 Chapter 8 Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life. The children of the group of families which formed the money-darstocracy of the city knew only their own small circle. They met at dancing classes, where governesses and occasionally mothers sat around the walls, while the little girls and handmade white frocks of exquisite simplicity, their shining hair drawn back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim little dip at the door before entering, and the boys in white-eaten collars and gleaming pumps bowed from the waist and then dived for the masculine corner of the long room. No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then a brave spirit among the boys would wander, with assumed unconsciousness but ears rather pink, to the opposite corner where the little girls were grouped like white butterflies milling in the sun. The peoness struck a cord and the children lined up, the girls on one side, the boys on the other, a long line with Mrs. Van Buren in the center, another cord rather a long one, Mrs. Van Buren curtsy to the girls. The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself, Mrs. Van Buren turned, another cord. The boys bent rather too much from the waist while Mrs. Van Buren swept another deep curtsy. The music now very definite as to time. Glide and short-step to the right. Glide and short-step to the left. Dancing school had commenced. Outside were long lines of motors waiting. The governesses chatted and sometimes embroidered. Mademoiselle tatted. Aspen Denslow was generally known as Pink but the origin of the name was shrouded in mystery. As Pink he had learned to waltz at the dancing class, at a time when he was more attentive to the step than to the music that accompanied it. As Pink Denslow he had played on a scrub team at Harvard, and got two broken ribs for his trouble, and as Pink he now paid intermittent visits to the Denslow bank between the hunting season in October and Polo at Eastern Fields and in California. At twenty-three he was still the boy of the dancing class, very careful at parties to ask his hostess to dance, and not noticeably upset when she did, having arranged to be cut in on the end of the second round. Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily Cardew. There had been other girls, of course, times when Lily seemed far away from Cambridge and some other fair charmer was near. But he had always known there was only Lily. Once or twice he would have become engaged had it not been for that. He was a blond boy, squarely built, good-looking without being handsome, and on rainy Sundays when there was no gulf he went quite cheerfully to St. Peter's with his mother and watched a pretty girl in the choir. He wished at those times that he could sing. A pleasant cumperer of the earth he had wrapped his talons in a napkin and buried them by the wayside, and promptly forgotten where they were. He was to find them later on, however, not particularly rusty, and he increased them rather considerably before he got through. It was this pleasant cumperer of the earth then who on the morning after Lily's return stopped his car before the Cardew house and got out. Immediately following his descent he turned, took a square white box from the car, ascended the steps, settled his neck in his collar and his tie around it, and rang the bell. The second man hastily buttoned into his coat and with a faint odor of silver polish about him, opened the door. Pink gave him his hat but retained the box firmly. Mrs. Cardew and Mrs. Cardew at home, he asked, yes? Then you might tell Grayson I'm here to luncheon, unless the family is lunching out. Yes, sir, said the footman. No, sir, they are lunching at home. Pink sauntered into the library. He was not so easy as his manner indicated. One never knew about Lily. Sometimes she was in a mood when she seemed to think a man funny and not to be taken seriously. And when she was serious, which was the way he liked her, he rather lacked humor. She was never serious about him or herself. It had been religion once, he remembered. She had wanted to know if he believed in the thirty-nine articles and because he had seen them in the back of the prayer book, worthy certainly would not be if there was not authority for them, he had said he did. Well, I don't, said Lily. And there had been rather a bad half-hour because he had felt that he had to stick to his thirty-nine guns, whatever they were. He had finished on a rather desperate note of appeal. See here, Lily, he had said, why do you bother your head about such things anyhow? Because I've got ahead and I want to use it. Life's too short. Eternity's pretty long. Do you believe in eternity? And there they were off again, and of course old Anthony had come in after that and had wanted to know about his aunt, Marcia, and otherwise had shown every indication of taking root on the hearth rug. Pink was afraid of Anthony. He felt like a stammering fool when Anthony was around. That was why he had invited himself to luncheon. Old Anthony lunched at his club. When he heard Lily coming down the stairs, Pink's honest heart beat somewhat faster. A good many times in France but particularly on the ship coming back he had thought about this meeting. In France a fellow had a lot of distractions and Lily had seemed as dear as ever but extremely remote. But once turned toward home and she had filled the entire western horizon. The other men had seen sunsets there and sometimes a ship or a school of purposes. But Pink had seen only Lily. She came in. The dear old girl. The beautiful, wonderful, dear old girl. The... Pink. He-hello Lily. Why Pink, you're a man. What do you think I'd be, a girl? You've grown. Oh, now see here Lily, I quit growing years ago. And to think you are back all right. I was so worried, Pink. He flushed at that. Didn't have worried. He said rather thickly, didn't get to the front until just before the end. My show was made a labour division in the south of France. If you laugh I'll take my flowers and go home. Why Pink, dear, I wouldn't laugh for anything. And it was the man behind the lines who... Won the war. He finished for her rather grimly. All right Lily, we've heard it before. Anyhow it's all done and over. And I brought gardenias and violets. You used to like them. It was dear of you to remember. Couldn't help remembering, no credit to me. I... You were always on my mind. She was busily unwrapping the box. Always he repeated unsteadily. What gorgeous things! She buried her face in them. Did you hear what I said, Lily? Yes, and it's sweet of you. Now sit down and tell me about things. I've got a lot to tell you, too. He had a sort of quiet obstinacy, however, and he did not sit down. When she had done so he stood in front of her looking down at her. You've been in a camp, I know that. I heard it over there. And Evro wrote me. It worried me because we had girls in the camps over there and every one of them had a string of suitors a mile long. Well, I didn't, said Lily, spiritedly. Then she laughed. He had been afraid she would laugh. Oh, Pink, how dear and funny and masculine you are! I have a perfectly uncontrollable desire to kiss you! Which she did to his amazement and consternation. Nothing she could have done would more effectually have shown him the hopelessness of his situation than that sisterly impulse. Good Lord! he gasped. He graces in the hall. If he comes in I shall probably do it again. Pink, you darting child, you are still the little boy at Mrs. Van Burence, and if you would only purse your lips and count one, two, three. Are you staying to luncheon? He was suffering terribly. Also he felt strangely empty inside because something that he had carried around with him for a long time seemed to have suddenly moved out and left a vacancy. Thanks I think not Lily, I've got a lot to do today. She sat very still. She had had to do it, had had to show him somehow that she loved him without loving him as he wanted her to. She had acted on impulse, on an impulse born of intention, but she had hurt him. It was in every line of his rigid body and set face. You're not angry, Pink dear? There's nothing to be angry about, he said stolidly. Things have been going on with me and staying where they've always been with you. That's all. I'm not very keen, you know, and I used to think. Your people like me? I mean, they wouldn't. Everybody likes you, Pink. Well, I'll trot along. He moved a step, hesitated. Is there anybody else, Lily? Nobody. You won't mind if I hang around a bit, then. You can always send me off when you are sick of me. But you couldn't if you were full enough to marry me. Whoever does marry you, dear, will be a lucky woman. In the end he stayed to luncheon and managed to eat a very fair one. But he had little lapses into silence and Grace Cardew drew her own shrewd conclusions. He's such a nice boy, Lily, she said after he had gone, and your grandfather would like it. In a way I think he expects it. I'm not going to marry to please him, mother. But you are fond of Alston. I want to marry a man, mother. Pink is a boy. He will always be a boy. He doesn't think, he just feels. He is fine and loyal and honest, but I would loathe him in a month. I wish, said Grace Cardew unhappily, I wish you had never gone to that camp. All afternoon Lily and Grace shopped. Lily was fitted into shining evening gowns, into bright little afternoon frocks, into Paris raps. The Cardew name was whispered through the shops, and great piles of exotic things were brought in for Grace's critical eye. Lily's own attitude was joyously carefree. Long lines of models walked by draped in furs, in satins and velvet and chiffon, tall girls most of them, with hair carefully dressed, faces delicately tinted, and that curious forward thrust at the waist and slight advancement of one shoulder that gave them an air of langress and difference. The only way I could get that twist, Lily confided to her mother, would be to stand that way and be done up in plaster of Paris. It is the most abandoned thing I ever saw. Grace was shocked and said so. Sometimes during the few hours since her arrival Lily had wondered if her years experiences had coarsened her. There were so many times when her mother raised her eyebrows. She knew that she had changed, that the granddaughter of old Anthony Cardew who had come back from the war was not the girl who had gone away. She had gone away amazingly ignorant. What little she had known of life she had learned away at school. But even there she had not realized the possibility of wickedness and vice in the world. One of the girls had run away with a music master who was married, and her name was forbidden to be mentioned. That was wickedness like blasphemy and a crime against the Holy Ghost. She had never heard of prostitution. Near the camp there was a district with a bad name and the girls of her organization were forbidden to so much as walk in that direction. It took her a long time to understand and she suffered horribly when she did. There were the depths of wickedness then and of a basement like that in the world. It was a bad world, a cruel sordid world. She did not want to live in it. She had had to reorganize all her ideas of life after that. At first she was flamingly indignant. God had made his world clean and beautiful and covered it with flowers and trees that grew cleanly begotten from the earth. Why had he not stopped there? Why had he soiled it with passion and lust? It was a little Red Cross nurse who helped her finally. Very well, she said, I see what you mean. But trees and flowers are not God's most beautiful gift to the world. I think they are. No, it is love. I am not talking about love, said Lily, flushing. Oh yes you are. You have never loved, have you? You are talking of one of the many things that go to make up love And out of that one phase of love comes the most wonderful thing in the world. He gives us the child. And again. All bodies are not whole and not all souls. It is wrong to judge life by its exceptions or love by its perversions, Lily. It had been the little nurse finally who cured her, for she secured Lily's removal to that shady house on a by-street where the tragedies of unwise love and use sought sanctuary. There were prayers there, morning and evening. They knelt, those girls, in front of their little wooden chairs, and by far the great majority of them quite simply laid their burdens before God, and with an equal simplicity felt that he would help them out. We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. Restore thou those who are penitent according to thy promises. And grant, O most merciful Father, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous and sober life. After a time Lily learned something that helped her. The soul was greater and stronger than the body and the mind. The body failed. It sinned, but that did not touch the unassailable purity and simplicity of the soul. The soul which lived on was always clean. For that reason there was no hell. Lily rose and buttoned her coat. Grace was fastening her sables and making a delayed decision in satans. Mother, I've been thinking it over. I am going to see Aunt Eleanor. Grace waited until a saleswoman had moved away. I don't like it, Lily. I was thinking, while we were ordering all that stuff. She is a car-do, mother. She ought to be having