Old Anthony's excursion to his daughter's house had not prospered. During the drive to Cardew Way he sat forward on the edge of the seat of his limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and anger, his stick tightly clutched in his hand. Almost before the machine stopped he was out on the pavement, scanning the house with hostile eyes.
The building was dark. Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously, for the household knew that Anthony Cardew had sworn never to darken his daughter's door, saw his erect, militant figure enter the gate and lose itself in the shadow of the house. There followed a short interval of nothing in particular, and then a tall man appeared in the rectangle of light which was the open door.
Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor. Astounded and alarmed. But he recovered himself quickly, and smiled.
“This is something I never expected to see,” he said, “Mr. Anthony Cardew on my doorstep.”
“I don't give a damn what you expected to see,” said Mr. Anthony Cardew. “I want to see my daughter.”
“Your daughter? You have said for a good many years that you have no daughter.”
“Stand aside, sir. I didn't come here to quibble.”
“But I love to quibble,” sneered Doyle. “However, if you insist—I might as well tell you, I haven't the remotest intention of letting you in.”
“I'll ask you a question,” said old Anthony. “Is it true that my daughter has been hurt?”
“My wife is indisposed. I presume we are speaking of the same person.”
“You infernal scoundrel,” shouted Anthony, and raising his cane, brought it down with a crack on Doyle's head. The chauffeur was half-way up the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring it down.
“Stop that!” yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer. When he reached the steps old Anthony was hanging his stick over his left forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it. This was difficult, however, because Anthony had quietly put his foot over the sill.
“I am going to see my daughter, Paul,” said Anthony Cardew. “Can you open the door?”
“Open it!” Paul observed truculently. “Watch me!”
He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him sprawling inside at Doyle's feet. He was up in an instant, squared to fight, but he only met Jim Doyle's mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared he covered with the cynical mask that was his face.
He made no move, offered no speech.
“Is she upstairs?”
“She is asleep. Do you intend to disturb her?”
“I do,” said old Anthony grimly. “I'll go first, Paul. You follow me, but I'd advise you to come up backwards.”
Suddenly Doyle laughed.
“What!” he said, “Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble home, and anticipating violence! You underestimate the honor you are doing me.”
He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the two men had reached the top. Then he followed them. The mask had dropped from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked, he would kill her. But she knew that. She was not a fool.
Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father's voice, and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief. They had found her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner. The girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer. A jailer who fed her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was all.
Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions. He had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In the end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook in which for months she had kept her careful records. Here and there, scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members of The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and carefully remembered. He had read them out to her as he came to them, suffering as she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not killed her. He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a mad-eyed fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once daily. In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning of all punishments; he told her of the movement's progress, of its ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its inevitable success. What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among them; what leading citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that that implied; and again the Cardews headed the list.
When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present, solicitous and attentive. She got out of her bed one day, and dragging her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and finding some opportunity of giving it to the doctor. Only to discover that they had taken away her pen, pencils and paper.
She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment. Olga had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that time on had spent most of her day on the upper floor. Not until Doyle came in would she go downstairs to prepare his food.
Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the stairs. She knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never let her be taken away. He would kill her first. He might kill Anthony Cardew. She had a sickening sense of tragedy coming up the staircase, tragedy which took the form of her father's familiar deliberate step. Perhaps had she known of the chauffeur's presence she might have chanced it, for every fiber of her tired body was crying for release. But she saw only her father, alone in that house with Doyle and the smoldering Russian.
The key turned in the lock.
Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her. With her long hair in braids, she seemed young, almost girlish. She looked like the little girl who had gone to dancing school in short white frocks and long black silk stockings, so many years ago.
“I've just learned about it, Elinor,” he said. He moved to the bed and stood beside it, looking down, but he did not touch her. “Are you able to be taken away from here?”
She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her heart for the part she had to play. It was difficult; she was so infinitely moved by her father's coming, and in the dim light he, too, looked like himself of years ago.
“Taken away? Where?” she asked.
“You don't want to stay here, do you?” he demanded bluntly.
“This is my home, father.”
“Good God, home! Do you mean to tell me that, with all you must know about this man, you still want to stay with him?”
“I have no other home.”
“I am offering you one.”
