A Poor Wise Man Part 67

Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.

"I wish you didn't hate me so, Ellen."

"I don't hate you." Ellen was slightly mollified. "But when I see you trying to put your burdens on other people--"

Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms around Ellen's neck.

"I love him so, Ellen," she whispered, "and I'll try so hard to make him happy."

Unexpected tears came into Ellen's eyes. She stroked the girl's fair hair.

"Never mind," she said. "The Good Man's got a way of fixing things to suit Himself. And I guess He knows best. We do what it's foreordained we do, after all."

Mrs. Boyd was sleeping. Edith went back to her sewing. She had depended all her life on her mother's needle, and now that that had failed her she was hastily putting some clothing into repair. In the kitchen near the stove the suit she meant to be married in was hung to dry, after pressing. She was quietly happy.

w.i.l.l.y Cameron found her there. He told her of Mrs. Davis' death, and then placed the license on the table at her side.

"I think it would be better to-morrow, Edith," he said. He glanced down at the needle in her unaccustomed fingers; she seemed very appealing, with her new task and the new light in her eyes. After all, it was worth while, even if it cost a lifetime, to take a soul out of purgatory.

"I had to tell mother, w.i.l.l.y."

"That's all right Did it cheer her any?"

"Wonderfully. She's asleep now."

He went up to his room, and for some time she heard him moving about.

Then she heard the sc.r.a.ping of his chair as he drew it to his desk, and vaguely wondered. When he came down he had a sealed envelope in his hand.

"I am going out, Edith," he said. "I shall be late getting back, and--I am going to ask you to do something for me."

She loved doing things for him. She flushed slightly.

"If I am not back here by two o'clock to-night," he said, "I want you to open that letter and read it. Then go to the nearest telephone, and call up the number I've written down. Ask for the man whose name is given, and read him the message."

"w.i.l.l.y!" she gasped. "You are doing something dangerous!"

"What I really expect," he said, smiling down at her, "is to be back, feeling more or less of a fool, by eleven o'clock. I'm providing against an emergency that will almost surely never happen, and I am depending on the most trustworthy person I know."

Very soon after that he went away. She sat for some time after he had gone, fingering the blank white envelope and wondering, a little frightened but very proud of his trust.

Dan came in and went up the stairs. That reminded her of the dinner, and she sat down in the kitchen with a pan of potatoes on her knee. As she pared them she sang. She was still singing when Ellen came back.

Something had happened to Ellen. She stood in the kitchen, her hat still on, drawing her cotton gloves through her fingers and staring at Edith without seeing her.

"You're not sick, are you, Ellen?"

Ellen put down her gloves and slowly took off her hat, still with the absorbed eyes of a sleep-walker.

"I'm not sick," she said at last. "I've had bad news."

"Sit down and I'll make you a cup of tea. Then maybe you'll feel like talking about it."

"I don't want any tea. Do you know that that man Akers has married Lily Cardew?"

"Married her!"

"The devil out of h.e.l.l that he is." Ellen's voice was terrible. "And all the time knowing that you--She's at home, the poor child, and Mademoiselle just sat and cried when she told me. It's a secret," she added, fiercely. "You keep your mouth shut about it. She never lived with him. She left him right off. I wouldn't know it now but the servants were talking about the house being forbidden to him, and I went straight to Mademoiselle. I said: 'You keep him away from Miss Lily, because I know something about him.' It was when I told her that she said they were married."

She went out and up the stairs, moving slowly and heavily. Edith sat still, the pan on her knee, and thought. Did w.i.l.l.y know? Was that why he was willing to marry her? She was swept with bitter jealousy, and added to that came suspicion. Something very near the truth flashed into her mind and stayed there. In her bitterness she saw w.i.l.l.y telling Lily of Akers and herself, and taking her away, or having her taken. It must have been something like that, or why had she left him?

But her anger slowly subsided; in the end she began to feel that the new situation rendered her own position more secure, even justified her own approaching marriage. Since Lily was gone, why should she not marry w.i.l.l.y Cameron? If what Ellen had said was true she knew him well enough to know that he would deliberately strangle his love for Lily. If it were true, and if he knew it.

She moved about the kitchen, making up the fire, working automatically in that methodless way that always set Ellen's teeth on edge, and thinking. But subconsciously she was listening, too. She had heard Dan go into his mother's room and close the door. She was bracing herself against his coming down.

Dan was difficult those days, irritable and exacting. Moody, too, and much away from home. He hated idleness at its best, and the strike was idleness at its worst. Behind the movement toward the general strike, too, he felt there was some hidden and sinister influence at work, an influence that was determined to turn what had commenced as a labor movement into a cla.s.s uprising.

That very afternoon, for the first time, he had heard whispered the phrase: "when the town goes dark." There was a diabolical suggestion in it that sent him home with his fists clenched.

He did not go to his mother's room at once. Instead, he drew a chair to his window and sat there staring out on the little street. When the town went dark, what about all the little streets like this one?

After an hour or so of ominous quiet Edith heard him go into his mother's room. Her hands trembled as she closed her door.

She heard him coming down at last, and suddenly remembering the license, hid it in a drawer. She knew that he would destroy it if he saw it. And Dan's face justified the move. He came in and stood glowering at her, his hands in his pockets.

"What made you tell that lie to mother?" he demanded.

"She was worried, Dan. And it will be true to-morrow. You--Dan, you didn't tell her it was a lie, did you?"

"I should have, but I didn't. What do you mean, it will be true to-morrow?"

"We are going to be married to-morrow."

"I'll lock you up first," he said, angrily. "I've been expecting something like that. I've watched you, and I've seen you watching him.

You'll not do it, do you hear? D'you think I'd let you get away with that? Isn't it enough that he's got to support us, without your coaxing him to marry you?"

She made no reply, but went on with a perfunctory laying of the table.

Her mouth had gone very dry.

"The poor fish," Dan snarled. "I thought he had some sense. Letting himself in for a nice life, isn't he? We're not his kind, and you know it. He knows more in a minute than you'll know all your days. In about three months he'll hate the very sight of you, and then where'll you be?"

When she made no reply, he called to the dog and went out into the yard.

She saw him there, brooding and sullen, and she knew that he had not finished. He would say no more to her, but he would wait and have it out with w.i.l.l.y himself.

Supper was silent. No one ate much, and Ellen, coming down with the tray, reported Mrs. Boyd as very tired, and wanting to settle down early.

"She looks bad to me," she said to Edith. "I think the doctor ought to see her."

"I'll go and send him."