that sort of thing. And just because grandfather hates her husband she hasn't anything. That is rather silly, dear. They are not in want. I believe he is quite flourishing. She is Father's sister and she is a good woman. We treat her like a leper. Grace was weakening. If you take the car your grandfather may hear of it. I'll take a taxi. Grace followed her with uneasy eyes. For years she paid a price for peace and not a small price. She had placed her pride on the domestic altar and accounted at a worthy sacrifice for Howard's sake, and she had succeeded. She knew Anthony Cardew had never forgiven her and would never like her, but he gave her now and then the tribute of a grudging admiration. And now Lily had come home and knew and different Lily with her Father's lovableness and his Father's obstinacy. Already Grace saw in the girl the beginning of a passionate protest against things as they were. Perhaps had Grace given to Lily the great love of her life instead of to Howard, she might have understood her last clearly. As it was she shivered slightly as she got into the limousine. Chapter 9 Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through which the taxi was passing. She knew vaguely that she was in the vicinity of one of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any of the Cardew plants. She had never been permitted to do so. Perhaps the neighborhood would have impressed her more had she not seen in the camp, that life can be stripped sometimes to its essentials and still have lost very little. But the dinginess depressed her. Smoke was in the atmosphere like a heavy fog. Soot lay on the window-sills and mingled with street dust to form little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river steamers guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current were gray with soft coal smoke. The foam of the river falling in broken cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast. Everywhere she began to see her own name. Cardew was on the aura hopper cars that were moving slowly along the railroad spur. One of the steamers bore Anthony Cardew in tall black letters on its side. There was a narrow street called Cardew Way. Aunt Eleanor lived on Cardew Way. She wondered if Aunt Eleanor found that curious as she did. Did she resent these ever-present reminders of her lost family? Did she have any bitterness because the very grayness of her skies was making her hard old father richer and more powerful? Yet there was comfort, stability, and a certain dignity about Aunt Eleanor's house when she reached it. It stood in the district but not of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave indication of being a flower garden in summer. There were two large gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had been swept to the last degree of neatness. The steps were freshly scoured and a small brass door plate, like a doctor's sign, was as bright as rubbing could make it. James Doyle, she read. Suddenly she was glad she had come. The little brick house looked anything but tragic with its shining windows, its white curtains, and its evenly drawn shades. Through the windows on the right came a flickering light, warm and rosy. There must be a coal fire there. She loved a coal fire. She had brazed herself to meet Aunt Eleanor at the door, but an elderly woman opened it. Mrs. Doyle is in. She said, just step inside. She did not ask Lily's name but left her in the dark little hall and creaked up the stairs. Lily hesitated. Then, feeling that Aunt Eleanor might not like to fight her so unceremoniously received, she pushed open a door which was only partly closed and made a step into the room. Only then did she see that it was occupied. A man sat by the fire, reading. He was holding his book low to get the light from the fire and he turned slowly to glance at Lily. He had clearly expected someone else. Eleanor, probably. I beg your pardon, Lily said. I'm calling on Mrs. Doyle and when I saw the firelight. He stood up then, a tall, thin man with close cropped gray mustache and heavy gray hair above a high, bulging forehead. She had never seen Jim Doyle, but Mademoiselle had once said that he had pointed ears like a satyr. She had immediately recanted on finding Lily searching in a book for a picture of a satyr. This man had ears pointed at the top. Lily was too startled then to analyze his face, but later on she was to know well the high intellectual forehead, the keen sunken eyes, the full but firmly held mouth and pointed satyr-like ears of that brilliant Irishman, cynic and art scoundrel Jim Doyle. He was inspecting her intently. Please, come in, he said. Did the maid take your name? No. I am Lily Cardew. I see. He stood quite still, eyeing her. You are Anthony's granddaughter. Yes. Just a moment. He went out, closing the door behind him and she heard him going quickly up the stairs. A door closed above and a weight settled down on the girl's heart. He was not going to let her see Aunt Eleanor. She was frightened, but she was angry too. She would not run away. She would wait until he came down, and if he was insolent well, she could be haughty. She moved to the fire and stood there, slightly flushed but very straight. She heard him coming down again almost immediately. He was outside the door, but he did not come in at once. She had a sudden impression that he was standing there, his hand on the knob, outlining what he meant to say to her when he showed the door to a hated Cardew. Afterwards, she came to know how right that impression was. He was never spontaneous. He was a man who debated everything, calculated everything beforehand. When he came in, it was slowly and with his head bent as though he still debated within himself. Then I think I have a right to ask what Anthony Cardew's granddaughter is doing in my house. Your wife's niece has come to call on her, Mr. Doyle. Are you quite sure that is all? I assure you that is all, Lily said hotly. It had not occurred to me that you would be here. I dare say, still strangely enough I do spend a certain amount of time in my home. Lily picked up her muff. If you have forbidden her to come down I shall go. Wait! He said slowly. I haven't forbidden her to see you. I asked her to wait. I wanted a few moments. You see, it is not often that I have a Cardew in my house and I am a selfish man. She hated him. She loathed his cold eyes, his long, slim, white hands. She hated him until he fascinated her. Sit down and I will call Mrs. Doyle. He went out again, but this time it was the elderly maid who went up the stairs. Doyle himself came back and stood before her on the hearth rug. He was slightly smiling and the look of uncertainty was gone. Now that you've seen me I'm not absolutely poisonous am I, Miss Lily? You don't mind my calling you that, do you? You are my niece. You have been taught to hate me, of course. Yes, said Lily coldly. By Jove the truth from a Cardew. Then, that's an old habit of mine damning the Cardews. I'll have to try to get over it, if they are going to re-establish family relations. He was laughing at her, Lily Knew, and she flushed somewhat. I wouldn't make too great an effort, then, she said. He smiled again, this time not unpleasantly, and suddenly he threw into his rich Irish voice an unexpected softness. No one knew better than Jim Doyle the uses of the human voice. You mustn't mind me, Miss Lily. I have no reason to love your family, but I am very happy that you came here today. My wife has missed her people. If you'll run in like this now and then it will do her worlds of good. And if my being here is going to keep you away I can clear out. She rather liked him for that speech. She was totally unlike what she had been led to expect, and she felt a sort of resentment toward her family for misleading her. He was a gentleman on the surface, at least. He had not been over-cordial at first, but then who could have expected cordiality under the circumstances. In Lily's defense it should be said that the vicissitudes of Eleanor's life with Doyle had been kept from her always. She had but two facts to go on. She had beaten her grandfather as a young man for a cause, and he held views as to labour which conflicted with those of her family. Months later when she learned all the truth it was too late. Of course your being here won't keep me away if you care to have me come. He was all dignity and charm then. They needed youth in that quiet place. They ought all to be able to forget the past which was done with anyhow. He showed of the first genuine interest she had found in her work at the camp, and before his unexpected geniality the girl opened like a flower. And all the time he was watching her with calculating eyes. He was a gambler with life, and he rather suspected that he had just drawn a valuable card. Thank you, he said gravely when she had finished. You have done a lot to bridge the gulf that lies, I am sure you have noticed it, between the people who saw service in this war and those who stayed at home. Suddenly Lily saw that the gulf between her family and herself was just that which was what he had intended. When Eleanor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed and eager, and her husband smiling, urbane, and genial. To Lily Eleanor Doyle had been for years a figure of mystery. She had not seen her for many years and she had remembered a thin, girlish figure, tragic eyed, which eternally stood by a window in her room looking out. But here was a matronly woman, her face framed with soft, dark hair, with eyes like her father's, with Howard Cardew's ease of manner too, but with a strange passivity, either of repression or of fire's early burned out and never renewed. Lily was vaguely disappointed. And Eleanor in soft grey silk matronly assured, unenthusiastically pleased to see her. Doyle himself cheerful and suave, the neat servant, the fire-lit, comfortable room. There was no drama in all that, no hint of mystery or tragedy. All the hatred at home for an impulsive assault of years ago, and this. Lily dear, Eleanor said and kissed her. Why Lily, you are a woman. I am twenty-odd, Eleanor. Yes of course, I keep forgetting. I live so quietly here that the days go by faster than I know. She put Lily back in her chair and glanced at her husband. Is Louie coming to dinner, Jim? Yes. I suppose you cannot stay, Lily. I ought to tell you, Aunt Eleanor, only mother knows that I am here. Aunt Eleanor smiled her quiet smile. I understand, dear. How are they all? Eleanor is very well. Father looks tired. There is some trouble at the mill, I think. Eleanor glanced at Doyle, but he said nothing. And your mother. She is well. Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction which was that her Aunt Eleanor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed inclined to make up for Eleanor's lack of enthusiasm by his own. He built up a larger fire and moved her chair near it. Whether is raw, he said. Sure you are comfortable now? And why not have dinner here? We have an interesting man coming and we don't often have the chance to offer our guests a charming young lady. Lily only came home yesterday, Jim, Eleanor observed. Her own people will want to see something of her. Besides, they do not know she is here. Lily felt slightly chilled. Over the years she had espoused her Aunt Eleanor's cause. In the early days she had painfully hemstitched a small handkerchief each fall that had sent it with much secrecy to add Eleanor's varying addresses at Christmas. She had felt a childish resentment of Eleanor Doyle's martyrdom. And now... Her father and grandfather are dining out tonight. Had Lily looked up she would have seen Doyle's eyes fixed on his wife ugly and menacing. Dining out, Lily glanced at him in surprise. There is a dinner tonight for the... He checked himself. The steel manufacturers are having a meeting, he finished. I believe to discuss me, among other things. Amazing the amount of discussion my simple opinions bring about. Eleanor Doyle unseen made a little gesture of despair and surrender. I hope you will stay, Lily, she said. You can telephone if you like. I don't see you often and there is so much I want to ask you. In the end Lily agreed. She would find out from Grayson if the men were really dining out and if they were Grayson would notify her mother that she was staying. She did not quite know herself why she had accepted unless it was because she was bored and restless at home. Perhaps too the lure of doing a forbidden thing influenced her subconsciously the thought that her grandfather would detest it. She had not forgiven him for the night before. Jim Doyle left her in the back hall at the telephone and returned to the sitting-room closing the door behind him. His face was set and angry. I thought I told you to be pleasant. I tried, Jim. You must remember I hardly know her. She got up and placed her hand on his arm but he shook it off. I don't understand, Jim, and I wish you wouldn't. What good is it? I've told you what I want. I want that girl to come here and to like coming here. That's plain, isn't it? But if you're going to sit with a frozen face, she'll be useful. Useful as hell to a preacher. I can't use my family that way. You and your family? Now listen, Eleanor. This isn't a matter of the Cardoos and me. It may be nothing, but it may be a big thing. I hardly know yet. His