Old Anthony was bewildered and angry. Elinor put out a hand to touch him, but he drew back.
“After he has thrown you downstairs and injured you—”
“How did you hear that?”
“The servant you had here came to see me to-night, Elinor. She said that that blackguard outside there had struck you and you fell down the stairs. If you tell me that's the truth I'll break every bone in his body.”
Sheer terror for Anthony made her breathless.
“But it isn't true,” she said wildly. “You mustn't think that. I fell. I slipped and fell.”
“Then,” said Anthony, speaking slowly, “you are not a prisoner here?”
“A prisoner? I'd be a prisoner anywhere, father. I can't walk.”
“That door was locked.”
She was fighting valiantly for him.
“I can't walk, father. I don't require a locked door to keep me in.”
He was too confused and puzzled to notice the evasion.
“Do you mean to say that you won't let me have you taken home? You are still going to stay with this man? You know what he is, don't you?”
“I know what you think he is.” She tried to smile, and he looked away from her quickly and stared around the room, seeing nothing, however. Suddenly he turned and walked to the door; but he stopped there, his hand on the knob, and us face twitching.
“Once more, Elinor,” he said, “I ask you if you will let me take you back with me. This is the last time. I have come, after a good many years of bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer you a home. Will you come?”
“No.”
Her courage almost failed her. She lay back, her eyes closed and her face colorless. The word itself was little more than a whisper.
Her father opened the door and went out. She heard him going down the stairs, heard other footsteps that followed him, and listened in an agony of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below. But nothing happened. The outside door closed, and after a moment she opened her eyes. Doyle was standing by the bed.
“So,” he said, “you intend to give me the pleasure of your society for some time, do you?”
She said nothing. She was past any physical fear for herself.
“You liar!” he said softly. “Do you think I don't understand why you want to remain here? You are cleverer than I thought you were, but you are not as clever as I am. You'd have done better to have let him take you away.”
“You would have killed him first.”
“Perhaps I would.” He lighted a cigarette. “But it is a pleasant thought to play with, and I shall miss it when the thing is fait accompli. I see Olga has left you without ice water. Shall I bring you some?”
He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher, some time later, and placed it on the stand beside the bed.
In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new heaviness. Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was so cheerless and somber. It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to it its gayer moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with something hot for Mrs. Boyd's tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the frugality of the meals with campaign anecdotes; Willy, lamenting the lack of a chance to fish, and subsequently eliciting a rare smile from Edith by being discovered angling in the kitchen sink with a piece of twine on the end of his umbrella.
Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them. And then suddenly it ceased. He made an effort, but there was no spontaneity in him. He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very little. He began to look almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching him with jealous, loving eyes, gave voice at last to the thought that was in her mind.
“I wish you'd go away,” she said, “and let us fight this thing out ourselves. Dan would have to get something to do, then, for one thing.”
“But I don't want to go away, Edith.”
“Then you're a fool,” she observed, bitterly. “You can't help me any, and there's no use hanging mother around your neck.”
“She won't be around any one's neck very long, Edith dear.”
“After that, will you go away?”
“Not if you still want me.”
“Want you!”
Dan was out, and Ellen had gone up for the invalid's tray. They were alone together, standing in the kitchen doorway.
Suddenly Edith, beside him, ran her hand through his arm.
“If I had been a different sort of girl, Willy, do you think—could you ever have cared for me?”
“I never thought about you that way,” he said, simply. “I do care for you. You know that.”
She dropped her hand.
“You are in love with Lily Cardew. That's why you don't—I've known it all along, Willy. I used to think you'd get over it, never seeing her and all that. But you don't, do you?” She looked up at him. “The real thing lasts, I suppose. It will with me. I wish to heaven it wouldn't.”
He was most uncomfortable, but he drew her hand within his arm again and held it there.
“Don't get to thinking that you care anything about me,” he said. “There's not as much love in the world as there ought to be, and we all need to hold hands, but—don't fancy anything like that.”
“I wanted to tell you. If I hadn't known about her I wouldn't have told you, but—you said it when you said there's not as much love as there ought to be. I'm gone, but I guess my caring for you hasn't hurt me any. It's the only reason I'm alive to-day.”
She freed her hand, and stood staring out over the little autumn garden. There was such brooding trouble in her face that he watched her anxiously.
