and a half-dozenforeigners, too. And that's all they got."

  "They won't talk?"

  "Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the MyersHousecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault, andthey're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest.They'll have to let them go, son. Here. You can do most everything. Canyou read Croatian? No? Well, here's something in English to cut yourwisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellowsstart."

  It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he saw behindit Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the discontents ofthe world, and would fatten by them; men who, secretly envious of theupper classes and unable to attain to them, would pull all men to theirown level, or lower. Men who cloaked their own jealousies with the garbof idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous, and imminent.

  The pamphlets spoke of "the day." It was a Prussian phrase. Therevolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as areward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust andgreed and idleness.

  At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and ruleitself.

  Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at thecity he loved.

  "Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?" he asked. "Will ourpeople take it up? Is the American nation going crazy?"

  "Not a bit of it," said Willy Cameron stoutly. "They're about as able tooverthrow the government as you are to shove o
ver the Saint Elmo Hotel."

  "I could do that, with a bomb."

  "No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in it. It'sthe hole we don't want."

  Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.