voice trialed off. He stood with his head bent, lost in those eternal calculations with which Eleanor Doyle was so familiar. The doorbell rang and was immediately followed by the opening and closing of the front door. From her station at the telephone Lily Cardoos saw a man come in, little more than a huge black shadow, which placed a hat on the stand and then, striking a match, lighted the gas overhead. In the illumination he stood before the mirror smoothing back his shining black hair. Then he saw her, stared and retreated into the sitting-room. Got company, I see? My niece, Lily Cardo, said Doyle dryly. The gentleman seemed highly amused. Evidently, he considered Lily's presence in the house in the nature of a huge joke. He was conveying this by pantomime in deference to the open door when Doyle nodded toward Eleanor. It's customary to greet your hostess, Louis. This thing I do, boasted the new arrival cheerily. Lo, Mrs. Doyle, is Arnie's going to dine with us? I don't know yet, Mr. Acres. She said without warmth. Louis Acres knew quite well that Eleanor did not like him and the thought amused him, the more so since as a rule women liked him rather too well. Deep in his heart he respected Jim Doyle's wife and sometimes feared her. He respected her because she had behind her traditions of birth and wealth, things he professed to despise but secretly envied. He feared her because he trusted no women and she knew too much. She loved Jim Doyle, but he had watched her and he knew that sometimes she hated Doyle also. He knew that could be because there had been women he had both loved and hated himself. Eleanor had gone out and Acres sat down. Well, he said in a lowered tone, I've written it. Doyle closed the door and stood again with his head lowered considering. You'd better look over it, continued Lou. I don't want to be jailed. You're better at skating over thin ice than I am. And I've been thinking over the prohibition matter, Jim. In a sense you're right. It will make them sullen and angry, but they won't go the limit without booze. I'd advise Cache-Aing a lot of it somewhere to be administered when needed. Doyle returned to his old place on the hearth rug, still thoughtful. He had paid no attention to Acres' views on prohibition nor to the paper laid upon the desk in the center of the room. Do you know that that girl in the hall will be worth forty million dollars some day? Some money, said Acres calmly, which reminds me, Jim, that I've got to have a raise and pretty soon. You've got plenty if you'd leave women alone. Tell them to leave me alone then, said Acres, stretching out his long legs. All right, we'll talk about that after dinner. What about this forty millions? Doyle looked at him quickly. Acres' speech about women had crystallized the vague plans which Lily's arrival had suddenly given rise to. He gave the young man a careful scrutiny from his handsome head to his feet and smiled. It had occurred to him that the Cardew family would low the man of Louis Acres' type with an entire and whole-hearted loathing. You might try to make her have a pleasant evening, he suggested, dryly. And to do that it might be as well to remember a number of things, one of which is that she is accustomed to the society of gentlemen. All right, old dear, said Acres without resentment. She hates her grandfather like poison, Doyle went on. She doesn't know it, but she does. A little education, and it is just possible. Get Olga, I'm no kindergarten teacher. You haven't seen her in the light yet. Louis Acres smiled and carefully settled his tie. Like Doyle, Acres loved the game of life and he liked playing for high stakes. He had joined forces with Doyle because the game was dangerous and exciting rather than because of any real conviction. Doyle had a fanatic faith with all his calculation, but Louis Acres had only calculation and ambition. A practicing attorney in the city, a specialist in union law openly, read in secret, he played his triple game shrewdly and with zest. Doyle turned to go, then stopped and came back. I was forgetting something, he said slowly. What possessed you to take that void girl to the searing building the other night? Who told you that? Mrs. Lasky saw you coming out. I had left something there, Acres said sullenly. That's the truth, whether you believe it or not. I wasn't there two minutes. You're a fool, Louis, Doyle said coldly. You'll play that game once too often. What happens to you is your own concern, but what may happen to me is mine. And I'll take mighty good care, it doesn't happen. Doyle was all unctioned in hospitality when he met Lily in the hall. At dinner he was brilliant, witty, the gracious host. Acres played up to him. At the foot of the table Eleanor sat outwardly passive, inwardly puzzled and watched Lily. She knew the contrast the girl must be drawing between the bright little meal with its simple service and clever talk and those dreary formal dinners at home when old Anthony sometimes never spoke at all or again used his caustic tongue like a scourge. Eleanor did not hate her father. She was simply no longer her father. As for Howard, she had had a childish affection for him, but he had gone away early to school and she hardly knew him. But she did not want his child here, drinking in as she was without clearly understanding what they meant, Doyle's theories of unrest and revolution. He will find that I am an idealist in a way, he was saying. That is, if you come often. I hope you will, by the way. I am perpetually dissatisfied with things as they are and wanting them changed, with the single exception of my wife, he bowed to Eleanor, and this little party which is delightful. Are you a socialist? Lily demanded in her direct way. Well, you might call it that. I go a bit further. Don't talk politics, Jim, Eleanor hastily interposed. He caught her eye and grinned. I am not talking politics, my dear. He turned to Lily, smiling. For one thing I don't believe that anyone should have a lot of money so that a taxi cab could remain taking away fabulous sums while the charming young lady dines at her leisure. He smiled again. Would it be a lot? Lily asked. I thought I'd better keep him because... She hesitated. Because this neighborhood is unlikely to have a cab stand. You were entirely right. But I can see that you won't like my idealistic community. You see, in it everybody will have enough, and nobody will have too much. Don't take him too seriously, Miss Cardoo, said Acre's bending forward. You and I know that there isn't such a thing as too much. Eleanor changed the subject. As a girl she had drawn rather well and she had retained her interest in that form of art. There was an exhibition in town of colored drawings. Everybody should see them, but Jim Doyle countered her move. I forgot to mention, he said, that in this ideal world we were discussing the arts will flourish. Not at once, of course, because the artists will be fighting. Fighting? Peras, pera, arastra, put in Louis Acre's. You cannot change a world in a day without revolution. But you don't believe that revolution is ever worth while, do you? If it would drive starvation and wretchedness from the world, yes. Lily found Louis Acre's interesting. Certainly he was very handsome. And after all, why should there be misery and hunger in the world? There must be enough for all. It was hardly fair, for instance, that she should have so much and others scarcely anything. Only it was like thinking about religion. You didn't get anywhere with it. You wanted to be good and tried to be. And you wanted to love God, only He seemed so far away mostly. And even that was confusing, because you prayed to God to be forgiven for wickedness, but it was to His Son, our Lord, one, went for help and trouble. One could be sorry for the poor and even give away all one had, but that would only help a few. It would have to be that everyone who had too much would give up all but what he needed. Lily tried to put that into words. Exactly, said Jim Doyle, only in my new world we realize that there would be a few craven spirits who might not willingly give up what they have. In that case it would be taken from them. And that is what you call revolution, precisely. But that's not revolution, it is a sort of justice, isn't it? You think very straight, young lady, said Jim Doyle. He had a fascinating theory of individualism, too. No man should impose his will and no community its laws on the individual. Laws were for slaves, ethics were better than laws to control. Although, he added her bainly, I dare say it might be difficult to convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a belief. While Louis Aker saw Lily to her taxicab that night, Doyle stood in the hall waiting. He was very content with his evening's work. Well, he said when Aker's returned. Mary is a marriage-bell. I'm to shore to the Brunelleschi drawings, to-morrow. Slightly flushed he smoothed this hair in front of the mirror over the stand. She's a nice child, he said. In his eyes was the look of the hunting animal that scents food. End of chapters 8 and 9. CHAPTER 10 LILY did not sleep very well that night. She was repentant for one thing, for her mother's evening alone, and for the anxiety in her face when she arrived. I've been so worried, she said. I was afraid your grandfather would get back before you did. I'm sorry, mother dear, I know it was selfish. But I've had a wonderful evening. Wonderful? All sorts of talk, Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her mother would not understand, and it would only make her uneasy. I suppose that his rank hearsay to say it, but I like Mr. Doyle. I detest him. But you don't know him, do you? I know he is stirring up all sorts of trouble for us. Lily, I want you to promise not to go back there. There was a little silence. A small feeling of rebellion was rising in the girl's heart. I don't see why. She is my own aunt. Will you promise? Please, don't ask me, mother. I—oh, don't you understand? It is interesting there, that's all. It isn't wrong to go. And the moment you forbid it, you make me want to go back. Were there any other people there to dinner? This asked, with sudden suspicion. Only one man, a lawyer named Acres. The name meant nothing to Grace Cardew. A young man? Not very young. In his thirties, I should think, Lily hesitated again. She had meant to tell her mother of the engagement for the next day, but Grace's attitude made it difficult. To be absolutely forbidden to meet Louis Acres at the gallery, and to be able to give no reason beyond the fact that she had met him at the Doyle House seemed absurd. A gentleman? I hardly know, Lily said frankly. In your sense of the word, perhaps not, mother, but he is very clever. Grace Cardew sighed and picked up her book. She never retired until Howard came in. And Lily went upstairs, uneasy and a little defiant. She must live her own life somehow. Have her own friends, think her own thoughts. The quiet tyranny of the family was again closing down on her. It would squeeze her dry in the end as it had her mother and Aunt Eleanor. She stood for a time by her window, looking out at the city. Behind her was her warm, luxurious room, her deep, soft bed. Yet all through the city there were those who did not sleep warm and soft. Close by perhaps, in that deteriorated neighborhood, there were children that very night going to bed hungry. As things had always been like that, should they always be so? Wasn't Mr. Doyle right after all? Only he went very far. You couldn't, for instance, take from a man the thing he had earned. What about the people who did not try to earn? She rather thought she would be clearer about it if she talked to Willie Cameron. She went to bed at last, a troubled young thing in a soft white nightgown, passionately in revolt against the injustice which gave to her so much and to others so little. And against that quiet domestic tyranny which was forcing her to her first deceit. Yet the visit to the gallery was innocuous enough. Louis Acre's met her there and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea and chose a quiet tea-room and a corner. I'll tell you something now it's over, he said, his bold eyes fixed on hers. I loathe galleries and pictures. I wanted to see you again, that's all. To see I am starting in by being honest with you. She was rather uncomfortable. Why don't you like pictures? Because they are only imitations of life. I like life. He pushed a stick up away. I don't want tea either. Tea was an excuse, too. He smiled at her. Perhaps you don't like honesty, he said. If you don't, you won't care for me. She was too inexperienced to recognize the gulf between frankness and effrontery, but he made her vaguely uneasy. He knew so many things and yet he was so obviously not quite a gentleman, in her family's sense of the word. He had a curious effect on her, too, one that she resented. He made her insistently conscious of her sex. And of his. His very deference had something of restraint about it. He thought, trying to drink her tea quietly, that he might be very terrible if he loved anyone. There was a sort of repressed fierceness behind his suavity. But he interested her and he was undeniably handsome, not in her father's way but with high-coloured almost dramatic good looks. There could be no doubt, too, that he was interested in her. He