“I think mother suspects,” she said at last.
“I hope not, Edith.”
“I think she does. She watches me all the time, and she asked to see Dan to-night. Only he didn't come home.”
“You must deny it, Edith,” he said, almost fiercely. “She must not know, ever. That is one thing we can save her, and must save her.”
But, going upstairs as usual before he went out, he realized that Edith was right, and that matters had reached a crisis. The sick woman had eaten nothing, and her eyes were sunken and anxious. There was an unspoken question in them, too, as she turned them on him. Most significant of all, the little album was not beside her, nor the usual litter of newspapers on the bed.
“I wish you weren't going out, Willy,” she said querulously. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“Can't we discuss it in the morning?”
“I won't sleep till I get it off my mind, Willy.” But he could not face that situation then. He needed time, for one thing. Surely there must be some way out, some way to send this frail little woman dreamless to her last sleep, life could not be so cruel that death would seem kind.
He spoke at three different meetings that night, for the election was close at hand. Pink Denslow took him about in his car, and stood waiting for him at the back of the crowd. In the intervals between hall and hall Pink found Willy Cameron very silent and very grave, but he could not know that the young man beside him was trying to solve a difficult question. Which was: did two wrongs ever make a right?
At the end of the last meeting Willy Cameron decided to walk home.
“I have some things to think over. Pink,” he said. “Thanks for the car. It saves a lot of time.”
Pink sat at the wheel, carefully scrutinizing Willy. It struck him then that Cameron looked fagged and unhappy.
“Nothing I can do, I suppose?”
“Thanks, no.”
Pink knew nothing of Lily's marriage, nor of the events that had followed it. To his uninquiring mind all was as it should be with her; she was at home again, although strangely quiet and very sweet, and her small world was at peace with her. It was all right with her, he considered, although all wrong with him. Except that she was strangely subdued, which rather worried him. It was not possible, for instance, to rouse her to one of their old red-hot discussions on religion, or marriage, or love.
“I saw Lily Cardew this afternoon, Cameron.”
“Is she all right?” asked Willy Cameron, in a carefully casual tone.
“I don't know.” Pink's honest voice showed perplexity. “She looks all right, and the family's eating out of her hand.. But she's changed somehow. She asked for you.”
“Thanks. Well, good-night, old man.”
Willy Cameron was facing the decision of his life that night, as he walked home. Lily was gone, out of his reach and out of his life. But then she had never been within either. She was only something wonderful and far away, like a star to which men looked and sometimes prayed. Some day she would be free again, and then in time she would marry. Some one like Pink, her own sort, and find happiness.
But he knew that he would always love her, to the end of his days, and even beyond, in that heaven in which he so simply believed. All the things that puzzled him would be straightened out there, and perhaps a man who had loved a woman and lost her here would find her there, and walk hand in hand with her, through the bright days of Paradise.
Not that that satisfied him. He was a very earthly lover, with the hungry arms of youth. He yearned unspeakably for her. He would have died for her as easily as he would have lived for her, but he could do neither.
That was one side of him. The other, having put her away in that warm corner of his heart which was hers always, was busy with the practical problem of the Boyds. He saw only one way out, and that way he had been seeing with increasing clearness for several days. Edith's candor that night, and Mrs. Boyd's suspicions, clearly pointed to it. There was one way by which to save Edith and her child, and to save the dying woman the agony of full knowledge.
Edith was sitting on the doorstep, alone. He sat down on the step below her, rather silent, still busy with his problem. Although the night was warm, the girl shivered.
“She's not asleep. She's waiting for me to go up, Willy. She means to call me in and ask me.”
“Then I'd better say what I have to say quickly. Edith, will you marry me?”
She drew off and looked at him.
“I'd better explain what I mean,” he said, speaking with some difficulty. “I mean—go through the ceremony with me. I don't mean actual marriage. That wouldn't be fair to either of us, because you know that I care for some one else.”
“But you mean a real marriage?”
“Of course. Your child has the right to a name, dear. And, if you don't mind telling a lie to save our souls, and for her peace of mind, we can say that it took place some time ago.”
She gazed at him dazedly. Then something like suspicion came into her face.
“Is it because of what I told you to-night?”
