A Poor Wise Man Part 36

"Will you go to bed?"

"I'll go to bed, all right."

He had found things rather more difficult after that. Two women, both ill and refusing to acknowledge it, and the prospect of Dan's being called out by the union. Try as he would, he could not introduce any habit of thrift into the family. Dan's money came and went, and on Sat.u.r.day nights there was not only nothing left, but often a deficit.

Dan, skillfully worked upon outside, began to develop a grievance, also, and on his rare evenings at home or at the table he would voice his wrongs.

"It's just hand to mouth all the time," he would grumble. "A fellow working for the Cardews never gets ahead. What chance has he got, anyhow? It takes all he can get to live."

w.i.l.l.y Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but with his women folks. And Dan was one of thousands. His wages went for food, too much food, food spoiled in cooking. There were men, with able women behind them, making less than Dan and saving money.

"Keep some of it out and bank it," he suggested, but Dan sneered.

"And have a store bill a mile long! You know mother as well as I do. She means well, but she's a fool with money."

He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left it, but he revealed once that there were long idle periods when the heating was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew sat and waited, doing nothing.

"But I'm there, all right," he said. "I'm not playing golf or riding in my automobile. I'm on the job."

"Well," said w.i.l.l.y Cameron, "I'm on the job about eleven hours a day, and I wear out more shoe leather than trouser seats at that. But it doesn't seem to hurt me."

"It's a question of principle," said Dan doggedly. "I've got no personal kick, y'understand. Only I'm not getting anywhere, and something's got to be done about it."

So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of independence, w.i.l.l.y Cameron made his way rather heavily toward the Boyd house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for Hendricks already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his night cla.s.s in metallurgy. He had had a letter from his mother, too, and he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not at all sure where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the Boyds flat, seemed impossible.

He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice, he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had pleaded a week of engagements.

"I'm sorry," she had said. "I'll call you up next week some time I have a lot of things I want to talk over with you."

But he knew she was avoiding him.

And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations against him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must not go to the house on Cardew Way. A man's loyalty was like a woman's virtue; it could not be questionable. There was no middle ground.

He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper bundle at her feet.

Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.

"I make it a point to hold my head high," she was saying. "I guess there was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but--Is that you, w.i.l.l.y?"

"Why, Miss Ellen!" he said. "And looking as though headed for a journey!"

Ellen's face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour, letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.

"I am, w.i.l.l.y. Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed, and I came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it."

That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.

"She says she's been living at the Cardews," she put in, rocking valiantly. "I guess most any place would seem tame after that. I do hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and then gives them away."

She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every indication of going up the chimney.

"I call that downright wasteful," she offered.

w.i.l.l.y glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore the inscription: "James Duncan Cameron, 1876" inside the case.

"Eleven o'clock," he said sternly. "And me promising the doctor I'd have you in bed at ten sharp every night! Now off with you."

"But, w.i.l.l.y--"

"--or I shall have to carry you," he threatened. It was an old joke between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated with the sense of being looked after.

"He's that domineering," she said to Ellen, "that I can't call my soul my own."

"Good-night," Ellen said briefly.

w.i.l.l.y stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him there when she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly.

"Good-night," he called. "Both windows open. I shall go outside to see."

Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and Penates.

"Now tell me about it," he said.

"I've left them. There has been a terrible fuss, and when Miss Lily left to-night, I did too."

"She left her home?"

She nodded.

"It's awful, w.i.l.l.y. I don't know all of it, but they've been having her followed, or her grandfather did. I think there's a man in it. Followed!

And her a good girl! Her grandfather's been treating her like a dog for weeks. We all noticed it. And to-night there was a quarrel, with all of them at her like a pack of dogs, and her governess crying in the hall. I just went up and packed my things."

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know. I got her a taxicab, and she only took one bag. I went right off to the housekeeper and told her I wouldn't stay, and they could send my money after me."

"Did you notice the number of the taxicab?"

"I never thought of it."

He saw it all with terrible distinctness, The man was Akers, of course.

Then, if she had left her home rather than give him up, she was really in love with him. He had too much common sense to believe for a moment that she had fled to Louis Akers' protection, however. That was the last thing she would do. She would have gone to a hotel, or to the Doyle house.

"She shouldn't have left home, Ellen."

"They drove her out, I tell you," Ellen cried, irritably. "At least that's what it amounted to. There are things no high-minded girl will stand. Can you lend me some money, w.i.l.l.y?"

He felt in his pocket, producing a handful of loose money.

"Of course you can have all I've got," he said. "But you must not go to-night, Miss Ellen. It's too late. I'll give you my room and go in with Dan Boyd."