rarely took his eyes off hers. Afterwards, she was to know well that bold possessive look of his. It was just before they left that he said, I am going to see you again, you know. May I come in some afternoon? Lily had been foreseeing that for some moments and she raised frank eyes to his. I am afraid not, she said. You see, you are a friend of Mr. Doyle's and you must know that my people and Aunt Allanor's husband are on bad terms. What has that got to do with you and me? Then he laughed. Might be unpleasant, I suppose. But you go to the Doyle's. She was very earnest. My mother knows, but my grandfather wouldn't permit it if he knew. And you put up with that sort of thing? He leaned closer to her. You are not a baby, you know, but I will say you are a good sport to do it anyhow. I'm not very comfortable about it. Bosh, he said abruptly, you go there as often as you can. Eleanor Doyle's a lonely woman and Jim is all right. You pick your own friends, my child, and live your own life. Every human being has that right. He helped her into a taxi at the door of the tea shop, giving her rather more assistance than she required, and then standing bare-headed in the march wind until the car had moved away. Lily, sitting back in her corner, was both repelled and thrilled. He was totally unlike the men she knew, those carefully repressed conventional clean cut boys like Pink Denslow. He was raw, vigorous, and possibly brutal. She did not quite like him, but she found herself thinking about him a great deal. The old life was reaching out its friendly idle hands toward her. The next day Grace gave a luncheon for her at the house, a gay little affair of color, chatter, and movement. But Lily found herself with little to say. Her year away had separated her from the small community of interests that bound the others together, and she wondered, listening to them in her sitting-room later, what they would all talk about when they had exchanged their bits of gossip, their news of this man and that. It would all be said so soon, and what then? Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle carefully guarded. They belonged together, they and the men who likewise belonged. Now and then there would be changes. A new man, of irreproachable family connections, would come to live in the city and cause a small flurry. Then in time he would be appropriated. Or a girl would come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would come back later permanently. All ways the same faces and the same small talk. Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocks at dinners and dances. Golf at the country club. Travel in the car-do-private car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting. Here at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picture stars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand. One never had a chance to meet them. And in quiet intervals, this still house and grandfather shut away in his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their lives as a spider clutches the diverging filaments of its web. Get in on this, Lily," said a clear young voice. We're talking about the most interesting men we met in our war work. You ought to have known a lot of them. I knew a lot of men, they were not so very interesting. There was a little nurse. Men, Lily dear! There was one awfully nice boy. He wasn't a soldier, but he was very kind to the men. They adored him. Did he fall in love with you? Not a particle. Why wasn't he a soldier? He is a little bit lame, but he is awfully nice. But what is extraordinary about him, then? Not a thing except his niceness. But they were servited with nice young men. They wanted something dramatic, and Willie Cameron was essentially undramatic. Besides, it was quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap made him unacceptable to them. Don't be ridiculous, Lily. You're hiding someone behind this kind person. You must have met somebody worthwhile. Not in the camp. I know a perfectly nice socialist, but he was not in the army. Not a socialist, really. Much worse. He believes in having a revolution. That stirred them somewhat. She saw their interested faces turn toward her. With the bomb under his coat, of course, Lily. He didn't bulge. Good-looking? Well, rather. How old is he, Lily? One of them asked suspiciously. Almost fifty, I should say. Good heavens! Their interest died. She could have revived it, she knew, if she mentioned Louis Acres. He would have answered to their prime requisite in an interesting man. He was both handsome and young. But she felt curiously disinclined to mention him. The party broke up. By once and twos luxuriously dressed little figures went down the great staircase where Grayson stood in the hall and the footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle, watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of comfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it should be. Lily would take up life again where she had left it off and all would be well. It was now the sixth day and she had not yet carried out that absurd idea of asking Ellen's friend to dinner. Lily was, however, at that exact moment in process of carrying it out. One for you, Mr. Cameron. Thanks, coming," sang out Willie Cameron. Edith Boyd sauntered toward his doorway. It's a lady. Woman! corrected Willie Cameron. The word lady is now obsolete since your sex has entered the economic world. He put on his coat. I said, Lady, and that's what I mean, said Edith. May I speak to Mr. Cameron? She mimicked, regular new port accent. Suddenly Willie Cameron went rather pale. If it should be Lily Cardo, but then, of course, it wouldn't be. She had been home for six days and if she had meant to call. Hello? he said. It was, Lily. Something that had been like a band around his heart suddenly loosened to fasten about his throat. His voice sounded strangled and strange. Why, yes, he said in the unfamiliar voice. I'd like to come, of course. Edith Boyd watched and listened with a slightly strained look in her eyes. To dinner? But I don't think I'd better come to dinner. Why not, Willie? Mr. William Wallace Cameron glanced around. There was no one about save Miss Boyd who was polishing the nails of one hand on the palm of the other. May I come in a business suit? Why, of course. Why not? I didn't know, said Willie Cameron. I didn't know what your people would think. That's all. Tomorrow at eight, then. Thanks. He hung up the receiver and walked to the door where he stood looking out and seeing nothing. She had not forgotten. He was going to see her. Instead of standing across the street by the park fence waiting for a glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her. There would be, eight from eleven was three, three hours of her. What a wonderful day it was. Spring was surely near. He would like to be able to go and pick up jinx and then take a long walk through the park. He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt that he might burst with it. Eight o'clock, said Edith. I wish you joy waiting until eight for supper. He had to come back a long, long way to her. May I come in a business suit? She mimicked him. My evening clothes have not arrived yet. My valets bringing them up to town to-morrow. Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist he caught the bitterness under her railway. It puzzled him. It's a young lady I knew at camp. I was in an army camp, you know. Is her name a secret? Why no, it is Cardu, Miss Lily Cardu. I believe you, not. But it is, he said, genuinely concerned. Why in the world should I give you a wrong name? Her eyes were fixed on his face. No, you wouldn't. But it makes me laugh because, well, it was crazy anyhow. What was crazy? Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what will happen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here about six weeks. Then you'll get a job at the Cardu Mills. They use chemists there and you will be— She lifted her fingertips and blew along them delicately. Gone, like that. She finished. Sometimes Willie Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man, for instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did not come any more. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had been distinctly a great above that competent young person Edith Boyd, if there were such grades these days—fluent and prosperous-looking and probably able to offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over. He had heard her doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask her about Akers, she had cut him off curtly. I was sick to death of him, that's all, she had said. But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of Louis Akers. It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at 7.30 in the morning and was off at 6, and the next day he came at 10 and stayed until 11 at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Men wandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a toothbrush, and sat or stood around for an hour or so. Clerks whose families had gone to the movies, bachelors who found their lodging houses dreary, a young doctor or two, coming in after evening office hours to leave a prescription and remaining to talk and listen. Thus they satisfied their gregarious instinct while with an easy call of home. The wealthy had their clubs, the workmen of the city had their balls and sometimes their saloons. But in between was that vast unorganized male element which was neither and had neither. To them the neighborhood pharmacy opened in the evening, warm and bright gave them a rendezvous. They gathered there in thousands the country over. During the war they fought their daily battles there with newspaper maps. After the war the League of Nations, local politics, a bit of neighborhood scandal washed down with soft drinks from the soda fountain, furnished the evening's entertainment. The Eagle Pharmacy had always been the neighborhood club, but with the advent of Willie Cameron it was attaining a new popularity. The roundsmen on the beach dropped in. The political boss of the ward named Hendrix, Dr. Smalley, the young physician who lived across the street and others. Back of the store proper was a room with the prescription desk at one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three. Here were a table and half a dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing with colored pins the last positions before the great Allied advance, and an ancient hat rack which had held from time immemorial an umbrella with rebroken ribs and a pair of artics of unknown ownership. Going to watch this boy, Hendrix confided to Dr. Smalley a night or two after Lily's return meeting him outside. He sure can talk. Dr. Smalley grinned. He can read my writing too which is more than I can do myself. What do you mean watch him? But whatever his purposes Mr. Hendrix kept them to himself. A big burly man with a fund of practical good sense, a keen knowledge of men, he had gained a small but loyal following. He was a retired master plumber with a small income from careful investments and he had a curious almost fanatic love for the city. I was born here, he would say boastfully. And I've seen it grow from fifty thousand to what it's got now. Some folks say it's dirty, but it's home to me all right. But on the evening of Lily's invitation the drugstore forum found Willie Cameron extremely silent. He had been going over his weaknesses, for the thought of Lily always made him humble and one of them was that he got carried away by things and talked too much. He did not intend to do that the next night at the Cardoos. Something scared him off, said Mr. Hendrix to Dr. Smalley after a half hour of almost as eternity while Willie Cameron smoked his pipe and listened. Watch him rise to this, though. And allowed. Why don't you fellows drop the League of Nations which none of you knows a damn about anyhow and get to the thing that's coming in this country? I'll bite, said Mr. Clary, who sold life insurance in the daytime and sometimes utilizes evenings in a similar manner. What's coming to this country? The crowd laughed. All right, said Mr. Hendrix, laugh while you can. I saw the chief of police today and he's got a line of conversation that makes the man feel like taking his savings out of the bank and burying them in the backyard. Willie Cameron took his pipe out of his mouth but remained dumb. Mr. Hendrix nudged Dr. Smalley, who rose manfully to the occasion. What does he say? Because the Russians have got a lot of paid agents here. Not all Russians, either. Some of our Americans are in it. It's to begin with a general strike. In this town? All over the country. But this is a good field for them. The crust's pretty thin here and where's that's the case there is likely to be earthquakes and eruptions. The chief says they're bringing in a bunch of gunmen, Wobblies and Bolshevists from every industrial town on the map. Did you get that, Cameron? Gunmen. Many a few men here dissatisfied with this form of government inquired Willie rather treculately. Not so you could notice it, said Mr. Clary, and once the Republican Party gets in, then there will never be a revolution. Why? That's why, said Willie Cameron. Of course you are worthless now. You aren't organized. You don't know how many you are or how strong you are. You