A Poor Wise Man, Mary Roberts Rinehart [classic book list TXT] 📗

afraid, ever since, that it would end in your not wanting to see me again. Just try to forget it happened, won’t you?”

“I knew it was an impulse, but it made me very proud, Willy.”

“All right,” he said quietly. “And that’s that. Now about your grandfather. I’ve had him on my mind, too. He is an old man, and sometimes they are peculiar. I am only sorry I upset him. And you are to forget that, too.”

In spite of herself she laughed, rather helplessly.

“Is there anything I am to remember?”

He smiled too, and straightened himself, like a man who has got something off his chest.

“Certainly there is, Miss Cardew. Me. Myself. I want you to know that I’m around, ready to fetch and carry like Jinx here, and about as necessary, I suppose. We are a good bit alike, Jinx and I. We’re satisfied with a bone, and we give a lot of affection. You won’t mind a bone now and then?”

His cheerful tone reassured the girl. There was no real hurt, then.

“That’s nice of you, you know.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “you know there are men who prefer a dream to reality. Perhaps I’m like that. Anyhow, that’s enough about me. Do you know that there is a strike coming?”

“Yes. I ought to tell you, Willy. I think the men are right.”

He stared at her incredulously.

“Right?” he said. “Why, my dear child, most of them want to strike about as much as I want delirium tremens. I’ve talked to them, and I know.”

“A slave may be satisfied if he has never known freedom.”

“Oh, fudge,” said Willy Cameron, rudely. “Where do you get all that? You’re quoting; aren’t you? The strike, any strike, is an acknowledgment of weakness. It is a resort to the physical because the collective mentality of labor isn’t as strong as the other side. Or labor thinks it isn’t, which amounts to the same thing. And there is a fine line between the fellow who fights for a principle and the one who knocks people down to show how strong he is.”

“This is a fight for a principle, Willy.”

“Fine little Cardew you are!” he scoffed. “Don’t make any mistake. There have been fights by labor for a principle, and the principle won, as good always wins over evil. But this is different. It’s a direct play by men who don’t realize what they are doing, into the hands of a lot of - well, we’ll call them anarchists. It’s Germany’s way of winning the war. By indirection.”

“If by anarchists you mean men like my uncle - “

“I do,” he said grimly. “That’s a family accident and you can’t help it. But I do mean Doyle. Doyle and a Pole named Woslosky, and a scoundrel of an attorney here in town, named Akers, among others.”

“Mr. Akers is a friend of mine, Willy.”

He stared at her.

“If they have been teaching you their dirty doctrines, Lily,” he said at last, “I can only tell you this. They can disguise it in all the fine terms they want. It is treason, and they are traitors. I know. I’ve had a talk with the Chief of Police.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“How well do you know Louis Akers?”

“Not very well.” But there were spots of vivid color flaming in her cheeks. He drew a long breath.

“I can’t retract it,” he said. “I didn’t know, of course. Shall we start back?”

They were very silent as they walked. Willy Cameron was pained and anxious. He knew Akers’ type rather than the man himself, but he knew the type well. Every village had one, the sleek handsome animal who attracted girls by sheer impudence and good humor, who made passionate, pagan love promiscuously, and put the responsibility for the misery they caused on the Creator because He had made them as they were.

He was agonized by another train of thought. For him Lily had always been something fine, beautiful, infinitely remote. There were other girls, girls like Edith Boyd, who were touched, some more, some less, with the soil of life. Even when, they kept clean they saw it all about them, and looked on it with shrewd, sophisticated eyes. But Lily was - Lily. The very thought of Louis Akers looking at her as he had seen him look at Edith Boyd made him cold with rage.

“Do you mind if I say something?”

“That sounds disagreeable. Is it?”

“Maybe, but I’m going to anyhow, Lily. I don’t like to think of you seeing Akers. I don’t know anything against him, and I suppose if I did I wouldn’t tell you. But he is not your sort.”

An impulse of honesty prevailed with her.

“I know that as well as you do. I know him better than you do. But, he stands for something, at least,” she added rather hotly. “None of the other men I know stand for anything very much. Even you, Willy.”

“I stand for the preservation of my country,” he said gravely. “I mean, I represent a lot of people who - well, who don’t believe that change always means progress, and who do intend that the changes Doyle and Akers and that lot want they won’t get. I don’t believe - if you say you want what they want - that you know what you are talking about.”

“Perhaps I am more intelligent than you think I am.”

He was, of course, utterly wretched, impressed by the futility of arguing with her.

“Do your people know that you are seeing Louis Akers!”

“You are being rather solicitous, aren’t you?”

