A Poor Wise Man Part 32

But good women were not like that. If they were, then they were not good. They did not lie awake remembering the savage clasp of a man's arms, knowing all the time that this was not love, but something quite different. Or if it was love, that it was painful and certainly not beautiful.

Sometimes she thought about w.i.l.l.y Cameron. He had had very exalted ideas about love. He used to be rather oratorical about it.

"It's the fundamental principle of the universe," he would say, waving his pipe wildly. "But it means suffering, dear child. It feeds on martyrdom and fattens on sacrifice. And as the h.c. of l. doesn't affect either commodity, it lives forever."

"What does it do, w.i.l.l.y, if it hasn't any martyrdom and sacrifice to feed on? Do you mean to say that when it is returned and everybody is happy, it dies?"

"Practically," he had said. "It then becomes domestic contentment, and expresses itself in the shape of butcher's bills and roast chicken on Sundays."

But that had been in the old care-free days, before w.i.l.l.y had thought he loved her, and before she had met Louis.

She made a desperate effort one day to talk to her mother. She wanted, somehow, to be set right in her own eyes. But Grace could not meet her even half way; she did not know anything about different sorts of love, but she did know that love was beautiful, if you met the right man and married him. But it had to be some one who was your sort, because in the end marriage was only a sort of glorified companionship.

The moral in that, so obviously pointed at Louis Akers, invalidated the rest of it for Lily.

She was in a state of constant emotional excitement by that time, and it was only a night or two after that she quarreled with her grandfather.

There had been a dinner party, a heavy, pompous affair, largely attended, for although spring was well advanced, the usual May hegira to the country or the coast had not yet commenced. Industrial conditions in and around the city were too disturbed for the large employers to get away, and following Lent there had been a sort of sporadic gayety, covering a vast uneasiness. There was to be no polo after all.

Lily, doing her best to make the dinner a success, found herself contrasting it with the gatherings at the Doyle house, and found it very dull. These men, with their rigidity of mind, invited because they held her grandfather's opinions, or because they kept their own convictions to themselves, seemed to her of a bygone time. She did not see in them a safe counterpoise to a people which in its reaction from the old order, was ready to swing to anything that was new. She saw only a dozen or so elderly gentlemen, immaculate and prosperous, peering through their gla.s.ses after a world which had pa.s.sed them by.

They were very grave that night. The situation was serious. The talk turned inevitably to the approaching strike, and from that to a possible attempt on the part of the radical element toward violence. The older men pooh-poohed that, but the younger ones were uncertain. Isolated riotings, yes. But a coordinated attempt against the city, no. Labour was greedy, but it was law-abiding. Ah, but it was being fired by incendiary literature. Then what were the police doing? They were doing everything. They were doing nothing. The governor was secretly a radical. Nonsense. The governor was saying little, but was waiting and watching. A general strike was only another word for revolution. No. It would be attempted, perhaps, but only to demonstrate the solidarity of labor.

After a time Lily made a discovery. She found that even into that carefully selected gathering had crept a surprising spirit, based on the necessity for concession; a few men who shared her father's convictions, and went even further. One or two, even, who, cautiously for fear of old Anthony's ears, voiced a belief that before long invested money would be given a fixed return, all surplus profits to be divided among the workers, the owners and the government.

"What about the lean years?" some one asked.

The government's share of all business was to form a contingent fund for such emergencies, it seemed.

Lily listened attentively. Was it because they feared that if they did not voluntarily divide their profits they would be taken from them?

Enough for all, and to none too much. Was that what they feared? Or was it a sense of justice, belated but real?

She remembered something Jim Doyle had said:

"Labor has learned its weakness alone, its strength united. But capital has not learned that lesson. It will not take a loss for a principle.

It will not unite. It is suspicious and jealous, so it fights its individual battles alone, and loses in the end."

But then to offset that there was something w.i.l.l.y Cameron had said one day, frying doughnuts for her with one hand, and waving the fork about with the other.

"Don't forget this, oh representative of the plutocracy," he had said.

"Capital has its side, and a darned good one, too. It's got a sense of responsibility to the country, which labor may have individually but hasn't got collectively."

These men at the table were grave, burdened with responsibility. Her father. Even her grandfather. It was no longer a question of profit. It was a question of keeping the country going. They were like men forced to travel, and breasting a strong head wind. There were some there who would turn, in time, and travel with the gale. But there were others like her grandfather, obstinate and secretly frightened, who would refuse. Who would, to change the figure, sit like misers over their treasure, an eye on the window of life for thieves.

She went upstairs, perplexed and thoughtful. Some time later she heard the family ascending, the click of her mother's high heels on the polished wood of the staircase, her father's st.u.r.dy tread, and a moment or two later her grandfather's slow, rather weary step. Suddenly she felt sorry for him, for his age, for his false G.o.ds of power and pride, for the disappointment she was to him. She flung open her door impulsively and confronted him.

"I just wanted to say good-night, grandfather," she said breathlessly.

"And that I am sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"Sorry--" she hesitated. "Because we see things so differently."

Lily was almost certain that she caught a flash of tenderness in his eyes, and certainly his voice had softened.

"You looked very pretty to-night," he said. But he pa.s.sed on, and she had again the sense of rebuff with which he met all her small overtures at that time. However, he turned at the foot of the upper flight.

"I would like to talk to you, Lily. Will you come upstairs?"

She had been summoned before to those mysterious upper rooms of his, where entrance was always by request, and generally such requests presaged trouble. But she followed him light-heartedly enough then. His rare compliment had pleased and touched her.

The lamp beside his high-backed, almost throne-like chair was lighted, and in the dressing-room beyond his valet was moving about, preparing for the night. Anthony dismissed the man, and sat down under the lamp.

"You heard the discussion downstairs, to-night, Lily. Personally I antic.i.p.ate no trouble, but if there is any it may be directed at this house." He smiled grimly. "I cannot rely on my personal popularity to protect me, I fear. Your mother obstinately refuses to leave your father, but I have decided to send you to your grand-aunt Caroline."

"Aunt Caroline! She doesn't care for me, grandfather. She never has."

"That is hardly pertinent, is it? The situation is this: She intends to open the Newport house early in June, and at my request she will bring you out there. Next fall we will do something here; I haven't decided just what."

There was a sudden wild surge of revolt in Lily. She hated Newport.

Grand-aunt Caroline was a terrible person. She was like Anthony, domineering and cruel, and with even less control over her tongue.

"I need not point out the advantages of the plan," said Anthony suavely.

"There may be trouble here, although I doubt it. But in any event you will have to come out, and this seems an excellent way."

"Is it a good thing to spend a lot of money now, grandfather, when there is so much discontent?"

Old Anthony had a small jagged vein down the center of his forehead, and in anger or his rare excitements it stood out like a scar. Lily saw it now, but his voice was quiet enough.

"I consider it vitally important to the country to continue its social life as before the war."

"You mean, to show we are not frightened?"

"Frightened! Good G.o.d, n.o.body's frightened. It will take more than a handful of demagogues to upset this government. Which brings me to a subject you insist on reopening, by your conduct. I have reason to believe that you are still going to that man's house."

He never called Doyle by name if he could avoid it.

"I have been there several times."

"After you were forbidden?"

His tone roused every particle of antagonism in her. She flushed.

"Perhaps because I was forbidden," she said, slowly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that I may consider your att.i.tude very unjust?"

If she looked for an outburst from him it did not come. He stood for a moment, deep in thought.

"You understand that this Doyle once tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate me?"

"I know that he tried to beat you, grandfather. I am sorry, but that was long ago. And there was a reason for it, wasn't there?"