A Poor Wise Man Read online

  A POOR WISE MAN

  By Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER I

  The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackenedwalls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over alla gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty.Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above theriver mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven and earth. Andagain the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the citylay buried in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of river boats movedspectrally along.

  Sometimes it was ugly, sometimes beautiful, but always the city waspowerful, significant, important. It was a vast melting pot. Through itsgates came alike the hopeful and the hopeless, the dreamers and thosewho would destroy those dreams. From all over the world there came menwho sought a chance to labor. They came in groups, anxious and dumb,carrying with them their pathetic bundles, and shepherded by men withcunning eyes.

  Raw material, for the crucible of the city, as potentially powerful asthe iron ore which entered the city by the same gate.

  The city took them in, gave them sanctuary, and forgot them. But theshepherds with the cunning eyes remembered.

  Lily Cardew, standing in the train shed one morning early in March,watched such a line go by. She watched it with interest. She haddeveloped a new interest in people during the year she had beenaway. She had seen, in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men,transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers, beginningalready to be actuated by the same motive. These aliens, going by, wouldbecome citizens. Very soon now they would appear on the streets in newAmerican clothes of extraordinary cut and color, their hair cut withclippers almost to the crown, and surmounted by derby hats always a sizetoo small.

  Lily smiled, and looked out for her mother. She was suddenlyunaccountably glad to be back again. She liked the smoke and the noise,the movement, the sense of things doing. And the sight of her mother,small, faultlessly tailored, wearing a great bunch of violets, andincongruous in that work-a-day atmosphere, set her smiling again.

  How familiar it all was! And heavens, how young she looked! Thelimousine was at the curb, and a footman as immaculately turned out asher mother stood with a folded rug over his arm. On the seat inside laya purple box. Lily had known it would be there. They would be ostensiblyfrom her father, because he had not been able to meet her, but she knewquite well that Grace Cardew had stopped at the florist's on her waydowntown and bought them.

  A little surge of affection for her mother warmed the girl's eyes. Thesmall attentions which in the Cardew household took the place of lovingdemonstrations had always touched her. As a family the Cardews wererather loosely knitted together, but there was something very lovableabout her mother.

  Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.

  "Mercy, Lily!" she said, "you look as old as I do."

  "Older, I hope," Lily retorted. "What a marvel you are, Grace dear." Nowand then she called her mother "Grace." It was by way of being a smalljoke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old Anthony,her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a rowabout it.

  "I feel horribly old, but I didn't think I looked it."

  They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her. "From yourfather, dear. He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the mill.I suppose you've seen the papers." Lily opened the box, and smiled ather mother.

  "Yes, I know. But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them? But never mind aboutthat; I know he's worried, and you're sweet to do it. Have you brokenthe news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is coming home?"

  "He sent you all sorts of messages, and he'll see you at dinner."

  Lily laughed out at that.

  "You darling!" she said. "You know perfectly well that I am nothing ingrandfather's young life, but the Cardew women all have what he likesto call savoir faire. What would they do, father and grandfather, if youdidn't go through life smoothing things for them?"

  Grace looked rather stiffly ahead. This young daughter of hers, with herdirectness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges of life,rather frightened her. The terrible honesty of youth! All these years ofironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties betweenold Anthony and Howard, and now a third generation to contend with. Apitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation. She turned and eyedLily uneasily.

  "You look tired," she said, "and you need attention. I wish you had letme send Castle to you."

  But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered her.Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps. Her face was less childish thanwhen she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions, analmost alarming maturity. But perhaps that was fatigue.

  "I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I've beenvery happy, really, and very busy."

  "You have been very vague lately about your work."

  Lily faced her mother squarely.

  "I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought it woulddrive grandfather crazy."

  "I thought you were in a canteen."

  "Not lately. I've been looking after girls who had followed soldiers tocamps. Some of them were going to have babies, too. It was rather awful.We married quite a lot of them, however."

  The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughterheld Grace Cardew dumb. She nodded, but her eyes had slightly hardened.So this was what war had done to her. She had had no son, and hadthanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had hatedher all her married life for it. But she had given her daughter, herclear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs of life.

  Her thoughts went back over the years. To Lily as a child, withMademoiselle always at her elbow, and life painted as a thing of beauty.Love, marriage and birth were divine accidents. Death was a quiet sleep,with heaven just beyond, a sleep which came only to age, which hadwearied and would rest. Then she remembered the day when Elinor Cardew,poor unhappy Elinor, had fled back to Anthony's roof to have a baby, andafter a few rapturous weeks for Lily the baby had died.

  "But the baby isn't old," Lily had persisted, standing in front of hermother with angry, accusing eyes.

  Grace was not an imaginative woman, but she turned it rather neatly, asshe told Howard later.