can't talk. You sit back and listen until you believe that this country is only capital and labor. You get squeezed in between them. You see labor getting more money than you and howling for still more. You see both capital and labor raising prices until you can't live on what you get. There are a hundred times as many of you as represent capital and labor combined, and all you do is loaf here and growl about things being wrong. Why don't you do something? You ought to be running this country, but you aren't. You're lazy. You don't even vote. You leave running the country to men like Mr. Hendricks here. Mr. Hendricks was cheerfully unirritated. All right, son, he said, I do my bit and like it. Go on. Don't stop to insult me. You can do that any time. I've been buying a seditious weekly since I came, said Willie Cameron. It's preaching a revolution, all right. I'd like to see its foreign language copies. They'll never overthrow the government, but they may try. Why don't you fellows combine to fight them? Why don't you learn how strong you are? Nine-tenths of the country and milling like sheep with a wolf around. Mr. Hendricks winked at the doctor. Would I tell you? Whispered Hendricks got them, hasn't he? If he'd suggest arming them with pop bottles and attacking that gang of anarchists at the cobblers down the street, they'd do it this minute. All right, son, he offered. We'll combine. Anything you say goes. And we'll get the Jim Doyle, Waslowski, Louie Acres outfit first. I know a first-class brick wall. Acres, said Willie Cameron. Do you know him? I do, said Hendricks. But that needn't prejudice you against me any. He's a bad actor and a smooth as butter. Do you know what their plan is? They expect to take the city, this city, the... Mr. Hendricks' voice was lost in fury. Talk, said the roundsman. Where'd the police be, I'm asking. The police, said Mr. Hendricks, evidently quoting, are as failed with sedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the army. Also the state constabulary. The hell they are, said the roundsman aggressively. But Willie Cameron was staring through the smoke from his pipe at the crowd. They might do it for a while, he said thoughtfully. There's a tremendous foreign population in the mill towns around, isn't there? Does anybody in the crowd own a revolver? Or know how to use it if he has one? I've got one, said the insurance agent. Don't know how it would work, found my wife nailing oil cloth with it the other day. Very well. If we're a representative group, they wouldn't need a battery of eight inch guns, would they? A little silence fell on the group. Around them the city went about its business. The roar of the day had softened to muffled night sounds as though one said, the city sleeps, be still. The red glare of the mills was the fire on the hearth. The hills were its four, protecting walls. And the night mist covered it like a blanket. Here's one representative of the plain people, said Mr. Hendricks, who is going home to get some sleep. And tomorrow I'll buy me a gun, and if I can keep the children out of the yard, I'll learn to use it. For a long time after he went home that night, Willie Cameron paced the floor of his upper room, pasted it until an irate border below hammered on his chandelier. Jinx followed him, moving sedately back and forth, now and then glancing up with idolatrous eyes. Willie Cameron's mind was active and not particularly coordinate. The Cardoos and Lily, Edith Boyd and Louis Acres, the plain people, an army marching to the city to loot and burn and rape, and another army meeting it, saying, you shall not pass, Abraham Lincoln, Russia, Lily. His last thought, of course, was of Lily Cardo. He had neglected to cover Jinx, and at last the dog leaped on the bed and snuggled close to him. He threw an end of the blanket over him and lay there, staring into the darkness. He was frightfully lonely. At last he fell asleep, and the March wind coming in through the opened window overturned a paper leaning against his cotter-box on which he had carefully written, have suit pressed, buy new tie, shirts from laundry. Chapter 11. Going home that night, Mr. Hendricks met Edith Boyd and accompanied her for a block or two. At his corner he stopped. How's your mother, Edith? It was Mr. Hendricks business to know his ward thoroughly. About the same, she isn't really sick, Mr. Hendricks. She is just low-spirited, but that's enough. I hate to go home. Hendricks hesitated. Still, home's a pretty good place, he said, especially for a pretty girl. There was an unmistakable meaning in his tone, and she threw up her head. I've got to get some pleasure out of life, Mr. Hendricks. Sure you have. He agreed affably. But playing around with Louis Acres is like playing with a hand grenade, Edith. She said nothing. I'd got him out, little girl. He's poor stuff. Mind, I'm not saying he's a fool, but he's a bad actor. Now, if I was a pretty girl and there was a nice fellow around like this Cameron, I'd be likely to think he was all right. He's got brains. Mr. Hendricks had a great admiration for brains. I'm sick of men. He turned at her tone and eyed her sharply. Well, don't judge them all by acres. This is my corner. Good night. Not afraid to go on by yourself, are you? If I ever was, I've had a good many chances to get over it. He turned the corner but stopped and called after her. Tell Dan I'll be in to see him soon, Edith. Haven't seen him since he came back from France. All right. She went on her steps lagging. She hated going home. When she reached the little house, she did not go in at once. The March night was not cold and she sat the step, hoping to see her mother's light go out in the second-story front windows. But it continued to burn steadily and at last, with a gesture of despair, she rose and unlocked the door. Almost at once she heard footsteps above and a peevish voice. That you, Edie? Yes. You mind bringing up the chloroform liniment and rubbing my back? I'll bring it, mother. She founded on the wainscotting in the entirety kitchen. She could hear the faint scurrying of water beetles over the oilcloth-covered floor and then silence. She fancied myriads of tiny, watchful eyes on her and something crunched under her foot. She felt like screaming. That new clerk at the store was always talking about homes. What did he know of squalid city houses with their insects and rats, their damp, moldy cellars, their hateful plumbing? A thought struck her. She lighted the gas and stared around. It was as she had expected. The dishes had not been washed. They were piled in the sink and a soiled dish-towel had been thrown over them. She lowered the gas and went upstairs. The hardness had somehow gone out of her when she thought of Willie Cameron. Back bad again, is it? She asked. It's always bad. But I've got a pain in my left shoulder and down my arm that's driving me crazy. I couldn't wash the dishes. Never mind the dishes, I'm not tired. Now crawl into bed and let me rub you. Mrs. Boyd complied. She was a small, thin woman in her early fifties who had set out to conquer life and had been conquered by it. The hopeless drab of her days stretched behind her, broken only by the incident of her widowhood and stretched ahead hopelessly. She had accepted Dan's going to France resignedly with neither protest nor undue anxiety. She had never been very close to Dan, although she loved him more than she did Edith. She was the sort of woman who has no fundamental knowledge of men. They had to be fed and mended for and they had strange physical wants that made a great deal of trouble in the world. But mostly they ate and slept and went to work in the morning and came home at night smelling of sweat and beer. There had been one little rift in the gray fog of her daily life, however. And through it she had seen Edith well married with perhaps a girl to do the housework and a room where Edith's mother could fold her hands and sit in the long silences without thought that were her sanctuary against life. Is that the place, mother? Yes. Yes. Edith's unwanted solicitude gave her courage. Edie, I want to ask you something. Well, but the girl stiffened. Lou hasn't been around lately. That's all over, mother. You mean you've quarreled. Oh, Edie, and me planning you'd have a nice home and everything. He never meant to marry me if that's what you mean. Mrs. Boyd turned on her back impatiently. You could have had him. He was crazy about you. Trouble is with you. You think you've got to follow hard and fast and you begin acting up. Then first thing you know. Some of that strange new tolerance persisted in the girl. Listen, mother, she said. I give you my word. Lou'd run a mile if he thought any girl wanted to marry him. I know him better than you do. If anyone ever does rope him in, he'll stick about three months and then beat it. I don't know why we have to have men anyhow. Put out the gas, Edie. No, don't open the window. The night air makes me cough. Edith started downstairs and set to work in the kitchen. Something would have to be done about the house. Dan was taking to staying out at nights because the untidy rooms repelled him and there was the question of food. Her mother had never learned to cook and recently more and more of the food had been something warmed out of a tin. If only they could keep a girl one who could scrub and wash dishes. There was a room on the third floor, an attic, full now of her mother's untidy harbors of years that might be used for a servant. Or she could move up there and they could get a roomer. The rent would pay a woman to come in now and then to clean up. She had played with that thought before and the roomer she had had in mind was Willie Cameron. But the knowledge that he knew the Cardews had somehow changed all that. She couldn't picture him going from this sorted house to the Cardew mansion and were still returning to it afterwards. She saw him there at the Cardews surrounded by bowing flungies, a picture of wealth gained from the movies and by women who moved indolently trailing through long vistas of ballroom and conservatory in low gowns without sleeves and draped with robes of pearls. Women who smoked cigarettes after dinner and played bridge for money. She hated the Cardews. On her way to her room, she paused at her mother's door. A sleep yet, mother? No, feel like I'm not going to sleep at all. Mother, she said with a desperate catch in her voice, we've got to change things around here. It isn't fair to Dan for one thing. We've got to get a girl to do the work and to do that we'll have to rent a room. She heard the thin figure twist impatiently. I've never yet been reduced to taking rumors and I'm not going to let the neighbors begin looking down on me now. Now listen, mother. Go on away, E.D. But suppose we could get a young man, a gentleman, who would be out all but three evenings a week. I don't know, but Mr. Cameron at the store isn't satisfied where he is. He's got a dog and they haven't any yard. We've got a yard. I won't be bothered with any dog, said the quarrelous voice from the darkness. With a gesture of despair, the girl turned away. What was the use anyhow? Let them go on then, her mother and Dan. Only let them let her go on too. She had tried her best to change herself, the house, the whole rotten mess, but they wouldn't let her. Her mode of disgust continued the next morning. When at 11 o'clock, Louis Acre sauntered in for the first time in days, she looked at him somberly but without disdain. Lou or somebody else, what did it matter? So long as something took her for a little while away from the sordidness of home, its stale odours, its untidiness, its quarrelous inmates. What's got into you lately, Edith? He inquired, lowering his voice. You used to be the best little pal ever. Now the other day when I called up, had the headache, she said laconically. Well, want to play around this evening? She hesitated. Then she remembered where Willie Cameron would be that night and her face hardened. Had anyone told Edith that she was beginning to care for the lame young man in the rear room with his exaggerated chivalry toward women, his belief in home and his sentimental whistling, she would have laughed. But he gave her something that the other men she knew robbed her of, a sort of self-respect. It was perhaps not so much that she cared for him as that he enabled her to care more for herself. But he was going to dinner with Lily Cardew. I might, depending on what you have got to offer. I've got a car now, Edith. I'm not joking. There was a lot of outside work and the organization came over. I've been after it for six months. We can have a ride and supper somewhere. How's the young man with the wooden leg? If you want to know, I'll call him out and let him tell you. Quick, aren't you? He smiled down at where she stood, firmly entrenched behind a showcase. Well, don't fall in love with him, that's all. I'm a bad man when I'm jealous. He sauntered out, leaving Edith gazing thoughtfully after him. He did not know, nor would have cared, had he known that her acceptance of his invitation was a complex of disgust of home, of the call of youth, and of the fact that Willie Cameron was dining at the Cardews that night. End of chapters 10 and 11. Chapters 12 and 13 of A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts Reinhart. