A Poor Wise Man Part 40

Dan had already gone, and his half-empty cup of black coffee was on the kitchen table. Ellen sniffed it and raised her eyebrows.

She rolled up her sleeves, put the toast in the oven and the ham in the frying pan, with much the same grimness with which she had sat the night before listening to Mrs. Boyd's monologue. If this was the way they looked after w.i.l.l.y Cameron, no wonder he was thin and pale. She threw out the coffee, which she suspected had been made by the time-saving method of pouring water on last night's grounds, and made a fresh pot of it. After that she inspected the tea towels, and getting a tin dishpan, set them to boil in it on the top of the range.

"Enough to give him typhoid," she reflected.

Ellen disapproved of her surroundings; she disapproved of any woman who did not boil her tea towels. And when Edith came down carefully dressed and undeniably rouged she formed a disapproving opinion of that young lady, which was that she was trying to land w.i.l.l.y Cameron, and that he would be better dead than landed.

She met Edith's stare of surprise with one of thinly veiled hostility.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Edith. "When did you blow in, and where from?"

"I came to see Mr. Cameron last night, and he made me stay."

"A friend of w.i.l.l.y's! Well, I guess you needn't pay for your breakfast by cooking it. Mother's probably run out for something--she never has anything in the house--and is talking somewhere. I'll take that fork."

But Ellen proceeded to turn the ham.

"I'll do it," she said. "You might spoil your hands."

But Edith showed no offense.

"All right," she acceded indifferently. "If you're going to eat it you'd better cook it. We're rotten housekeepers here."

"I should think, if you're going to keep boarders, somebody would learn to cook. Mr. Cameron's mother is the best housekeeper in town, and he was raised on good food and plenty of it."

Her tone was truculent. Ellen's world, the world of short hours and easy service, of the decorum of the Cardew servants' hall, of luxury and dignity and good pay, had suddenly gone to pieces about her. She was feeling very bitter, especially toward a certain chauffeur who had prophesied the end of all service. He had made the statement that before long all people would be equal. There would be no above and below-stairs, no servants' hall.

"They'll drive their own cars, then, d.a.m.n them," he had said once, "if they can get any to drive. And answer their own bells, if they've got any to ring. And get up and cook their own breakfasts."

"Which you won't have any to cook," Grayson had said irritably, from the head of the long table. "Just a word, my man. That sort of talk is forbidden here. One word more and I go to Mr. Cardew."

The chauffeur had not sulked, however. "All right, Mr. Grayson," he said affably. "But I can go on thinking, I daresay. And some of these days you'll be wishing you'd climbed on the band wagon before it's too late."

Ellen, turning the ham carefully, was conscious that her revolt had been only partially on Lily's account. It was not so much Lily's plight as the abuse of power, although she did not put it that way, that had driven her out. Ellen then had carried out her own small revolution, and where had it put her? She had lost a good home, and what could she do?

All she knew was service.

Edith poured herself a cup of coffee, and taking a piece of toast from the oven, stood nibbling it. The crumbs fell on the not over-clean floor.

"Why don't you go into the dining-room to eat?" Ellen demanded.

"Got out of the wrong side of the bed, didn't you?" Edith asked.

"w.i.l.l.y's bed, I suppose. I'm not hungry, and I always eat breakfast like this. I wish he would hurry. We'll be late."

Ellen stared. It was her first knowledge that this girl, this painted hussy, worked in w.i.l.l.y's pharmacy, and her suspicions increased. She had a quick vision, as she had once had of Lily, of Edith in the Cameron house; Edith reading or embroidering on the front porch while w.i.l.l.y's mother slaved for her; Edith on the same porch in the evening, with all the boys in town around her. She knew the type, the sort that set an entire village by the ears and in the end left home and husband and ran away with a traveling salesman.

Ellen had already got w.i.l.l.y married and divorced when Mrs. Boyd came in.

She carried the milk pail, but her lips were blue and she sat down in a chair and held her hand to her heart.

"I'm that short of breath!" she gasped. "I declare I could hardly get back."

"I'll give you some coffee, right off."

When w.i.l.l.y Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into the parlor. His pallor was not lost on her, or his sunken eyes. He looked badly fed, shabby, and hara.s.sed, and he bore the marks of his sleepless night on his face. "Are you going to stay here?" she demanded.

"Why, yes, Miss Ellen."

"Your mother would break her heart if she knew the way you're living."

"I'm very comfortable. We've tried to get a ser--" He changed color at that. In the simple life of the village at home a woman whose only training was the town standard of good housekeeping might go into service in the city and not lose caste. But she was never thought of as a servant. "--help," he subst.i.tuted. "But we can't get any one, and Mrs.

Boyd is delicate. It is heart trouble."

"Does that girl work where you do?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Is she engaged to you? She calls you w.i.l.l.y." He smiled into her eyes.

"Not a bit of it, or thinking of it."

"How do you know what she's thinking? It's all over her. It's w.i.l.l.y this and w.i.l.l.y that--and men are such fools."

There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to forget; Edith at his doorway, with that odd look in her eyes; Edith never going to sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain things she had said, that he had pa.s.sed over lightly and somewhat uncomfortably.

"That's ridiculous, Miss Ellen. But even if it were true, which it isn't, don't you think it would be rather nice of her?" He smiled.

"I do not. I heard you going out last night, w.i.l.l.y. Did you find her?"

"She is at the Doyles'. I didn't see her."

"That'll finish it," Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around the parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard, at the unwound clock on the mantel shelf.

"If you're going to stay here I will," she announced abruptly. "I owe that much to your mother. I've got some money. I'll take what they'd pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another family." Then, seeing hesitation in his eyes: "That woman's sick, and you've got to be looked after. I could do all the work, if that--if the girl would help in the evenings."

He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries, and she was accustomed to luxury. There was no room for her. But in the end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith offering to share her upper bedroom.

"It's a hole," she said, "cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.

But there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone."

"I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith," he said for perhaps the twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, "and you would take my room."

"No chance," she said cheerfully. "Mother would raise the devil if you tried it." She glanced at Ellen's face. "If that word shocks you, you're due for a few shocks, you know."

"The way you talk is your business, not mine," said Ellen austerely.

When they finally departed on a half-run Ellen was established as a fixture in the Boyd house, and was already piling all the cooking utensils into a wash boiler and with grim efficiency was searching for lye with which to clean them.

Two weeks later, the end of June, the strike occurred. It was not, in spite of predictions, a general walk-out. Some of the mills, particularly the smaller plants, did not go down at all, and with reduced forces kept on, but the chain of Cardew Mills was closed. There was occasional rioting by the foreign element in outlying districts, but the state constabulary handled it easily.