“I had thought of it before. That helped, of course.”
It seemed so surprisingly simple, put into words, and the light on the girl's face was his answer. A few words, so easily spoken, and two lives were saved. No, three, for Edith's child must be considered.
“You are like God,” said Edith, in a low voice. “Like God.” And fell to soft weeping. She was unutterably happy and relieved. She sat there, not daring to touch him, and looked out into the quiet street. Before her she saw all the things that she had thought were gone; honor, a place in the world again, the right to look into her mother's eyes; she saw marriage and happy, golden days. He did not love her, but he would be hers, and perhaps in His own good time the Manager of all destinies would make him love her. She would try so hard to deserve that.
Mrs. Boyd was asleep when at last Edith went up the staircase, and Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the girl softly humming to herself as she undressed, and marveled.
When Lily had been at home for some time, and Louis Akers had made no attempt to see her, or to announce the marriage, the vigilance of the household began to relax. Howard Cardew had already consulted the family lawyer about an annulment, and that gentleman had sent a letter to Akers, which had received no reply.
Then one afternoon Grayson, whose instructions had been absolute as to admitting Akers to the house, opened the door to Mrs. Denslow, who was calling, and found behind that lady Louis Akers himself. He made an effort to close the door behind the lady, but Akers was too quick for him, and a scene at the moment was impossible.
He ushered Mrs. Denslow into the drawing room, and coming out, closed the doors.
“My instructions, sir, are to say to you that the ladies are not at home.”
But Akers held out his hat and gloves with so ugly a look that Grayson took them.
“I have come to see my wife,” he said. “Tell her that, and that if she doesn't see me here I'll go upstairs and find her.”
When Grayson still hesitated he made a move toward the staircase, and the elderly servant, astounded at the speech and the movement, put down the hat and faced him.
“I do not recognize any one in the household by that name, sir.”
“You don't, don't you? Very well. Tell Miss Cardew I am here, and that either she will come down or I'll go up. I'll wait in the library.”
He watched Grayson start up the stairs, and then went into the library. He was very carefully dressed, and momentarily exultant over the success of his ruse, but he was uneasy, too, and wary, and inclined to regard the house as a possible trap. He had made a gambler's venture, risking everything on the cards he held, and without much confidence in them. His vanity declined to believe that his old power over Lily was gone, but he had held a purely physical dominance over so many women that he knew both his strength and his limitations.
What he could not understand, what had kept him awake so many nights since he had seen her, was her recoil from him on Willy Cameron's announcement. She had known he had led the life of his sort; he had never played the plaster saint to her. And she had accepted her knowledge of his connection with the Red movement, on his mere promise to reform. But this other, this accident, and she had turned from him with a horror that made him furious to remember. These silly star-eyed virgins, who accepted careful abstractions and then turned sick at life itself, a man was a fool to put himself in their hands.
Mademoiselle was with Lily in her boudoir when Grayson came up, a thin, tired-faced, suddenly old Mademoiselle, much given those days to early masses, during which she prayed for eternal life for the man who had ruined Lily's life, and that soon. To Mademoiselle marriage was a final thing and divorce a wickedness against God and His establishment on earth.
Lily, rather like Willy Cameron, was finding on her spirit at that time a burden similar to his, of keeping up the morale of the household.
Grayson came in and closed the door behind him. Anger and anxiety were in his worn old face, and Lily got up quickly. “What is it, Grayson?”
“I'm sorry, Miss Lily. He was in the vestibule behind Mrs. Denslow, and I couldn't keep him out. I think he had waited for some one to call, knowing I couldn't make a scene.”
Mademoiselle turned to Lily.
“You must not see him,” she said in rapid French. “Remain here, and I shall telephone for your father. Lock your door. He may come up. He will do anything, that man.”
“I am going down,” Lily said quietly. “I owe him that. You need not be frightened. And don't tell mother; it will only worry her and do no good.”
Her heart was beating fast as she went down the stairs. From the drawing room came the voices of Grace and Mrs. Denslow, chatting amiably. The second man was carrying in tea, the old silver service gleaming. Over all the lower floor was an air of peace and comfort, the passionless atmosphere of daily life running in old and easy grooves.
