A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER LI

  OLD Anthony's body had been brought home, and lay in state in his greatbed. There had been a bad hour; death seems so strangely to erase faultsand leave virtues. Something strong and vital had gone from the house,and the servants moved about with cautious, noiseless steps. In Grace'sboudoir, Howard was sitting, his arms around his wife, telling her thestory of the day. At dawn he had notified her by telephone of Akers'murder.

  "Shall I tell Lily?" she had asked, trembling.

  "Do you want to wait until I get back?"

  "I don't know how she will take it, Howard. I wish you could be here,anyhow."

  But then had come the battle and his father's death, and in the end itwas Willy Cameron who told her. He had brought back all that was mortalof Anthony Cardew, and, having seen the melancholy procession up thestairs, had stood in the hall, hating to intrude but hoping to beuseful. Howard found him there, a strange, disheveled figure, bearingthe scars of battle, and held out his hand.

  "It's hard to thank you, Cameron," he said; "you seem to be alwaysabout when we need help. And"--he paused--"we seem to have needed itconsiderably lately."

  Willy Cameron flushed.

  "I feel rather like a meddler, sir."

  "Better go up and wash," Howard said. "I'll go up with you."

  It happened, therefore, that it was in Howard Cardew's opulentdressing-room that Howard first spoke to Willy Cameron of Akers' death,pacing the floor as he did so.

  "I haven't told her, Cameron." He was anxious and puzzled. "She'll haveto be told soon, of course. I don't know anything about women. I don'tknow how she'll take it."

  "She has a great deal of courage. It will be a shock, but not a grief.But I have been thinking--" Willy Cameron hesitated. "She must not feelany remorse," he went on. "She must not feel that she contributed to itin any way. If you can make that clear to her--"

  "Are you sure she did not?"

  "It isn't facts that matter now. We can't help those. And no one cantell what actually led to his change of heart. It is what she is tothink the rest of her life."

  Howard nodded.

  "I wish you would tell her," he said. "I'm a blundering fool when itcomes to her. I suppose I care too much."

  He caught rather an odd look in Willy Cameron's face at that, andpondered over it later.

  "I will tell her, if you wish."

  And Howard drew a deep breath of relief. It was shortly after that hebroached another matter, rather diffidently.

  "I don't know whether you realize it or not, Cameron," he said, "butthis thing to-day might have been a different story if it had not beenfor you. And--don't think I'm putting this on a reward basis. It'snothing of the sort--but I would like to feel that you were working withme. I'd hate like thunder to have you working against me," he added.

  "I am only trained for one thing."

  "We use chemists in the mills."

  But the discussion ended there. Both men knew that it would be takenup later, at some more opportune time, and in the meantime both had onethought, Lily.

  So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from WillyCameron. She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through, watchinghim with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day.But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known longago, in some infinitely remote past.

  "I am sorry," she said, when he finished. "I didn't want him to die. Youknow that, don't you? I never wished him--Willy, I say I am sorry, but Idon't really feel anything. It's dreadful."

  Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for thefirst time in her healthy young life.

  * * * * *

  An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She foundWilly Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a lookof wild despair in his eyes.

  Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhatsince the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth andworldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end,to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with theshades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.

  "She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron," she said. "It was but a crisisof the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you."

  Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure,which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went upthe stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figurelost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently movedforward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at theunmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went andstood before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood inthe old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw theendless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Thendeath. Grayson was old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardewhouse. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to the picture.

  "Wherever you are, sir," he said, "you needn't worry any more. The linewill carry on, sir. The line will carry on."

  Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, andgathered Lily close in his arms.

  CHAPTER LII

  Thanksgiving of the year of our Lord 1919 saw many changes. It saw,slowly emerging from the chaos of war, new nations, like children,taking their first feeble steps. It saw a socialism which, born at fullterm might have thrived, prematurely and forcibly delivered, and makinga valiant but losing fight for life. It saw that war is never good,but always evil; that war takes everything and gives nothing, save thatsometimes a man may lose the whole world and gain his own soul.

  It saw old Anthony Cardew gone to his fathers, into the vast democracyof heaven, and Louis Akers passed through the Traitors' Gate of eternityto be judged and perhaps reprieved. For a man is many men, good and bad,and the Judge of the Tower of Heaven is a just Judge.

  It saw Jim Doyle a fugitive, Woslosky dead, and the Russian, Ross,bland, cunning and eternally plotting, in New England under anothername. And Mr. Hendricks ordering a new suit for the day of takingoffice. And Doctor Smalley tying a bunch of chrysanthemums on Annabelle,against a football game, and taking a pretty nurse to see it.