  "It was such a nice baby," she said, feeling for an idea. "I thinkprobably God was lonely without it, and sent an angel for it again."

  "But it is still upstairs," Lily had insisted. She had had a curiousinstinct for truth, even then. But there Grace's imagination had failedher, and she sent for Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle was a good Catholic,and very clear in her own mind, but what she left in Lily's brain wasa confused conviction that every person was two persons, a body and asoul. Death was simply a split-up, then. One part of you, the part thatbathed every morning and had its toe-nails cut, and went to dancingschool in a white frock and thin black silk stockings and carriage bootsover pumps, that part was buried and would only came up again at theResurrection. But the other part was all the time very happy, and mostlysinging.

  Lily did not like to sing.

  Then there was the matter of tears. People only cried when they hurtthemselves. She had been told that again and again when she threatenedtears over her music lesson. But when Aunt Elinor had gone away she hadfound Mademoiselle, the deadly antagonist of tears, weeping. And hereagain Grace remembered the child's wide, insistent eyes.

  "Why?"

  "She is sorry for Aunt Elinor."

  "Because her baby's gone to God? She ought to be glad, oughtn't she?"

  "Not that;" said Grace, and had brought a box
of chocolates and givenher one, although they were not permitted save one after each meal.

  Then Lily had gone away to school. How carefully the school had beenselected! When she came back, however, there had been no more questions,and Grace had sighed with relief. That bad time was over, anyhow. ButLily was rather difficult those days. She seemed, in some vagueway, resentful. Her mother found her, now and then, in a frowning,half-defiant mood. And once, when Mademoiselle had ventured some jestingremark about young Alston Denslow, she was stupefied to see the girlmarch out of the room, her chin high, not to be seen again for hours.

  Grace's mind was sub-consciously remembering those things even when shespoke.

  "I didn't know you were having to learn about that side of life," shesaid, after a brief silence.

  "That side of life is life, mother," Lily said gravely. But Grace didnot reply to that. It was characteristic of her to follow her own lineof thought.

  "I wish you wouldn't tell your grandfather. You know he feels stronglyabout some things. And he hasn't forgiven me yet for letting you go."

  Rather diffidently Lily put her hand on her mother's. She gave her rarecaresses shyly, with averted eyes, and she was always more diffidentwith her mother than with her father. Such spontaneous bursts ofaffection as she sometimes showed had been lavished on Mademoiselle.It was Mademoiselle she had hugged rapturously on her small feast days,Mademoiselle who never demanded affection, and so received it.

  "Poor mother!" she said, "I have made it hard for you, haven't I? Is heas bad as ever?"

  She had not pinned on the violets, but sat holding them in her hands,now and then taking a luxurious sniff. She did not seem to expecta reply. Between Grace and herself it was quite understood that oldAnthony Cardew was always as bad as could be.

  "There is some sort of trouble at the mill. Your father is worried."

  And this time it was Lily who did not reply. She said,inconsequentially:

  "We're saved, and it's all over. But sometimes I wonder if we were worthsaving. It all seems such a mess, doesn't it?" She glanced out.They were drawing up before the house, and she looked at her motherwhimsically.

  "The last of the Cardews returning from the wars!" she said. "Only sheis unfortunately a she, and she hasn't been any nearer the war than theState of Ohio."

  Her voice was gay enough, but she had a quick vision of the grimold house had she been the son they had wanted to carry on the name,returning from France.

  The Cardews had fighting traditions. They had fought in every war fromthe Revolution on. There had been a Cardew in Mexico in '48, and in thatupper suite of rooms to which her grandfather had retired in wrath onhis son's marriage, she remembered her sense of awe as a child on seeingon the wall the sword he had worn in the Civil War. He was a small man,and the scabbard was badly worn at the end, mute testimony to the longforced marches of his youth. Her father had gone to Cuba in '98, andhad almost died of typhoid fever there, contracted in the marshes ofFlorida.

  Yes, they had been a fighting family. And now--

  Her mother was determinedly gay. There were flowers in the dark oldhall, and Grayson, the butler, evidently waiting inside the door,greeted her with the familiarity of the old servant who had slipped hersweets from the pantry after dinner parties in her little-girl years.

  "Welcome home, Miss Lily," he said.

  Mademoiselle was lurking on the stairway, in a new lace collar over herold black dress. Lily recognized in the collar a great occasion, forMademoiselle was French and thrifty. Suddenly a wave of warmth andgladness flooded her. This was home. Dear, familiar home. She had comeback. She was the only young thing in the house. She would bring themgladness and youth. She would try to make them happy. Always before shehad taken, but now she meant to give.

  Not that she formulated such a thought. It was an emotion, rather. Sheran up the stairs and hugged Mademoiselle wildly.