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 12. Howard Cardew was in his dressing room sitting before the fire. His man had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was sitting before the fire rather listlessly. In Grace's room adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices. Before Lily's return, now and then, when he was tired, Grace and he had dined by the fire in her boudoir. It had been very restful. He was still in love with his wife, although, as in most marriages, there was one who gave more than the other. In this case, it was Grace who gave and Howard who received. But he loved her. He never thought of other women. Only his father had never let him forget her weaknesses. Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his father's eyes rather than his own. He had put up a hard fight with his father, not about Grace. That was over and done with, although it had been bad while it lasted. But his real struggle had been to preserve himself to keep his faiths and his ideals and even his personality. In the inessentials he had yielded easily and so bought peace. Or perhaps a truce of a sort. But for the essentials, he was standing with a sort of dogged conviction that if he lowered his flag it would precipitate a crisis. He was not brilliant, but he was intelligent, progressive and kindly. He knew that his father considered him both stupid and obstinate. There was going to be a strike. The quarrel now was between Anthony's Kurt and let them strike in his own conviction that a strike at this time might lead to even worse things. The men's demands were exorbitant. No business, no matter how big, could concede them and live. But Howard was debating another phase of the situation. Not all the mills would go down. A careful canvas of some of the other independent concerns had shown the men 80, 90, even 100% loyal. Those were the smaller plants where there had always been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners and the men. There the men knew the owners and the owners knew the men who had been with them for years. But the Cardu mills would go down. There had been no liaison between the Cardus and the workmen. The very magnitude of the business forbade that. And for many years, too, the Cardus had shown a gross callousness to the welfare of the laborers. Long ago, he had urged on his father the progressive attitude of other steelmen, but Anthony had jeered. And when Howard had forced the issue and gained concessions, it was too late. The old grievances remained in too many minds. To hate the Cardus had become a habit. Their past sins would damn them now. The strike was wrong, a wicked thing. It was without reason and without aim. The men were knocking a hole in the boat that floated them. But there was a tap at his door and he called, come in. From her babyhood, Lily had had her own peculiar method of signalling that she stood without a delicate rapid tattoo of fingernails on the panel. He watched smilingly for her entrance. Well, she said, thank goodness you haven't started to dress. I tried to get here earlier, but my hair wouldn't go up. I want to make a good impression tonight. Is there a dinner on? I didn't know it. Not a dinner, a young man. I came to see what you are going to wear. Really? Well, I haven't a great variety. The ordinary dinner dress of a gentleman doesn't lend itself to any extraordinary ornamentation. If you like, I'll pin on that metal from the iron and steel. Who's coming, Lily? Grayson says, grandfather's dining out. I believe so. What a piece of luck, I mean. You know what he'd say if I asked him not to dress for dinner. Am I to gather that you are asking me? He wouldn't mind, would you? He hasn't any evening clothes. Look here, Lily, said her father, sitting upright. Who is coming here tonight? And why should he upset the habits of the entire family? Willie Cameron, you know father, and he has the queerest ideas about us. Honestly, and I want him to like us, and it's such a good chance with grandfather out. He ignored that. How about our liking him? Oh, you'll like him, everybody does. You will try to make a good impression, won't you, father? He got up and resting his hands on her shoulder, smiled down into her upturned face. I will, he said, but I think I should tell you that your anxiety arouses deep in black suspicions in my mind. Am I to understand that you have fixed your young affections on this Willie Cameron and that you want your family to help you in your dark designs? Lily laughed. I love him, she said. I really do. I could listen to him for hours. But people don't want to marry Willie Cameron. They just love him. There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white young man, quite sexless, whom people loved but did not dream of marrying. I see, he said slowly, like a puppy. Not at all like a puppy. I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear. Well, ring for Adams, and you think he wouldn't care for the medal. I think he'd love it. He'd probably think some king gave it to you. I'm sure he believes that you and grandfather are habitually hobnob with kings. She turned to go out. He doesn't approve of kings. You are making me extremely uneasy, was her father's shot. I only hope I acquit myself well. Hurry then. He is sure to be exactly on the hour. Howard was still smiling slightly to himself when a half hour later he descended the staircase. But he had some difficulty first in reconciling his preconceived idea of Willie with the tall young man with the faint unevenness of step who responded to his greeting so calmly and so easily. We are always glad to see any of Lily's friends. It is very good of you to let me come, sir. Why, the girl was blind. This was a man, a fine, upstanding fellow with a clean, cut, sensitive face and honest, almost beautiful eyes. How did women judge men anyhow? And try as he would. Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willie Cameron that night. He tried him out on a number of things. In religion, for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not come up fully during the war. Religion isn't a matter only of churches anymore, said Mr. Cameron. It has to go out into the streets, I think, sir. It's a, well, Christ left the tabernacle, you remember. That was all right. Howard felt that himself sometimes. He was a vestry man at St. Peter's, and although he felt very devout during the service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine old building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at the door when he glanced at the sky to see what were the prospects for an afternoon's gulf. In politics, Willie Cameron was less satisfactory. I haven't decided yet, he said. I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but although I suppose parties are necessary, I don't like to feel that I am party-bound. Anyhow, the old party lines are gone. I'd rather look. He stopped. That terrible speech of Edith Boyd still rankled. Go on, Willie, said Lily. I told them they'd love to hear you talk. That's really all, sir, said Willie Cameron unhappily. I am a Scott, and to start a Scott on reform is fatal. Ah, you believe in reform. We are not doing very well as we are, sir. I should like extremely to know how you feel about things, said Howard gravely. Only this, so long as one party is or is considered the representative of capital, the vested interests in the other of labor, the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor the other cannot be adequately represented. And the solution? Perhaps a new party, or better still, a liberalizing of the Republican. Before long, said Lily suddenly, there will be no state. There will be enough for everybody and nobody will have too much. Howard smiled at her indulgently. How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition? That's the difficulty about it, said Lily thoughtfully. It means a revolution. It would be peaceful, though. The thing to do is to convince people that it is simple justice and then they will divide what they have. Why, Lily? Grace's voice was anxious. That's socialism. But Howard only smiled tolerantly and changed the subject. Everyone had these attacks of idealism in youth. They were the exaggerated altruism of adolescence, a part of its dreams and aspirations. He changed the subject. I like the boy, he said to Grace later over the cribbage board in the morning room. He has character and a queer sort of magnetism. It mightn't be a bad thing. Grace was counting. I forgot to tell you, I think she refused Pink Densilow the other day. I rather gathered from the way she spoke of young Cameron that she isn't interested there, either. Not a bit, said Grace complacently. You needn't worry about him. Howard smiled. He was often conscious that after all the years of their common life, his wife's mind and his traveled along parallel lines that never met. Willie Cameron was extremely happy. He had brought his pipe along, although without much hope, but the moment they were settled by the library fire, Lily had suggested it. You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave around, she said, and I want to know such a lot of things, where you live and all that. I live in a boarding house, more house than board really, and the work's all right. I'm going to study metallurgy some day. There are night courses at the college, only I haven't many nights. He had lighted his pipe and kept his eyes on it mostly or on the fire. He was afraid to look at Lily because there was something he could not keep out of his eyes but must keep from her. It had been both better and worse than he had anticipated seeing her in her home. Lily herself had not changed. She was her wonderful self in spite of her frock and her surroundings. But the house, her people, with their ease of wealth and position, graces slight condescension, the elaborate simplicity of dining, the matter of coarseness of the service. It was not that Lily was above him. That was ridiculous, but she was far removed from him. There is something wrong with you, Willie, she said unexpectedly. You are not happy or you are not well, which is it? You are awfully thin for one thing. I'm all right, he said, evading her eyes. Are you lonely? I don't mean now, of course. Well, I've got a dog, that helps. He's a helpless sort of mutt. I carry his meat home from the shop in my pocket and I feel like a butcher's wagon sometimes, but he's taken a queer sort of liking to me and he has something to talk to. Why didn't you bring him along? Dogs were forbidden in the Cardew house by old Anthony's order as were pipes, especially old and beloved ones, but Lily was entirely reckless. He did follow me. He's probably sitting on the doorstep now. I tried to send him back, but he's an obstinate little beast. Lily got up. I am going to bring him in, she said, and if you'll ring that bell, we'll get him some dinner. I'll get him while you ring. Half an hour later, Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a miserable evening. Some young whippersnapper who employed a handful of men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew, was a clog in the wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said, tempora mutantor, Mr. Cardew, and the wise employer meets those changes halfway. You young fools want to go all the way. Not at all, we'll meet them halfway and stop. Bah, said Anthony Cardew, and had left the club in a temper. The club was going to the dogs along with the rest of the world. There was only a handful of straight-thinking men like himself left in it. Lot of young cravens letting their men dominate them and intimidate them. So he slammed into his house, threw off his coat and hat, and sniffed. A pungent acrid odor was floating through a partly closed door. Anthony Cardew flung open the door and entered. Before the fire on a deep velvet couch sat his granddaughter. Beside her was a thin young man in a gray suit and the thin young man was waving an old pipe about and saying, tempora mutantor, Lily, the wise employer. I am afraid, sir, said Anthony in a terrible voice, that you are not acquainted with the rules of my house. I object to pipes. There are cigars in the humidor behind you. Very sorry, Mr. Cardew, Willie Cameron explained. I didn't know. I'll put it away, sir. But Anthony was not listening. His eyes had traveled from an empty platter on the hearth rug to a deep chair where jinks both warm and fed at the same time and extremely distended with meat lay sleeping. Anthony put out a hand and pressed the bell beside him. I want you to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather. Lily was rather pale, but she had the Cardew poise. He was in the camp when I was. Grayson entered on that, however, and Anthony pointed to jinks. Put that dog out, he said, and left the room, his figure rigid and uncompromising. Grayson, Lily said, white to the lips, that dog is to remain here. He's perfectly quiet, and will you find Alan and ask her to come here? Haven't I made enough trouble? Asked Willie Cameron unhappily. I can see her again, you know. She's crazy to see you, Willie, and besides, Grayson had gone after a moment's hesitation. Don't you see, she said. The others have always submitted. I did too, but I can't keep it up, Willie. I can't live here and let him treat me like that. Or, my friends, I know what will happen. I'll run away like Aunt Allanor. You must not do that, Lily. He was very grave. Why not? They think she is unhappy. She isn't. She ran away and married a man she cared about. I may call you up some day and ask you to marry me. She added less tensely. You would be enough, liquid husband, you know. She looked up at him, still angry, but rather amused with this new conceit. Don't. She was startled by the look on his face. You see, he said painfully, what only amuses you in that idea is, well, it doesn't amuse me, Lily. I only meant, she was very uncomfortable. You are so real, independable, and kind, and I, I know what you mean, like jinx there. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. But you must not talk about marrying me unless you mean it. You see, I happen to care. Willie, it won't hurt you to know, although I hadn't meant to tell you. And, of course, you know I am not asking you to marry me. Only I'd like you to feel that you can count on me always. The one person a woman can count on is the man who loves her. And after a little silence, you see, I know you are not in love with me. I cared from the beginning, but I always knew that. I wish I did. She was rather close to tears. She had not felt at all like that with pink, but although she knew he was suffering, his quietness deceived her. She had the theory of youth about love, that it was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love demanded not knowing that love gives first and then asks. She could not know how he felt about his love for her, that it lay in a sort of cathedral shrine in his heart. There were holy days when saints leapt their niches and were shown in city streets, but until that holy day came, they remained in the church. You will remember that, won't you? I'll remember, Willie. I won't be a nuisance, you know. I've never had any hope, so I won't make you unhappy. And don't be unhappy about me, Lily. I would rather love you even knowing I can't have you than be loved by anybody else. Perhaps, had he shown more hurt, he would have made it seem more real to her. But he was frightfully anxious not to cause her pain. I'm really very happy loving you, he added, and smiled down at her reassuringly. But he had, for all that, a wild, primitive impulse which almost overcame him for a moment to pick her up in his arms and carry her out the door and away with him. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from that grim old house and that despotic little man to liberty and happiness and William Wallace Cameron. Ellen came in, divided between uneasiness and delight, and inquired painstakingly about his mother and his uncle in California and the Presbyterian minister. But she was uncomfortable and uneasy and refused to sit down, and Willie watched her furtively slipping out again with a slight frown. It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into classes, those who served and those who were served. But he had an idea that it was those below who made the distinction nowadays. It was the masses who insisted on isolating the classes. They made kings, perhaps, that they might someday reach up and pull them off their thrones. At the top of the stairs, Ellen found Mademoiselle, who fixed her with cold eyes. What were you doing down there? She demanded. Miss Lily sent for me to see that young man I told you about. How dare you go down and into the library? I have just told you, said Ellen, her face setting. She sent for me. Why didn't you say you were in bed? I'm no liar, Mademoiselle. Besides, I guess it's no crime to see a boy I've known all his life and his mother and me like sisters. You are a fool, said Mademoiselle, and turning clumped back in her bedroom slippers to her room. Ellen went up to her room. Here, too, for she had given her allegiance to Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew and in a more remote fashion to Howard. But Ellen, crying angry tears in her small white bed that night, sensed a new division in the family with Mademoiselle and Anthony and Howard and Grace on one side and Lily standing alone fighting valiantly for the right to live her own life, to receive her own friends and the friends of her friends, even though one of these latter might be a servant in her own house. Yet Ellen, with the true snobbishness of the servant's haul, disapproved of Lily's course while she admired it. But they're all against her, Ellen reflected. The poor thing, and just because of Willie Cameron. Well, I'll stand by her if they throw me out for it. In her romantic head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily eloping with Willie Cameron, assisted by herself. Lily in the little Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her charm in being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village and the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call and work hard's necessary. Into Ellen's not very hard working, but monotonous life had come its first dream of romance. Chapter 13. For three weeks Lily did not see Louis Acres, nor did she go back to the house on Cardew Way. She hated doing clandestine or forbidden things, and she was too determined to add nothing to the tenseness she began to realize existed at home. She went through her days, struggling to fit herself again into the old environment, reading to her mother, lending herself with assumed enthusiasm to such small gateys as Lent permitted, and doing penance in a dozen ways for that stolen afternoon with Louis Acres. She had been forbidden to see him again. It had come about by Grace's confession to Howard as to Lily's visit to the Doyles. He had not objected to that. Unless Doyle talks his rubbish to her, he said. She said something the other night that didn't sound like her. Was anyone else there? An attorney named Acres, she said. And at that, Howard had scowled. She'd better keep away altogether, he observed curtly. She oughtn't to meet men like that. Shall I tell her? I'll tell her, he said, and tell her he did not too tactfully, and men like shielding her by not telling her his reasons. He's not the sort of man I want you to know, he finished. That ought to be sufficient. Have you seen him since? Lily flushed, but she did not like to lie. I had tea with him one afternoon. I often have tea with men, Father, you know that. You knew I wouldn't approve, or you would have mentioned it. Because he felt that he had been rather ruthless with her, he stopped in at the jewelers next morning and sent her a tiny jeweled watch. Lily was touched and repentant. She made up her mind not to see Louis Acres again and found a certain relief in the decision. She was conscious that he had a peculiar attraction for her, a purely emotional appeal. He made her feel alive. Even when she disapproved of him, she was conscious of him. She put him resolutely out of her mind to have him reappear in her dreams, not as a lover, but as someone dominant and insistent, commanding her to do absurd, inconsequential things. Now and then she saw Willie Cameron and they had gone back, apparently, to the old friendly relationship. They walked together, and once they went to the moving pictures, to Grace's horror. But there were no peanuts to eat, and instead of the jingling camp piano, there was an orchestra, and it was all strangely different. Even Willie Cameron was different. He was very silent, and on the way home, he did not once speak of the plain people. Louis Acres had both written and telephoned her, but she made excuses and did not see him, and the last time he had hung up the receiver abruptly. She felt an odd mixture of relief and regret. Then, about the middle of April, she saw him again. Spring was well on by that time. Before the Doyle House on Cardew Way, the two horse chestnuts were showing great red-brown buds, ready to fall into leaf with the first warm day, and Eleanor, assisted by Jenny the elderly maid, was finishing her spring house cleaning. The Cardew Mansion showed window boxes at each window, filled by the florist with spring flowers to be replaced later by summer ones. A potted primrose sat behind the plate glass of the Eagle Pharmacy among packets of flower seeds and spring tonics, its leaves occasionally nibbled by the pharmacy cat out of some atavistic cravings survived through long generations of city streets. The children's playground near the Lily Furnace was ready. Howard Cardew himself had overseen the locations of the swings and shoot the shoots, and at friendship an army of workers was sprinkling and tamping the turf of the polo field. After two years of war there was to be polo again that spring and early summer. The Cherry Hill Hunt Team was still intact, although some of the visiting outfits had been badly shot to pieces by the war. But the war was over. It lay behind, a nightmare to be forgotten as soon as possible. It had left its train of misery and debt, but spring had come. On a pleasant Monday Lily motored out to the field with Pink Denslo. It had touched her that he still wanted her and it had offered an escape from her own worries. She was fighting a sense of failure that day. It seemed impossible to reconcile the warring elements at home. Old Anthony and his son were quarreling over the strike and Anthony was jibing constantly at Howard over the playground. It was not so much her grandfather's irritability that depressed her as his tyranny over the household and his attitude toward her mother roused her to bitter resentment. The night before she had left the table after one of his scourging speeches only to have what amounted to a scene with her mother afterward. But I cannot sit by while he insults you, mother. It is just his way. I don't mind, really. Oh, Lily, don't destroy what I have built up so carefully. It hurts your father so. Sometimes, Lily said slowly, he makes me think that Eleanor's husband was right. He believes a lot of things. What things? Grace had asked suspiciously. Lily hesitated. Well, a sort of socialism for one thing, only it isn't exactly that. It's individualism, really, or I think so. The sort of thing that this house stifles. Grace was too horrified for speech. I don't want to hurt you, mother, but don't you see? He tyrannizes over all of us and it's bad for our souls. Why should he bellow at the servants? Or talk to you the way he did tonight? She smiled faintly. We're all drowning and I want to swim, that's all. Mr. Doyle, you are talking nonsense, said Grace sharply. You have got a lot of ideas from that wretched house and now you think they are your own. Lily, I warn you, if you insist on going back to the Doyles, I shall take you abroad. Lily turned and walked out of the room and there was something suggestive of old Anthony in the pitch of her shoulders. Her anger did not last long, but her uneasiness persisted. Already she knew that she was older in many ways than Grace. She had matured in the past year, more than her mother in 20, and she felt rather like a woman obeying the mandates of a child. But on that pleasant Monday, she was determined to be happy. Old world begins to look pretty, doesn't it? Said Pink, breaking in on her thoughts. Lovely. It's not a bad place to live in, after all, said Pink, trying to cheer his own rather unhappy humor. There is always spring to expect when we get low in winter and there are horses and dogs and blossoms on the trees and all that. What he meant was, if there isn't love, you are perfectly satisfied with things just as they are, aren't you, Lily asked, half-enviously. Well, I changed some things, he stopped. He wasn't going to go around sighing like a furnace. But it's a pretty good sort of place, I'm for it. Have you sent your ponies out? Only two, I want to show you one I bought from the government almost for nothing. Remount Man piped me off. Light in flesh, rather, but fast. Handy, light mouth, all he needs is a bit of training. They had been in the open country for some time, but now they were approaching the Cardoos friendship plant. The furnaces had covered the fields with a thin deposit of reddish ore dust. Such blighted grasses grew had already lost its fresh green and the trees showed stunted blossoms. The one oasis of freshness was the polo field itself, carefully irrigated by underground pipes. The field, with its stables and grandstand, had been the gift of Anthony Cardo, thereby promoting much discussion with his son. For Howard had wanted the land for certain purposes of his own to build a clubhouse for the men at the plant with a baseball field. Finding his father objure it in that, he had urged that the field be thrown open to the men and their families, save immediately preceding and during the polo season. But he had failed there too. Anthony Cardo had insisted, and with some reason, that to use the grounds for band concerts and baseball games for picnics and playgrounds would ruin the turf for its legitimate purpose. Howard had subsequently found other land and out of his own private means had carried out his plans, but the location was less desirable. And he knew what his father refused to believe that the polo ground taking up space badly needed for other purposes was a continual grievance. Suddenly pink stared ahead. I say, he said, have they changed the rule about that sort of thing? He pointed to the field. A diamond had been roughly outlined on it with bags of sand and a ball game was in progress, boys