When Lily entered the library she closed the door behind her. She had, on turning, a swift picture of Grayson, taking up his stand in the hall, and it gave her a sense of comfort. She knew he would remain there, impassively waiting, so long as Akers was in the house.
Then she faced the man standing by the center table. He made no move toward her, did not even speak at once. It left on her the burden of the opening, of setting the key of what was to come. She was steady enough now.
“Perhaps it is as well that you came, Louis,” she said. “I suppose we must talk it over some time.”
“Yes,” he agreed, his eyes on her. “We must. I have married a wife, and I want her, Lily.”
“You know that is impossible.”
“Because of something that happened before I knew you? I never made any pretensions about my life before we met. But I did promise to go straight if you'd have me, and I have. I've lived up to my bargain. What about you?”
“It was not a part of my bargain to marry you while you—I have thought and thought, Louis. There is only one thing to be done. You will have to divorce me, and marry her.”
“Marry her? A girl of the streets, who chooses to say that I am the father of her child! It's the oldest trick in the word. Besides—” He played his best card—“she won't marry me. Ask Cameron, who chose to make himself so damned busy about my affairs. He's in love with her. Ask him.”
In spite of herself Lily winced. Out of the wreckage of the past few weeks one thing had seemed to remain, something to hold to, solid and dependable and fine, and that had been Willy Cameron. She had found, in these last days, something infinitely comforting in the thought that he cared for her. It was because he had cared that he had saved her from herself. But, if this were true—
“I am not going back to you, Louis. I think you know that. No amount of talking about things can change that.”
“Why don't you face life and try to understand it?” he demanded, brutally. “Men are like that. Women are like that—sometimes. You can't measure human passions with a tape line. That's what you good women try to do, and you make life a merry little hell.” He made an effort, and softened his voice. “I'll be true to you, Lily, if you'll come back.”
“No,” she said, “you would mean to be, but you would not. You have no foundation to build on.”
“Meaning that I am not a gentleman.”
“Not that. I know you, that's all. I understand so much that I didn't before. What you call love is only something different. When that was gone there would be the same thing again. You would be sorry, but I would be lost.”
Her coolness disconcerted him. Two small triangular bits of color showed in his face. He had been prepared for tears, even for a refusal to return, but this clear-eyed appraisal of himself, and the accuracy of it, confused him. He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate love to her, but her only expression was one of distaste. When at last he caught her to him she perforce submitted, a frozen thing that told him, more than any words, how completely he had lost her. He threw her away from him, then, baffled and angry.
“You little devil!” he said. “You cold little devil!”
“I don't love you. That's all. I think now that I never did.”
“You pretended damned well.”
“Don't you think you'd better go?” Lily said wearily. “I don't like to hurt you. I am to blame for a great deal. But there is no use going on, is there? I'll give you your freedom as soon as I can. You will want that, of course.”
“My freedom! Do you think I am going to let you go like that? I'll fight you and your family in every court in the country before I give you up. You can't bring Edith Boyd up against me, either. If she does that I'll bring up other witnesses, other men, and she knows it.”
Lily was very pale, but still calm. She made a movement toward the bell, but he caught her hand before she could ring it.
“I'll get your Willy Cameron, too,” he said, his face distorted with anger. “I'll get him good. You've done a bad thing for your friends and your family to-day, Lily. I'll go the limit on getting back at them. I've got the power, and by God, I'll use it.”
He flung out into the hall, and toward the door. There he encountered Grayson, who reminded him of his hat and gloves, or he would have gone without them.
Grayson, going into the library a moment later, found Lily standing there, staring ahead and trembling violently. He brought her a cup of tea, and stood by, his old face working, while she drank it.
The strike had apparently settled down to the ordinary run of strikes. The newspaper men from New York were gradually recalled, as the mill towns became orderly, and no further acts of violence took place. Here and there mills that had gone down fired their furnaces again and went back to work, many with depleted shifts, however.
But the strikers had lost, and knew it. Howard Cardew, facing the situation with his customary honesty, saw in the gradual return of the men to work only the urgency of providing for their families, and realized that it was not peace that was coming, but an armed neutrality. The Cardew Mills were still down, but by winter he was confident they would be open again. To what purpose? To more wrangling and bickering, more strikes? Where was the middle ground? He was willing to give the men a percentage of the profits they made. He did not want great wealth, only an honest return for his invested capital. But he wanted to manage his own business. It was his risk.