  It saw Ellen roasting a turkey, and a strange young man in the EaglePharmacy, a young man who did not smoke a pipe, and allowed no visitorsin the back room. And it saw Willy Cameron in the laboratory of thereopened Cardew Mills, dealing in tons instead of grains and drams,and learning to touch any piece of metal in the mill with a moistenedfore-finger before he sat down upon it.

  * * * * *

  But it saw more than that.

  On the evening of Thanksgiving Day there was an air of repressedexcitement about the Cardew house. Mademoiselle, in a new silk dress,ran about the lower floor, followed by an agitated Grayson with a cloth,for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vasesof flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arriveda large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear andthere exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and diversother excitable and emotional women to peep within.

  After which he tied it up again and carried it upstairs.

  At seven o'clock Elinor Cardew, lovely in black satin, was carried downthe stairs and placed in a position which commanded both the hall andthe drawing-room. For some strange reason it was essential that sheshould see both.

  At seven-thirty came in a rush:

  (a)--Mr. Alston Denslow, in evening clothes and gardenia, and feeling inhis right waist-coat pocket nervously every few minutes.

  (b)--An excited woman of middle age, in a black silk dress still faintlybearing the creases of five days in a trunk, and accompanied by amongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle,Pink, and Howard Cardew. ("He said Jinx was to come," she explainedbreat
hlessly to her bodyguard. "I never knew such a boy!")

  (c)--Mr. Davis, in a frock coat and white lawn tie, and taken upstairsby Grayson, who mistook him for the bishop.

  (d)--Aunt Caroline, in her diamond dog collar and purple velvet, anddetermined to make the best of things.

  (e)--The real bishop this time, and his assistant, followed by a valetwith a suitcase, containing the proper habiliments for a prince of thechurch while functioning. (A military term, since the Bishop had been inthe army.)

  (f)--A few unimportant important people, very curious, and the womenuncertain about the proper garb for a festive occasion in a house ofmourning.

  (g)--Set of silver table vases, belated.

  (h)--Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, Mayor and Mayoress-elect. Extremelydignified.

  (i)--An overfull taxicab, containing inside it Ellen, Edith, Dan andJoe. The overflow, consisting of a tall young man, displaying repressedexcitement and new evening clothes, with gardenia, sat on the seatoutside beside the chauffeur and repeated to himself a sort of chantaccompanied by furious searchings of his pockets. "Money. Checkbook.Tickets. Trunk checks," was the burden of his song.

  (j)--Doctor Smalley and Annabelle. He left Annabelle outside.

  * * * * *

  The city moved on about its business. In thousands of homes the lightsshone down on little family groups, infinitely tender little groups. Theworkers of the city were there, the doors shut, the fires burning. Toeach man the thing he had earned, not the thing that he took. To allmen the right to labor, to love, and to rest. To children, the rightto play. To women, the hearth, and the peace of the hearth. To lovers,love, and marriage, and home.

  The city moved on about its business, and its business was homes.

  * * * * *

  At the great organ behind the staircase the organist sat. In stiff rowsnear him were the Cardew servants, marshaled by Grayson and in theirbest.

  Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited. And as he waited he kept his eyeson the portrait of old Anthony, in the drawing-room beyond. There was afixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was reassurance. It was asthough he would say to the portrait: "It has all come out very well, yousee, sir. It always works out somehow. We worry and fret, we old ones,but the young come along, and somehow or other they manage, sir."

  What he actually said was to tell a house maid to stop sniveling.

  Over the house was the strange hush of waiting. It had waited beforethis, for birth and for death, but never before--

  The Bishop was waiting also, and he too had his eyes fixed on oldAnthony's portrait, a straight, level-eyed gaze, as of man to man, as ofprince of the church to prince of industry. The Bishop's eyes said:"All shall be done properly and in order, and as befits the Cardews,Anthony."

  The Bishop was as successful in his line as Anthony Cardew had been inhis. He cleared his throat.

  The organist sat at the great organ behind the staircase, waiting. Hewas playing very softly, with his eyes turned up. He had played thesame music many times before, and always he felt very solemn, as one whomakes history. He sighed. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was only anaccompaniment to life, to which others sang and prayed, were christened,confirmed and married. But what was the song without the music? Hewished the scullery maid would stop crying.

  Grayson touched him on the arm.

  "All ready, sir," he said.

  *****

  Willy Cameron stood at the foot of the staircase, looking up.