A Poor Wise Man - Mary Roberts Rinehart (good e books to read .txt) 📗
- Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
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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 who had both loved and hated himself.
Elinor had gone out, and Akers 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-ing 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 Aker’s 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 Akers, calmly. “Which reminds me, Jim, that I’ve got to have a raise. And pretty soon.”
“You get plenty, if you’d leave women alone.”
“Tell them to leave me alone, then,” said Akers, stretching out his long legs. “All right. We’ll talk about that, after dinner. What about this forty millions?”
Doyle looked at him quickly. Akers’ 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 loathe a man of Louis Akers’ 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 Akers, 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 Akers smiled and carefully settled his tie.
Like Doyle, Akers 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 Akers had only calculation and ambition. A practicing attorney in the city, a specialist in union law openly, a Red 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 Boyd girl to the Searing Building the other night?”
“Who told you that?”
“Woslosky saw you coming out.”
“I had left something there,” Akers 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 unction and hospitality when he met Lily in the hall. At dinner he was brilliant, witty, the gracious host. Akers played up to him. At the foot of the table Elinor 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. Elinor did not hate her father; he 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.
“You 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 Elinor, “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,” Elinor hastily interposed. He caught her eye and grinned.
“I’m not talking politics, my dear.” He turned to Lily, smiling.
“For one thing, I don’t believe that any one should have a lot of money, so that a taxicab could remain ticking away fabulous sums while a charming young lady dines at her leisure.” He smiled again.
“Will 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 Cardew,” said Akers, bending forward. “You and I know that there isn’t such a thing as too much.”
Elinor 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. Lily 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?”
“Per aspera ad astra,” put in Louis Akers. “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 Akers 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 in 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 every one 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, urbanely, “I daresay it might be difficult to convert Mr. Anthony Cardew to such a belief.”
While Louis Akers 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 Akers returned.
“Merry as a marriage bell. I’m to show her the Brunelleschi drawings tomorrow.”
Slightly flushed, he smoothed his 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.
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 it is 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?” Grace asked, with sudden suspicion.
“Only one man. A lawyer named Akers.”
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 Akers 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 Elinor.
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.
Because 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 Willy 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 Akers met her there, and carefully made the rounds with her. Then he suggested tea, and chose a quiet
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