The coal miners were going out. The Cardews owned coal mines. The miners wanted to work a minimum day for a maximum wage, but the country must have coal. Shorter hours meant more men for the mines, and they would have to be imported. But labor resented the importation of foreign workers.
Again, what was the answer?
Still, he was grateful for peace. The strike dragged on, with only occasional acts of violence. From the hill above Baxter a sniper daily fired with a long range rifle at the toluol tank in the center of one of the mills, and had so far escaped capture, as the tank had escaped damage. But he knew well enough that a long strike was playing into the hands of the Reds. It was impossible to sow the seeds of revolution so long as a man's dinner-pail was full, his rent paid, and his family contented. But a long strike, with bank accounts becoming exhausted and credit curtailed, would pave the way for revolution.
Old Anthony had had a drastic remedy for strikes.
“Let all the storekeepers, the country over, refuse credit to the strikers, and we'd have an end to this mess,” he said.
“We'd have an end to the storekeepers, too,” Howard had replied, grimly.
One good thing had come out of the bomb outrages. They had had a salutary effect on the honest labor element. These had no sympathy with such methods and said so. But a certain element, both native and foreign born, secretly gloated and waited.
One thing surprised and irritated Howard. Public sentiment was not so much with the strikers, as against the mill owners. The strike worked a hardship to the stores and small businesses dependent on the great mills; they forgot the years when the Cardews had brought them prosperity, had indeed made them possible, and they felt now only bitter resentment at the loss of trade. In his anger Howard saw them as parasites, fattening on the conceptions and strength of those who had made the city. They were men who built nothing, originated nothing. Men who hated the ladder by which they had climbed, who cared little how shaky its foundation, so long as it stood.
In September, lured by a false security, the governor ordered the demobilization of the state troops, save for two companies. The men at the Baxter and Friendship plants, owned by the Cardews, had voted to remain out, but their leaders appeared to have them well in hand, and no trouble was anticipated. The agents of the Department of Justice, however, were still suspicious. The foreigners had plenty of money. Given as they were to hoarding their savings in their homes, the local banks were unable to say if they were drawing on their reserves or were being financed from the outside.
Shortly before the mayoralty election trouble broke out in the western end of the state, and in the north, in the steel towns. There were ugly riotings, bombs were sent through the mails, the old tactics of night shootings and destruction of property began. In the threatening chaos Baxter and Friendship, and the city nearby, stood out by contrast for their very orderliness. The state constabulary remained in diminished numbers, a still magnificent body of men but far too few for any real emergency, and the Federal agents, suspicious but puzzled, were removed to more turbulent fields.
The men constituting the Vigilance Committee began to feel a sense of futility, almost of absurdity. They had armed and enrolled themselves—against what? The growth of the organization slowed down, but it already numbered thousands of members. Only its leaders retained their faith in its ultimate necessity, and they owed perhaps more than they realized to Willy Cameron's own conviction.
It was owing to him that the city was divided into a series of zones, so that notification of an emergency could be made rapidly by telephone and messenger. Owing to him, too, was a new central office, with some one on duty day and night. Rather ironically, the new quarters were the dismantled rooms of the Myers Housecleaning Company.
On the day after his proposal to Edith, Willy Cameron received an unexpected holiday. Mrs. Davis, the invalid wife of the owner of the Eagle Pharmacy, died and the store was closed. He had seen Edith for only a few moments that morning, but it was understood then that the marriage would take place either that day or the next.
He had been physically so weary the night before that he had slept, but the morning found him with a heaviness of spirit that he could not throw off. The exaltation of the night before was gone, and all that remained was a dogged sense of a duty to be done. Although he smiled at Edith, his face remained with her all through the morning.
“I'll make it up to him,” she thought, humbly. “I'll make it up to him somehow.”
Then, with Ellen out doing her morning marketing, she heard the feeble thump of a cane overhead which was her mother's signal. She was determined not to see her mother again until she could say that she was married, but the thumping continued, and was followed by the crash of a broken glass.
“She's trying to get up!” Edith thought, panicky. “If she gets up it will kill her.”