playing, but a long line of men watching from the sidelines. I don't know, but it doesn't hurt anything. Ruins the turf, that's all. He stopped the car and got out. Look at this sign. It says, ball playing or any trespassing forbidden on these grounds. I'll clear them off. I wouldn't pink, they may be ugly. But he only smiled at her reassuringly and went off. She watched him go with many misgivings, his sturdy young figure, his careful dress, his heir of the young aristocrat, easy, domineering, unconsciously incident. They would resent him she knew those men and boys. And after all, why should they not use the field? There was injustice in that sign. Yet her liking and real sympathy were with pink. Pink, she called. Come back here, let them alone. He turned toward her, a face slightly flushed with indignation and set with purpose. Sorry, can't do it, Lily. This sort of things got to be stopped. She felt rather hopelessly that he was wrong but that he was right too. The grounds were private property. She sat back and watched. Pink was angry. She could hear his voice, see his gestures. He was shooing them off like a lot of chickens and they were laughing. The game had stopped and the sidelines were pressing forward. There was a moment's debate with raised voices, a sullen muttering from the crowd and the line closing into a circle. The last thing she saw before it closed was a man lunging at pink and his counter-faint. Then someone was down. If it was pink, he was not out for there was fighting still going on. The laborers working on the grounds were running. Lily stood up in the car, pale and sickened. She was only vaguely conscious of a car that suddenly left the road and dashed recklessly across the priceless turf but she did see and recognize Louie Acres as he leaped from it and flinging men this way and that disappeared into the storm center. She could hear his voice too, loud and angry and see the quick dispersal of the crowd. Some of the men, foreigners, passed quite near to her and night her either sullenly or with mocking smiles. She was quite oblivious of them. She got out and ran with shaking knees across to where pink lay on the grass, his profile white and sharply chiseled with two or three men bending over him. Pink was dead. Those brutes had killed him. Pink. He was not dead. He was moving his arms. Louie Acres straightened when he saw her and took off his hat. Nothing to worry about, Miss Gardeau, he said. But what sort of idiocy? Hello, old man, all right now? Pink sat up, then rose stiffly and awkwardly. He had to cut over one eye and he felt for his handkerchief. Fowled me, he said, filthy lot anyhow. Wonder they didn't walk on me when I was down. He turned to the groundskeeper who had come up. You ought to know better than to let those fellows cut up this turf, he said angrily. What are you here for anyhow? But he was suddenly very sick. He looked at Lily, his face drawn and blanched. Got me right, he muttered. I... Get into my car, said Acres, not too amably. I'll drive you to the stables. I'll be back, Miss Gardeau. Lily went back to the car and sat down. She was shocked and startled, but she was strangely excited. The crowd had beaten Pink, but it had obeyed Louie Acres like a master. He was a man. He was a strong man. He must be built of iron. Mentally, she saw him again, driving recklessly over the turf, throwing the men to right and left, horse with anger, tall, dominant, powerful. It was more important that a man be a man than that he be a gentleman. After a little, he drove back across the field, sending the car forward again at reckless speed. Some vision of her grandfather watching the machine careening over the still, soft and spongy turf and leaving deep tracks behind it made her smile. Acres leaped out. No need to worry about our young friend, he said cheerfully. He is alternately being very sick at his stomach and cursing the poor working man. But I think I'd better drive you back. He'll be poor company, I'll say that. He looked at her, his bold eyes challenging, relying the amiable gentleness of his smile. I'd better let him know. I told him he isn't strong for me. I always hate the fellow who saves you, you know, but he didn't object. Lily moved into his car obediently. She felt a strange inclination to do what this man wanted. Rather, it was an inability to oppose him. He went on, big, strong and imperious. And he carried one along. It was easy and queer. But she did unconsciously, which she had never done with pink or any other man. She sat as far away from him on the wide seat as she could. He noticed that and smiled ahead over the wheel. He had been infuriated over her avoidance of him, but if she was afraid of him, bully engine in this car, never have to change a gear. You certainly made a road through the field. They'll fix that all right. Are you warm enough? Yes, thank you. You have been treating me very badly, you know, Miss Cardew. I have been frightfully busy. That's not true and you know it. You've been forbidden to see me, haven't you? I have been forbidden to go back to Cardew way. They don't know about me then. There isn't very much to know, is there? I wish you wouldn't fence with me, he said impatiently. I told you once I was frank. I want you to answer one question. If this thing rested with you, would you see me again? I think I would, Mr. Acres, she said honestly. Had she ever known a man like the one beside her, she would not have given him that opportunity. He glanced sharply around and then suddenly stopped the car and turned toward her. I'm crazy about you and you know it, he said, and roughly, violently, he caught her to him and kissed her again and again. Her arms were pinned to her sides and she was helpless. After a brief struggle to free herself, she merely shut her eyes and waited for him to stop. I'm mad about you, he whispered. Then he freed her. Lily wanted to feel angry, but she felt only humiliated and rather soiled. There were men like that then, men who gave way to violent impulses who lost control of themselves and had to apologize afterwards. She hated him, but she was sorry for him too. He would have to be so humble. She was staring ahead, white, and waiting for his explanation when he released the break and started the car forward slowly. Well, he said with a faint smile, you will have to apologize for that, Mr. Acres. I'm damned if I will. That man back there, Dan Slow, he's the sort who would kiss a girl and then crawl about it afterwards. I won't, I'm not sorry. A strong man can digest his own sins. I kissed you because I wanted to. It wasn't an impulse. I meant to when we started. And you're only doing the conventional thing and pretending to be angry. You're not angry. Good God girl, be yourself once in a while. I'm afraid I don't understand you. Her voice was haughty, and I must ask you to stop the car and let me get out. I'll do nothing of the sort, of course. Now get this straight, Miss Cardew. I haven't done you any harm. I may have a brutal way of showing that I'm crazy about you, but it's my way. I'm a man and I'm no hand-kisser. And when she said nothing, you think I'm unrestrained and I am in a way. But if I did what I really want to do, I'd not take you home at all. I'd steal you. You've done something to me. God knows what. Then I can only say I'm sorry, Lily said slowly. She felt strangely helpless and rather maternal. With all his strength, this sort of man needed to be protected from himself. She felt no answering thrill, whatever, to his passion, but as though having told her he loved her, he had placed a considerable responsibility in her hands. I'll be good now, he said. Mind, I'm not sorry, but I don't want to worry you. He made no further overtures to her during the ride, but he was neither sulky nor sheepish. He feigned an anxiety as to the threatened strike and related at great length and with extreme cleverness of invention his own efforts to prevent it. I have a good bit of influence with the AFL, he said. Doesn't bad with them, but I'm still solid. But it's coming, sure, a shooting, and they'll win too. He knew women well and he saw that she was forgiving him, but she would not forget. He had a cynical doctrine to the effect that a woman's first kiss of passion left an ineradicable mark on her and he was quite certain that Lily had never been kissed so before. Driving through the park, he turned to her. Please forgive me, he said, his mellow voice contrite and supplicating. You've been so fine about it that you make me ashamed. I would like to feel that it wouldn't happen again, that's all. That means you intend to see me again, but never is a long word. I'm afraid to promise. You go to my head, Lily Cardoo. They were halted by the traffic and it gave him a chance to say something he had been ingenuously formulating in his mind. I've known lots of girls, I'm no saint. But you are different. You're a good woman. You could do anything you wanted with me if you cared to. And because she was young and lovely and because he was always the slave of youth and beauty, he meant what he said. It was a lie, but he was lying to himself also and his voice held unmistakable sincerity. But even then he was watching her, weighing the effect of his words on her. He saw that she was touched. He was very well pleased with himself on his way home. He left the car at the public garage and walked whistling blindly to his small bachelor apartment. He was a self-indulgent man and his rooms were comfortable to the point of luxury. In the sitting room was a desk as clean and orderly as Doyle's was untidy. Having put on his dressing gown, he went to it and with a sheet of paper before him sat for some time thinking. He found his work irksome at times. True, it had its interest. He was the liaison between organized labor which was conservative in the main and the radical element both in and out of the organization. He played a double game and his work was always the same to fan the discontent, latently smoldering in every man's soul into a flame. And to do this he had not Doyle's fanaticism. Personally, Louis Akers found the world a pretty good place. He hated the rich because they had more than he had but he scorned the poor because they had less. And he liked the feeling of power he had when on the platform, men swayed to his words like wheat to a wind. Personal ambition was his fetish as power was Anthony Cardus. Sometimes he walked past the exclusive city clubs and he dreamed of a time when he too would have the entree to them. But time was passing. He was 33 years old when Jim Doyle crossed his path and the clubs were as far away as ever. It was Doyle who found the weak place in his armor and who taught him that when one could not rise it was possible to pull others down. But it was Woslowski, the Americanized Pole who had put the thing in a more appealing form. Our friend Doyle to the contrary, he said cynically, we cannot hope to contend against the inevitable. The few will always govern the many in the end. It will be the old cycle, autocracy, anarchy and then democracy. But out of this last comes always the one man who crowns himself or his ground, one of the people. You or myself it may be. The pole had smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Acres did not go to work immediately. He sat for some time, a cigarette in his hand, his eyes slightly narrowed. He believed that he could marry Lily Cardu. It would take time in all his skill, but he believed he could do it. His mind wandered to Lily herself, her youth and charm, her soft red mouth, the feel of her warm young body in his arms. He brought himself up sharply. Where would such a marriage take him? He pondered the question pro and con. On the one hand the Cardus, on the other, did doil in a revolutionary movement. A revolution would be interesting and exciting and there was strong in him the desire to pull down. But revolution was troublesome. It was violent and bloody. Even if it succeeded it would be years before the country would be stabilized. This other now. He sat low in his chair, his long legs stretched out in his favorite position and dreamed. He would not play the fool like doil. He would conciliate the family. In the end he would be put up at the clubs. He might even play polo. His thoughts wandered to pink denselow at the polo grounds and he grinned. Young fool, he reflected, if I can't beat his time. He ordered dinner to be sent up and mixed himself a cocktail using the utmost care in its preparation. Drinking it he eyed himself complacently in the small mirror over the mantle. Yes, life was not bad. It was damned interesting. It was a game. No, it was a race where a man could so hedge his bets that he stood to gain whoever won. When there was a knock at the door he did not turn. Come in, he said. But it was not the waiter. It was Edith Boyd. He saw her through the mirror and so addressed her. Hello, sweetie, he said, then he turned. You oughtn't to come here, Edith. I've told you about that. I had to see you, Lou. Well, take a good look, then, he said. Her coming fitted in well with the complacence of his mood. Yes, life was good, so long as it held power and drink and women. He stooped to kiss her, but although she accepted the caress, she did not return it. Not mad at me, Miss Boyd, are you? No, Lou, I'm frightened. End of chapters 12 and 13