A Poor Wise Man Part 43

w.i.l.l.y Cameron smiled.

"I'm a good bit like the boy who dug post holes in the daytime and took in was.h.i.+ng at night to support the family. But I'll work, if that's what you mean."

"We'd better have a const.i.tution and all that, don't you think?" Pink asked. "We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up at the first meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll go like a fire."

But w.i.l.l.y Cameron overruled that.

"We don't need that sort of stuff," he said, "and if we begin that we might as well put it in the newspapers. We want men who can keep their mouths shut, and who will sign some sort of a card agreeing to stand by the government and to preserve law and order. Then an office and a filing case, and their addresses, so we can get at them in a hurry if we need them. Get me a piece of paper, somebody."

Then and there, in twenty words, w.i.l.l.y Cameron wrote the now historic oath of the new Vigilance Committee, on the back of an old envelope. It was a promise, an agreement rather than an oath. There was a little hush as the paper pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Not a man there but felt a certain solemnity in the occasion. To preserve the Union and the flag, to fight all sedition, to love their country and support it; the very simplicity of the words was impressive. And the mere putting of it into visible form crystallized their hitherto vague anxieties, pointed to a real enemy and a real danger. Yet, as w.i.l.l.y Cameron pointed out, they might never be needed.

"Our job," he said, "is only as a last resort. Only for real trouble.

Until the state troops can get here, for instance, and if the constabulary is greatly outnumbered. It's their work up to a certain point. We'll fight if they need us. That's all."

It was very surprising to him to find the enterprise financed immediately. Pink offered an office in the bank building. Some one agreed to pay a clerk who should belong to the committee. It was practical, businesslike, and--done. And, although he had protested, he found himself made the head of the organization.

"--without t.i.tle and without pay," he stipulated. "If you wish a t.i.tle on me, I'll resign."

He went home that night very exalted and very humble.

CHAPTER XXI

For a time Lily remained hidden in the house on Cardew Way, walking out after nightfall with Louis occasionally, but shrinkingly keeping to quiet back streets. She had a horror of meeting some one she knew, of explanations and of gossip. But after a time the desire to see her mother became overwhelming. She took to making little flying visits home at an hour when her grandfather was certain to be away, going in a taxicab, and reaching the house somewhat breathless and excited. She was driven by an impulse toward the old familiar things; she was homesick for them all, for her mother, for Mademoiselle, for her own rooms, for her little toilet table, for her bed and her reading lamp. For the old house itself.

She was still an alien where she was. Elinor Doyle was a perpetual enigma to her; now and then she thought she had penetrated behind the gentle mask that was Elinor's face, only to find beyond it something inscrutable. There was a dead line in Elinor's life across which Lily never stepped. Whatever Elinor's battles were, she fought them alone, and Lily had begun to realize that there were battles.

The atmosphere of the little house had changed. Sometimes, after she had gone to bed, she heard Doyle's voice from the room across the hall, raised angrily. He was nervous and impatient; at times he dropped the unctuousness of his manner toward her, and she found herself looking into a pair of cold blue eyes which terrified her.

The brilliant little dinners had entirely ceased, with her coming. A sort of early summer lethargy had apparently settled on the house.

Doyle wrote for hours, shut in the room with the desk; the group of intellectuals, as he had dubbed them, had dispersed on summer vacations.

But she discovered that there were other conferences being held in the house, generally late at night.

She learned to know the nights when those meetings were to occur. On those evenings Elinor always made an early move toward bed, and Lily would repair to her hot low-ceiled room, to sit in the darkness by the window and think long, painful thoughts.

That was how she learned of the conferences. She had no curiosity about them at first. They had something to do with the strike, she considered, and with that her interest died. Strikes were a symptom, and ultimately, through great thinkers like Mr. Doyle, they would discover the cure for the disease that caused them. She was quite content to wait for that time.

Then, one night, she went downstairs for a gla.s.s of ice water, and found the lower floor dark, and subdued voices coming from the study. The kitchen door was standing open, and she closed and locked it, placing the key, as was Elinor's custom, in a table drawer. The door was partly gla.s.s, and Elinor had a fear of the gla.s.s being broken and thus the key turned in the lock by some intruder.

On toward morning there came a violent hammering at her bedroom door, and Doyle's voice outside, a savage voice that she scarcely recognized.

When she had thrown on her dressing gown and opened the door he had instantly caught her by the shoulder, and she bore the imprints of his fingers for days.

"Did you lock the kitchen door?" he demanded, his tones thick with fury.

"Yes. Why not?" She tried to shake off his hand, but failed.

"None of your business why not," he said, and gave her an angry shake.

"Hereafter, when you find that door open, you leave it that way. That's all."

"Take your hands off me!" She was rather like her grandfather at that moment, and his lost caution came back. He freed her at once and laughed a little.

"Sorry!" he said. "I get a bit emphatic at times. But there are times when a locked door becomes a mighty serious matter."

The next day he removed the key from the door, and subst.i.tuted a bolt.

Elinor made no protest.

Another night Elinor was taken ill, and Lilly had been forced to knock at the study door and call Doyle. She had an instant's impression of the room crowded with strange figures. The heavy odors of sweating bodies, of tobacco, and of stale beer came through the half-open door and revolted her. And Doyle had refused to go upstairs.

She began to feel that she could not remain there very long. The atmosphere was variable. It was either cynical or sinister, and she hated them both. She had a curious feeling, too, that Doyle both wanted her there and did not want her, and that he was changing his att.i.tude toward her Aunt Elinor. Sometimes she saw him watching Elinor from under half-closed eyelids.

But she could not fill her days with anxieties and suspicions, and she turned to Louis Akers as a flower to the open day. He at least was what he appeared to be. There was nothing mysterious about him.

He came in daily, big, dominant and demonstrative, filling the house with his presence, and demanding her in a loud, urgent voice. Hardly had the door slammed before he would call:

"Lily! Where are you?"

Sometimes he lifted her off her feet and held her to him.

"You little whiffet!" he would say. "I could crush you to death in my arms."

Had his wooing all been violent she might have tired sooner, because those phases of his pa.s.sion for her tired her. But there were times when he put her into a chair and sat on the floor at her feet, his handsome face uplifted to hers in a sort of humble adoration, his arms across her knees. It was not altogether studied. He was a born wooer, but he had his hours of humility, of vague aspirations. His insistent body was always greater than his soul, but now and then, when he was physically weary, he had a spiritual moment.

"I love you, little girl," he would say.

It was in one of those moments that she extracted a promise from him.

He had been, from his position on the floor, telling her about the campaign.

"I don't like your running against my father, Louis."

"He couldn't have got it, anyhow. And he doesn't want it. I do, honey.

I need it in my business. When the election's over you're going to marry me."

She ignored that.

"I don't like the men who come here, Louis. I wish they were not friends of yours."

"Friends of mine! That bunch?"

"You are always with them."

"I draw a salary for being with them, honey."

"But what do you draw a salary for?" He was immediately on the alert, but her eyes were candid and unsuspicious. "They are strikers, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"Is it legal business?"