She stood at the foot of the stairs, scarcely breathing, and listened. There was a dreadful silence above. She stole up, finally, to where she could see her mother. Mrs. Boyd was still in her bed, but lying with open eyes, unmoving.
“Mother,” she called, and ran in. “Mother.”
Mrs. Boyd glanced at her.
“I thought that glass would bring you,” she said sharply, but with difficulty. “I want you to stand over there and let me look at you.”
Edith dropped on her knees beside the bed, and caught her mother's hand.
“Don't! Don't talk like that, mother,” she begged. “I know what you mean. It's all right, mother. Honestly it is. I—I'm married, mother.”
“You wouldn't lie to me, Edith?”
“No. I'm telling you. I've been married a long time. You—don't you worry, mother. You just lie there and quit worrying. It's all right.”
There was a sudden light in the sick woman's eyes, an eager light that flared up and died away again.
“Who to?” she asked. “If it's some corner loafer, Edie—” Edith had gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that drove the tortured look from her mother's eyes.
“You can ask him when he comes home this evening.”
“Edie! Not Willy?”
“You've guessed it,” said Edith, and burying her face in the bed clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for all that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end to earn the love of the man who was like God to her.
There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.
Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.
“I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born,” she said.
She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When Edith moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look of peace on her face.
It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she had done. She shrank from doing it. It was one thing for Willy to have done it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly afraid of Ellen. And Ellen's reception of the news justified her fears.
“And you'd take him that way!” she said, scornfully. “You'd hide behind him, besides spoiling his life for him! It sounds like him to offer, and it's like you to accept.”
“It's to save mother,” said Edith, meekly.
“It's to save yourself. You can't fool me. And if you think I'm going to sit by and let him do it, you can think again.”
“It's as good as done,” Edith flashed. “I've told mother.”
“That you're going to be, or that you are?”
“That we are married.”
“All right,” Ellen said triumphantly. “She's quiet and peaceful now, isn't she? You don't have to get married now, do you? You take my advice, and let it go at that.”
It was then that Edith realized what she had done. He would still marry her, of course, but behind all his anxiety to save her had been the real actuating motive of his desire to relieve her mother's mind. That was done now. Then, could she let him sacrifice himself for her?
She could. She could and she would. She set her small mouth firmly, and confronted the future; she saw herself, without his strength to support her, going down and down. She remembered those drabs of the street on whom she had turned such cynical eyes in her virtuous youth, and she saw herself one of that lost sisterhood, sodden, hectic, hopeless.
When Willy Cameron left the pharmacy that day it was almost noon. He went to the house of mourning first, and found Mr. Davis in a chair in a closed room, a tired little man in a new black necktie around a not over-clean collar, his occupation of years gone, confronting a new and terrible leisure that he did not know how to use.
“You know how it is, Willy,” he said, blinking his reddened eyelids. “You kind of wish sometimes that you had somebody to help you bear your burden, and then it's taken away, but you're kind of bent over and used to it. And you'd give your neck and all to have it back.”
Willy Cameron pondered that on his way up the street.
There was one great longing in him, to see Lily again. In a few hours now he would have taken a wife, and whatever travesty of marriage resulted, he would have to keep away from Lily. He meant to play square with Edith.
He wondered if it would hurt Lily to see him, remind her of things she must be trying to forget. He decided in the end that it would hurt her, so he did not go. But he walked, on his way to see Pink Denslow at the temporary bank, through a corner of the park near the house, and took a sort of formal and heart-breaking farewell of her.
Time had been when life had seemed only a long, long trail, with Lily at the end of it somewhere, like water to the thirsty traveler, or home to the wanderer; like a camp fire at night. But now, life seemed to him a broad highway, infinitely crowded, down which he must move, surrounded yet alone.
But at least he could walk in the middle of the road, in the sunlight. It was the weaklings who were crowded to the side. He threw up his head.
It had never occurred to him that he was in any, danger, either from Louis Akers or from the unseen enemy he was fighting. He had a curious lack of physical fear. But once or twice that day, as he went about, he happened to notice a small man, foreign in appearance and shabbily dressed. He saw him first when he came out of the marriage license office, and again when he entered the bank.