“I am being rather anxious. I wouldn’t dare, of course, if we hadn’t been such friends. But Akers is wrong, wrong every way, and I have to tell you that, even if it means that you will never see me again. He takes a credulous girl - “

“Thank you!”

“And talks bunk to her and possibly makes love to her - “

“Haven’t we had enough of Mr. Akers?” Lily asked coldly. “If you cannot speak of anything else, please don’t talk.”

The result of which was a frozen silence until they reached the house.

“Good-by,” she said primly. “It was very nice of you to call me up. Good-by, Jinx.” She went up the steps, leaving him bare-headed and rather haggard, looking after her.

He took the dog and went out into the country on foot, tramping through the mud without noticing it, and now and then making little despairing gestures. He was helpless. He had cut himself off from her like a fool. Akers. Akers and Edith Boyd. Other women. Akers and other women. And now Lily. Good God, Lily!

Jinx was tired. He begged to be carried, planting two muddy feet on his master’s shabby trouser leg, and pleading with low whines. Willy Cameron stooped and, gathering up the little animal, tucked him under his arm. When it commenced to rain he put him under his coat and plunged his head through the mud and wet toward home.

Lily had entered the house in a white fury, but a moment later she was remorseful. For one thing, her own anger bewildered her. After all, he had meant well, and it was like him to be honest, even if it cost him something he valued.

She ran to the door and looked around for him, but he had disappeared. She went in again, remorseful and unhappy. What had come over her to treat him like that? He had looked almost stricken.

“Mr. Akers is calling, Miss Cardew,” said the footman. “He is in the drawing-room.”

Lily went in slowly.

Louis Akers had been waiting for some time. He had lounged into the drawing-room, with an ease assumed for the servant’s benefit, and had immediately lighted a cigarette. That done, and the servant departed, he had carefully appraised his surroundings. He liked the stiff formality of the room. He liked the servant in his dark maroon livery. He liked the silence and decorum. Most of all, he liked himself in these surroundings. He wandered around, touching a bowl here, a vase there, eyeing carefully the ancient altar cloth that lay on a table, the old needle-work tapestry on the chairs.

He saw himself fitted into this environment, a part of it; coming down the staircase, followed by his wife, and getting into his waiting limousine; sitting at the head of his table, while the important men of the city listened to what he had to say. It would come, as sure as God made little fishes. And Doyle was a fool. He, Louis Akers, would marry Lily Cardew and block that other game. But he would let the Cardews know who it was who had blocked it and saved their skins. They’d have to receive him after that; they would cringe to him.

Then, unexpectedly, he had one of the shocks of his life. He had gone to the window and through it he saw Lily and Willy Cameron outside. He clutched at the curtain and cursed under his breath, apprehensively. But Willy Cameron did not come in; Akers watched him up the street with calculating, slightly narrowed eyes. The fact that Lily Cardew knew the clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication. His surprise was lost in anxiety. But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather pale and unsmiling, found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height. She found her poise entirely gone, and it was he who spoke first.

“I know,” he said. “You didn’t ask me, but I came anyhow.”

She held out her hand rather primly.

“It is very good of you to come.

“Good! I couldn’t stay away.”

He took her outstretched hand, smiling down at her, and suddenly made an attempt to draw her to him.

“You know that, don’t you?”

“Please!”

He let her go at once. He had not played his little game so long without learning its fine points. There were times to woo a woman with a strong arm, and there were other times that required other methods.

“Right-o,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about you so much that I daresay I have got farther in our friendship than I should. Do you know that you haven’t been out of my mind since that ride we had together?”

“Really? Would you like some tea?”

“Thanks, yes. Do you dislike my telling you that?”

She rang the bell, and then stood Lacing him.

“I don’t mind, no. But I am trying very hard to forget that ride, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“When a beautiful thing comes into a man’s life he likes to remember it.”

“How can you call it beautiful?”

“Isn’t it rather fine when two people, a man and a woman, suddenly find a tremendous attraction that draws them together, in spite of the fact that everything else is conspiring to keep them apart?”

“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “It just seemed all wrong, somehow.”

“An honest impulse is never wrong.”

“I don’t want to discuss it, Mr. Akers. It is over.”

While he was away from her, her attraction for him loomed less than the things she promised, of power and gratified ambition. But he found her, with her gentle aloofness, exceedingly appealing, and with the tact of the man who understands women he adapted himself to her humor.

“You are making me very unhappy; Miss Lily,” he said. “If you’ll only promise to let me see you now and then, I’ll promise to be as mild as dish-water. Will you promise?”

She was still struggling, still remembering Willy Cameron, still trying to remember all the things that Louis Akers was not.

“I think I ought not to