  "You darling old thing!" she cried. She lapsed into French. "I saw thecollar at once. And think, it is over! It is finished. And all your niceFrench relatives are sitting on the boulevards in the sun, and sippingtheir little glasses of wine, and rising and bowing when a pretty girlpasses. Is it not so?"

  "It is so, God and the saints be praised!" said Mademoiselle, huskily.

  Grace Cardew followed them up the staircase. Her French was negligible,and she felt again, as in days gone by, shut from the little world oftwo which held her daughter and governess. Old Anthony's doing, that.He had never forgiven his son his plebeian marriage, and an earlyconversation returned to her. It was on Lily's first birthday and he hadmade one of his rare visits to the nursery. He had brought with him apearl in a velvet case.

  "All our women have their own pearls," he had said. "She will have hergrandmother's also when she marries. I shall give her one the firstyear, two the second, and so on." He had stood looking down at the childcritically. "She's a Cardew," he said at last. "Which means that shewill be obstinate and self-willed." He had paused there, but Grace hadnot refuted the statement. He had grinned. "As you know," he added. "Isshe talking yet?"

  "A word or two," Grace had said, with no more warmth in her tone thanwas in his.

  "Very well. Get her a French governess. She ought to speak French beforeshe does English. It is one of the accomplishments of a lady. Get a goodwoman, and for heaven's sake arrange to serve her breakfast in her room.I don't want to have to be pleasant to any chattering French woman ateight in the morning."

  "No, you wouldn't," Grace had said.

  Anthony had stamped out, but in the hall he smiled grimly. He did notlike Howard's wife, but she was not afraid of him. He respected her forthat. He took good care to see that the Frenchwoman was found, and atdinner, the only meal he took with the family, he would now and thensend for the governess and Lily to come in for dessert. That, ofcourse, was later on, when the child was nearly ten. Then would followa three-cornered conversation in rapid French, Howard and Anthony andLily, with Mademoiselle joining in timidly, and with Grace, at the sideof the table, pretending to eat and feeling cut off, in a middle-classworld of her own, at the side of the table. Anthony Cardew had retainedthe head of his table, and he had never asked her to take his deadwife's place.

  After a time Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, thefact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared tosee her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She madedesperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent wasatrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh inchildish, unthinking mirth. She gave it up at last.

  She never told Howard about it. He had his own difficulties with hisfather, and she would not add to them. She managed the house, checkedover the bills and sent them to the office, put up a cheerful andcourageous front, and after a time sheathed herself in an armor ofsmiling indifference. But she thanked heaven when the time came tosend Lily away to school. The effort of concealing the armed neutralitybetween Anthony and herself was growing more wearing. The girl wasobservant. And Anthony had been right, she was a Cardew. She would havefought her grandfather out on it, defied him, accused him, hated him.And Grace wanted peace.

  Once again as she followed Lily and Mademoiselle up the stairs she feltthe barrier of language, and back of it the Cardew pride and traditionsthat somehow cut her off.

  But in Lily's rooms she was her sane and cheerful self again. Inside thedoorway the girl was standing, her eyes traveling over her little domainecstatically.

  "How lovely of you not to change a thing, mother!" she said. "I wasso afraid--I know how you hate my stuff. But I might have known youwouldn't. All the time I've been away, sleeping in a dormitory, andtaking turns at the bath, I have thought of my own little place." Shewandered around, touching her familiar possessions with caressing hands."I've a good notion," she declared, "to go to bed immediately, just forthe pleasure of lying in linen sheets again." Suddenly she turned to hermother. "I'm afraid you'll find I've made some queer friends, mother."

  "W
hat do you mean by 'queer'?"

  "People no proper Cardew would care to know." She smiled. "Where'sEllen? I want to tell her I met somebody she knows out there, the nicestsort of a boy." She went to the doorway and called lustily: "Ellen!Ellen!" The rustling of starched skirts answered her from down thecorridor.

  "I wish you wouldn't call, dear." Grace looked anxious. "You know howyour grandfather--there's a bell for Ellen."

  "What we need around here," said Lily, cheerfully, "is a little morecalling. And if grandfather thinks it is unbefitting the family dignityhe can put cotton in his ears. Come in, Ellen. Ellen, do you know that Imet Willy Cameron in the camp?"

  "Willy!" squealed Ellen. "You met Willy? Isn't he a fine boy, MissLily?"

  "He's wonderful," said Lily. "I went to the movies with him everyFriday night." She turned to her mother. "You would like him, mother. Hecouldn't get into the army. He is a little bit lame. And--" she surveyedGrace with amused eyes, "you needn't think what you are thinking. He istall and thin and not at all good-looking. Is he, Ellen?"

