A Poor Wise Man - Mary Roberts Rinehart (good e books to read .txt) 📗

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 arch 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 Elinor. 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 haughtily. “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 reestablish 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 to-day. 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. He 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 Elinor’s life with Doyle had been kept from her always. She had but two facts to go on: he had beaten her grandfather as a young man, for a cause, and he held views as to labor which conflicted with those of her family.

Months later, when she learned all the truth, it was too late.

“Of course you’re 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 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 Elinor came in they were absorbed in conversation, Lily flushed and eager, and her husband smiling, urbane, and genial.

To Lily, Elinor 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 fires early burned out and never renewed.

Lily was vaguely disappointed. Aunt Elinor, in soft gray 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!” Elinor said, and kissed her. “Why, Lily, you are a woman!”

“I am twenty, Aunt Elinor.”

“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 Louis coming to dinner, Jim?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you cannot stay, Lily?”

“I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor. Only mother knows that I am here.”

Aunt Elinor smiled her quiet smile.

“I understand, dear. How are they all?”

“Grandfather is very well. Father looks tired. There is some trouble at the mill, I think.”

Elinor 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 Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle. He seemed inclined to make up for Elinor’s lack of enthusiasm by his own. He built up a larger fire, and moved her chair near it.

“Weather’s 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,” Elinor observed. “Her own people will want to see something of her. Besides, they do no know she is here.”

Lily felt slightly chilled. For years she had espoused her Aunt Elinor’s cause; in the early days she had painfully hemstitched a small handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to Aunt Elinor’s varying addresses at Christmas. She had felt a childish resentment of Elinor Doyle’s martyrdom. And now -

“Her father and grandfather are dining out to-night.” 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 to-night, 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.”

Elinor 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, dosing 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, Elinor. This isn’t a matter o the Cardews and me. It may be nothing, but it may be a big thing. I hardly know yet - ” His voice trailed off; he stood with his head bent, lost in those eternal calculations with which Elinor 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 Cardew 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 Cardew,” 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 Elinor.

“It’s customary to greet your hostess, Louis.”

“Easiest thing I do,” boasted the new arrival cheerily. “‘Lo, Mrs. Doyle. Is our niece going to dine with us?”

“I don’t know yet, Mr. Akers,” she said, without warmth. Louis Akers knew quite well that Elinor 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.