A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts Rinehart (popular books of all time TXT) 📖

The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the even tenor of her days there, the feeling she had of sanctuary did not offset Lily’s clear knowledge that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing. Even her grandfather, whose anger had driven her away, she remembered now as a feeble old man, fighting his losing battle in a changing world, and yet with a sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the end.

She had determined, that first night in Elinor’s immaculate guest room, to go back the next day. They had been right at home, by all the tenets to which they adhered so religiously. She had broken the unwritten law not to break bread with an enemy of her house. She had done what they had expressly forbidden, done it over and over.

“On top of all this,” old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of her delinquencies from some notes in his hand, “you dined last night openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly my enemy, and openly of impure life.”

“I do not believe he is your enemy.”

“He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to kill me.”

“Oh, Lily, Lily!” said her mother.

But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.

“I don’t believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let him come here - “

“Never in this house,” said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his hand. “He will come here over my dead body.”

“You have no right to condemn a man unheard.”

“Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a rake, a - dog.”

“Just a moment, father,” Howard had put in, quietly. “Lily, do you care for this man? I mean by that, do you want to marry him?”

“He has asked me. I have not given him any answer yet. I don’t want to marry a man my family will not receive. It wouldn’t be fair to him.”

Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a bitterness of language that turned Lily cold and obstinate. She heard him through, with her father vainly trying to break in and save the situation; then she said, coldly:

“I am sorry you feel that way about it,” and turned and left the room.

She had made no plan, of course. She hated doing theatrical things. But shut in her bedroom with the doors locked, Anthony’s furious words came back, his threats, his bitter sneers. She felt strangely alone, too. In all the great house she had no one to support her. Mademoiselle, her father and mother, even the servants, were tacitly aligned with the opposition. Except Ellen. She had felt lately that Ellen, in her humble way, had espoused her cause.

She had sent for Ellen.

In spite of the warmth of her greeting, Lily had felt a reserve in Aunt Elinor’s welcome. It was as though she was determinedly making the best of a bad situation.

“I had to do it, Aunt Elinor,” she said, when they had gone upstairs. There was a labor conference, Doyle had explained, being held below.

“I know,” said Elinor. “I understand. I’ll pin back the curtains so you can open your windows. The night air is so smoky here.”

“I am afraid mother will grieve terribly.”

“I think she will,” said Elinor, with her quiet gravity. “You are all she has.”

“She has father. She cares more for him than for anything in the world.”

“Would you like some ice-water, dear?”

Some time later Lily roused from the light sleep of emotional exhaustion. She had thought she heard Willy Cameron’s voice. But that was absurd, of course, and she lay back to toss uneasily for hours. Out of all her thinking there emerged at last her real self, so long overlaid with her infatuation. She would go home again, and make what amends she could. They were wrong about Louis Akers, but they were right, too.

Lying there, as the dawn slowly turned her windows to gray, she saw him with a new clarity. She had a swift vision of what life with him would mean. Intervals of passionate loving, of boyish dependence on her, and then - a new face. Never again was she to see him with such clearness. He was incapable of loyalty to a woman, even though he loved her. He was born to be a wanderer in love, an experimenter in passion. She even recognized in him an incurable sensuous curiosity about women, that would be quite remote from his love for her. He would see nothing wrong in his infidelities, so long as she did not know and did not suffer. And he would come back to her from them, watchful for suspicion, relieved when he did not find it, and bringing her small gifts which would be actually burnt offerings to his own soul.

She made up her mind to give him up. She would go home in the morning, make her peace with them all, and never see Louis Akers again.

She slept after that, and at ten o’clock Elinor wakened her with the word that her father was downstairs. Elinor was very pale. It had been a shock to her to see her brother in her home after all the years, and a still greater one when he had put his arm around her and kissed her.

“I am so sorry, Howard,” she had said. The sight of him had set her lips trembling. He patted her shoulder.

“Poor Elinor,” he said. “Poor old girl! We’re a queer lot, aren’t we?”

“All but you.”

“An obstinate, do-and-be-damned lot,” he said slowly. “I’d like to see my little girl, Nellie. We can’t have another break in the family.”

He held Lily in much the same way when she came down, an arm around her, his big shoulders thrown back as though he would guard her against the world. But he was very uneasy and depressed, at that. He had come on a difficult errand, and because he had no finesse he blundered badly. It was some time before she gathered the full meaning of what he was saying.

“Aunt Cornelia’s!” she exclaimed.

“Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe,” he put in hastily, seeing her puzzled face, “I think I can arrange about passports.”

“Does that mean he won’t have me back, father?”

“Lily, dear,” he said, hoarse with anxiety, “we simply have to remember that he is a very old man, and that his mind is not elastic. He is feeling very bitter now, but he will get over it.”

“And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven! I was ready to go back, but - he won’t have me. Is that it?”

“Only just for the present.” He threw out his hands. “I have tried everything. I suppose, in a way, I could insist, make a point of it, but there are other things to be considered. His age, for one thing, and then - the strike. If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no concession, no argument with the men, it makes it very difficult, in many ways.”

“I see. It is wicked that any one man should have such power. The city, the mills, his family - it’s wicked.” But she was conscious of no deep anger against Anthony now. She merely saw that between them, they, she and her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be passed. And in Howard’s efforts she saw the temporizing that her impatient youth resented.

“I am afraid it is a final break, father,” she said. “And if he shuts me out I must live my own life. But I am not going to run away to Aunt Cornelia or Europe. I shall stay here.”

He had to be content with that. After all, his own sister - but he wished it were not Jim Doyle’s house. Not that he regarded Lily’s shift toward what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all youth had a slant toward socialism, and outgrew it. But he went away sorely troubled, after a few words with Elinor Doyle alone.

“You don’t look unhappy, Nellie.”

“Things have been much better the last few years.”

“Is he kind to you?”

“Not always, Howard. He doesn’t drink now, so that is over. And I think there are no other women. But when things go wrong I suffer, of course.” She stared past him toward the open window.

“Why don’t you leave him?”

“I couldn’t go home, Howard. You know what it would be. Worse than Lily. And I’m too old to start out by myself. My habits are formed, and besides, I - ” She checked herself.

“I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself,” he said eagerly; “that would be a wonderful way out for everybody.”

She shook her head.

“We’ll manage all right,” she said. “I’ll make Lily comfortable and as happy as I can.”

He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have noticed with what care she was choosing her words. His father’s age, his unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire soon from the arbitrary stand he had taken. Elinor hardly heard him. Months afterwards he was to remember the distant look in her eyes, a sort of half-frightened determination, but he was self-engrossed just then.

“I can’t persuade you?”