  "He is a very fine young man," Ellen said rather stiffly. "He's veryhighly thought of in the town I come from. His father was a doctor, andhis buggy used to go around day, and night. When he found they wouldn'ttake him as a soldier he was like to break his heart."

  "Lame?" Grace repeated, ignoring Ellen.

  "Just a little. You forget all about it when you know him. Don't you,Ellen?"

  But at Grace's tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and becameagain a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing,rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew,whose eyebrows were slightly raised.

  "Thank you, miss," she said. And went out, leaving Lily rather chilledand openly perplexed.

  "Well!" she said. Then she glanced at her mother. "I do believe you area little shocked, mother, because Ellen and I have a mutual friendin Mr. William Wallace Cameron! Well, if you want the exact truth, hehadn't an atom of use for me until he heard about Ellen." She put an armaround Grace's shoulders. "Brace up, dear," she said, smilingly. "Don'tyou cry. I'll be a Cardew bye-and-bye."

  "Did you really go to the moving pictures with him?" Grace asked, ratherunhappily. She had never been inside a moving picture theater. To herthey meant something a step above the corner saloon, and a degree belowthe burlesque houses. They were constituted of bad air and unchaperonedyoung women accompanied by youths who dangled cigarettes from a lowerlip, all obviously of the lower class, including the cigarette; and ofother women, sometimes drab, dragged of breast and carrying childrenwho should have been in bed hours before; or still others, wanderingin pairs, young, painted and predatory. She was not imaginative, or shecould not have lived so long in Anthony Cardew's house. She never saw,in the long line waiting outside even the meanest of the little theatersthat had invaded the once sacred vicinity of the Cardew house, the cryof every human heart for escape from the sordid, the lure of romance,the call of adventure and the open road.

  "I can't believe it," she added.

  Lily made a little gesture of half-amused despair.

  "Dearest," she said, "I did. And I liked it. Mother, things have changeda lot in twenty years. Sometimes I think that here, in this house, youdon't realize that--" she struggled for a phrase--"that things havechanged," she ended, lamely. "The social order, and that sort of thing.You know. Caste." She hesitated. She was young and inarticulate, andwhen she saw Grace's face, somewhat frightened. But she was not oldAnthony's granddaughter for nothing. "This idea of being a Cardew," shewent on, "that's ridiculous, you know. I'm only half Cardew, anyhow. Therest is you, dear, and it's got being a Cardew beaten by quite a lot."

  Mademoiselle was deftly opening the girl's dressing case, but she pausednow and turned. It was to Grace that she spoke, however.

  "They come home like that, all of them," she said. "In France also. Butin time they see the wisdom of the old order, and return. It is one ofthe fruits of war."

  Grace hardly heard her.

  "Lily," she asked, "you are not in love with this Cameron person, areyou?"

  But Lily's easy laugh reassured her.

  "No, indeed," she said. "I am not. I shall probably marry beneath me,as you would call it, but not William Wallace Cameron. For one thing, hewouldn't have grandfather in his family."

  Some time later Mademoiselle tapped at Grace's door, and entered. Gracewas reclining on a chaise longue, towels tucked about her neck and overher pillows, while Castle, her elderly English maid, was applying icein a soft cloth to her face. Grace sat up. The towel, pinned around herhair like a coif, gave a placid, almost nun-like appearance to her stilllovely face.

  "Well?" she demanded. "Go out for a minute, Castle."

  Mademoiselle waited until the maid had gone.

  "I have spoken to Ellen," she said, her voice cautious. "A young man whodoes not care for women, a clerk in a country pharmacy. What is that,Mrs. Cardew?"

  "It would be so dreadful, Mademoiselle. Her grandfather--"

  "But not handsome," insisted Mademoiselle, "and lame! Also, I know thechild. She is not in love. When that comes to her we shall know it."

  Grace lay back, relieved, but not entirely comforted.

  "She is changed, isn't she, Mademoiselle?"

  Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.

  "A phase," she said. She had got the word from old Anthony, who regardedany mental attitude that did not conform with his own as a conditionthat would pass. "A phase, only. Now that she is back among familiarthings, she will become again a daughter of the house."

  "Then you think this talk about marrying beneath her--"

  "She 'as had liberty," said Mademoiselle, who sometimes lost anaspirate. "It is like wine to the young. It intoxicates. But it, too,passes. In my country--"

  But Grace had, for a number of years, heard a great deal ofMademoiselle's country. She settled herself on her pillows.

  "Call Castle, please," she said. "And--do warn her not to voice thoseideas of hers to her grandfather. In a country pharmacy, you say?"

  "And lame, and not fond of women," corroborated Mademoiselle. "Ca nepourrait pas etre mieux, n'est-ce pas?"