He had decided to tell Pink of his approaching marriage and to ask him to be present. He meant to tell him the facts. The intimacy between them was now very close, and he felt that Pink would understand. He neither wanted nor expected approval, but he did want honesty between them. He had based his life on honesty.
Yet the thing was curiously hard to lead up to. It would be hard to set before any outsider the conditions at the Boyd house, or his own sense of obligation to help. Put into everyday English the whole scheme sounded visionary and mock-heroic.
In the end he did not tell Pink at all, for Pink came in with excitement written large all over him.
“I sent for you,” he said, “because I think we've got something at last. One of our fellows has just been in, that storekeeper I told you about from Friendship, Cusick. He says he has found out where they're meeting, back in the hills. He's made a map of it. Look, here's the town, and here's the big hill. Well, behind it, about a mile and a half, there's a German outfit, a family, with a farm. They're using the barn, according to this chap.”
“The barn wouldn't hold very many of them.”
“That's the point. It's the leaders. The family has an alibi. It goes in to the movies in the town on meeting nights. The place has been searched twice, but he says they have a system of patrols that gives them warning. The hills are heavily wooded there, and he thinks they have rigged up telephones in the trees.”
There was a short silence. Willy Cameron studied the rug.
“I had to swear to keep it to ourselves,” Pink said at last. “Cusick won't let the Federal agents in on it. They've raided him for liquor twice, and he's sick as a poisoned pup.”
“How about the county detectives?”
“You know them. They'll go in and fight like hell when the time comes, but they're likely to gum the game where there's any finesse required. We'd better find out for ourselves first.”
Willy Cameron smiled.
“What you mean is, that it's too good a thing to throw to the other fellow. Well, I'm on, if you want me. But I'm no detective.”
Pink had come armed for such surrender. He produced a road map of the county and spread it on the desk.
“Here's the main road to Friendship,” he said, “and here's the road they use. But there's another way, back of the hills. Cusick said it was a dirt lane, but dry. It's about forty miles by it to a point a mile or so behind the farm. He says he doesn't think they use that road. It's too far around.”
“All right,” said Willy Cameron. “We use that road, and get to the farm, and what then? Surrender?”
“Not on your life. We hide in the barn. That's all.”
“That's enough. They'll search the place, automatically. You're talking suicide, you know.”
But his mind was working rapidly. He was a country boy, and he knew barns. There would be other outbuildings, too, probably a number of them. The Germans always had plenty of them. And the information was too detailed to be put aside lightly.
“When does he think they will meet again?”
“That's the point,” Pink said eagerly. “The family has been all over the town this morning. It is going on a picnic, and he says those picnics of theirs last half the night. What he got from the noise they were making was that they were raising dust again, and something's on for to-night.”
“They'll leave somebody there. Their stock has to be looked after.”
“This fellow says they drop everything and go. The whole outfit. They're as busy raising an alibi as the other lot is raising the devil.”
But Willy Cameron was a Scot, and hard-headed.
“It looks too simple, Pink,” he said reflectively. He sat for some time, filling and lighting his pipe, and considering as he did so. He was older than Pink; not much, but he felt extremely mature and very responsible.
“What do we know about Cusick?” he asked, finally.
“One of the best men we've got. They've fired his place once, and he's keen to get them.”
“You're anxious to go?”
“I'm going,” said Pink, cheerfully.
“Then I'd better go along and look after you. But I tell you how I see it. After I've done that I'll go as far as you like. Either there is nothing to it and we're fools for our pains, or there's a lot to it, and in that case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics to go there alone.”
Pink laughed joyously.
Life had been very dull for him since his return from France. He had done considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual with him, but he had had no action. But behind his boyish zest there was something more, something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his prayers; a deep and holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of men stood at attention. Something he was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his country.
At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of a small printing shop in the heart of the city. It went on to the accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front and rear entrances.
Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him, smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick. In a corner on the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.
“I don't know why you're so damned suspicious, Jim,” he was saying. “Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right.”
“Like a house a-fire,” said Cusick, complacently.
“I think, Akers,” Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, “that you are letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take their places.”
“Cameron is the brains of the outfit,” Akers said sulkily.
“How do you know Cameron will go?”
Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.
“I've got a hunch. That's all.”
A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand. With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other he settled his tie. He smiled down at her.