A Poor Wise Man Part 22

"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 mutantur, 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," w.i.l.l.y 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 Jinx, 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 Jinx.

"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 Ellen and ask her to come here?"

"Haven't I made enough trouble?" asked w.i.l.l.y Cameron, unhappily. "I can see her again, you know."

"She's crazy to see you, w.i.l.l.y. 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, w.i.l.l.y. 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 Elinor."

"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 an awfully good 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 and dependable 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."

"w.i.l.l.y!"

"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 pa.s.sionate. 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 left 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, w.i.l.l.y."

"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 rea.s.suringly. 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 w.i.l.l.y watched her furtively slipping out again with a slight frown. It was not right, somehow, this dividing of the world into cla.s.ses, 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 ma.s.ses who insisted on isolating the cla.s.ses. They made kings, perhaps that they might some day 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've 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. Heretofore she had given her allegiance to Mademoiselle and Mrs. Cardew, and in a more remote fas.h.i.+on, 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 sn.o.bbishness of the servants' hall, disapproved of Lily's course while she admired it.

"But they're all against her," Ellen reflected. "The poor thing! And just because of w.i.l.l.y 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 w.i.l.l.y Cameron, a.s.sisted by herself. Lily in the little Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her charm, and being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call, and were cards necessary?

Into Ellen's not very hard-working but monotonous life had comes its first dream of romance.

CHAPTER XIII