CHAPTER XXXII
Life had beaten Lily Cardew. She went about the house, patheticallyreminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those days when she had sought sanctuarythere; but where Elinor had seen those days only as interludes in herstormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace. She was very tender,very thoughtful, insistently cheerful, as though determined that her ownill-fortune should not affect the rest of the household.
But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end. Life for herwas over. Her bright dreams were gone, her future settled. Without soputting it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to service, to smallkindnesses, and little thoughtful acts. She was, daily and hourly,making reparation to them all for what she had cost them, in hope.
That was the thing that had gone out of life. Hope. Her loathing ofLouis Akers was gone. She did not hate him. Rather she felt toward him asort of numbed indifference. She wished never to see him again, but therevolt that had followed her knowledge of the conditions under which hehad married her was gone. She tried to understand his viewpoint, to makeallowances for his lack of some fundamental creed to live by. But as thedays went on, with that healthy tendency of the mind to bury pain, shefound him, from a figure that bulked so large as to shut out all thehorizon of her life, receding more and more.
But always he would shut off certain things. Love, and marriage, and ofcourse the hope of happiness. Happiness was a thing one earned, and shehad not earned it.
After the scene at the Saint Elmo, when he had refused to let her go,and when Willy Cameron had at last locked him in the bedroom of thesuite and had taken her away, there had followed a complete silence.She had waited for some move or his part, perhaps an announcement of themarriage in the newspapers, but nothing had appeared. He had commenceda whirlwind campaign for the mayoralty and was receiving a substantialsupport from labor.
The months at the house on Cardew Way seemed more and more dream-like,and that quality of remoteness was accentuated by the fact that shehad not been able to talk to Elinor. She had telephoned more than onceduring the week, but a new maid had answered. Mrs. Doyle was out. Mrs.Doyle was unable to come to the telephone. The girl was a foreigner,with something of Woslosky's burr in her voice.
Lily had not left the house since her return. During that familyconclave which had followed her arrival, a stricken thing of few wordsand long anxious pauses, her grandfather had suggested that. He hadbeen curiously mild with her, her grandfather. He had made no friendlyovertures, but he had neither jibed nor sneered.
"It's done," he had said briefly. "The thing now is to keep her out ofhis clutches." He had turned to her. "I wouldn't leave the house for fewdays, Lily."
It was then that Willy Cameron had gone. Afterwards she thought thathe must have been waiting, patiently protective, to see how the old manreceived her.
Her inability to reach Elinor began to dismay her, at last. There wassomething sinister about it, and finally Howard himself went to theDoyle house. Lily had come back on Thursday, and on the followingTuesday he made his call, timing it so that Doyle would probably be awayfrom home. But he came back baffled.
"She was not at home," he said. "I had to take the servant's word forit, but I think the girl was lying."
"She may be ill. She almost never goes out."
"What possible object could they have in concealing her illness?" Howardsaid impatiently.
But he was very uneasy, and what Lily had told him since her return onlyincreased his anxiety. The house was a hotbed of conspiracy, and for herown reasons Elinor was remaining there. It was no place for a sisterof his. But Elinor for years had only touched the outer fringes ofhis life, and his days were crowded with other things; the increasingarrogance of the strikers, the utter uselessness of trying to maketerms with them, his own determination to continue to fight his futilepolitical campaign. He put her out of his mind.
Then, at the end of another week, a curious thing happened. Anthony andLily were in the library. Old Anthony without a club was Old Anthonylost, and he had developed a habit, at first rather embarrassing to theothers, of spending much of his time downstairs. He was no sinner turnedsaint. He still let the lash of his tongue play over the household, buthis old zest in it seemed gone. He made, too, small tentative overturesto Lily, intended to be friendly, but actually absurdly self-conscious.Grace, watching him, often felt him rather touching. It was obvious toher that he blamed himself, rather than Lily, for what had happened.
On this occasion he had asked Lily to read to him.
"And leave out the politics," he had said, "I get enough of thatwherever I go."
As she read she felt him watching her, and in the middle of a paragraphhe suddenly said:
"What's become of Cameron?"
"He must be very busy. He is supporting Mr. Hendricks, you know."
"Supporting him! He's carrying him on his back," grunted Anthony. "Whatis it, Grayson?"
"A lady--a woman--calling on Miss Cardew."
Lily rose, but Anthony motioned her back.
"Did she give any name?"
"She said to say it was Jennie, sir."
"Jennie! It must be Aunt Elinor's Jennie!"
"Send her in," said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his facetwitching; it occurred to her then that this strange old man might stilllove his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.
It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tallgaunt woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to Lily in a hat.
"Why, Jennie!" she said. And then: "Is anything wrong?"
"There is and there isn't," Jennie said, somberly. "I just wanted totell you, and I don't care if he kills me for it. It was him that threwher downstairs. I heard him hit her."
Old Anthony stiffened.
"He threw Aunt Elinor downstairs?"
"That's how she broke her leg."
Sheer amazement made Lily inarticulate.
"But they said--we didn't know--do you mean that she has been there allthis time, hurt?"
"I mean just that," said Jennie, stolidly. "I helped set it, with himpretending to be all worked up, for the doctor to see. He got rid ofme all right. He's got one of his spies there now, a Bolshevik likehimself. You can ask the neighbors."
Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his car.Lily, frightened by the look on his face, made only one protest.
"You mustn't go alone," she said. "Let me go, too. Or takeGrayson--anybody."
But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and drewon his gloves.
"What is the house number?"
Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who hasmade up his mind to follow a certain course, but to keep himself well inhand.
A Poor Wise Man Page 31