Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and
appearing in the next. Lily Cardew at that stage of her life had a
considerable amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination,
although it was softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her,
women who had loved, and suffered dominance because they loved. Her very
infatuation for Louis Akers, like Elinor's for Doyle, was possibly an
inheritance from her fore-mothers, who had been wont to overlook the
evil in a man for the strength in him. Only Lily mistook physical
strength for moral fibre, insolence and effrontery for courage.
In both her virtues and her faults, however, irrespective of heredity,
Lily represented very fully the girl of her position and period. With no
traditions to follow, setting her course by no compass, taught to think
but not how to think, resentful of tyranny but unused to freedom,
she moved ahead along the path she had elected to follow, blindly and
obstinately, yet unhappy and suffering.
Her infatuation for Louis Akers had come to a new phase of its rapid
development. She had reached that point where a woman realizes that the
man she loves is, not a god of strength and wisdom, but a great child
who needs her. It is at that point that one of two things happens: the
weak woman abandons him, and follows her dream elsewhere. The woman
of character, her maternal instinct roused, marries him, bears him
children, is both wife and mother to him, and finds in their united
weaknesses such strength as she can.
In her youth and self-sufficiency Lily stood ready to give, rather than
to receive. She felt now that he needed her more than she needed him.
There was something unconsciously patronizing those days in her attitude
toward him, and if he recognized it he did not resent it. Women had
always been “easy” for him. Her very aloofness, her faint condescension,
her air of a young grande dame, were a part of her attraction for him.
Love sees clearly, and seeing, loves on. But infatuation is blind; when
it gains sight, it dies. Already Lily was seeing him with the critical
eyes of youth, his loud voice, his over-fastidious dress, his occasional
grossnesses. To offset these she placed vast importance on his promise
to leave his old associates when she married him.
The time was very close now. She could not hold him off much longer,
and she began to feel, too, that she must soon leave the house on Cardew
Way. Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious and ungracious.
She knew that he had no knowledge of Louis's promise, but he began to
feel that she was working against him, and showed it.
And in Louis Akers too she began to discern an inclination not to pull
out until after the election. He was ambitious, and again and again he
urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he
were elected first.
That issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and learned
the terms on which she might return home. She was alarmed by his noisy
anger at the situation.
“Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet,” she said. “You have known their
attitude all along, haven't you?”
“I'll show them,” he said, thickly. “Damned snobs!” He glanced at her
then uneasily, and her expression put him on his guard. “I didn't mean
that, little girl. Honestly I didn't. I don't care for myself. It's
you.”
“You must understand that they think they are acting for my good. And
I am not sure,” she added, her clear eyes on him, “that they are not
right. You frighten me sometimes, Louis.”
But a little later he broke out again. If he wasn't good enough to enter
their house, he'd show them something. The election would show them
something. They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of the city.
She saw then that he was bent on remaining with Doyle until after the
election.
Lily sat back, listening and thinking. Sometimes she thought that he
did not love her at all. He always said he wanted her, but that was
different.
“I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis,” she said, when
he had exhausted himself. “I don't believe you know what love is.”
That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her hands,
begging her not to give him up, and once again her curious sense of
responsibility for him triumphed.
“You will marry me soon, dear, won't you?” he implored her. But she
thought of Willy Cameron, oddly enough, even while his arms were around
her; of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching, suppliant
and insistent; Willy Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what
she now knew was the blow of her engagement like a gentleman and a
soldier.
They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men
in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others who, out of
a deep humility, offer little and give everything they have.
In the end, nothing was settled. After he had gone Lily, went up to
Elinor's room. She had found in Elinor lately a sort of nervous tension
that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of
her visit home, and of her determination to marry Louis within the next
few days. Elinor had dropped her sewing and clenched her hands in her
lap.
“Not soon, Lily!” she said. “Oh, not soon. Wait a little--wait two
months.”
“Two months?” Lily said wonderingly. “Why two months?”
“Because, at the end of two months, nothing would make you marry him,”
Elinor said, almost violently. “I have sat by and waited, because I
thought you would surely see your mistake. But now--Lily, do you envy me
my life?”
“No,” Lily said truthfully; “but you love him.”
Elinor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding.
“You are different,” she said finally. “You will break, where I have
only bent.”
But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be
able to take any strong initiative now. And all her moral and physical
courage she was saving for a great emergency.
Cardew Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of the
bomb outrages of that night.
When she went down to breakfast the next morning she found Jim Doyle
pacing the floor of the dining room in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper
clenched in his hand. By the window stood Elinor, very pale and with
slightly reddened eyes. They had not heard her, and Doyle continued a
furious harangue.
“The fools!” he said. “Damn such material as I have to work with! This
isn't the time, and they know it. I've warned them over and over. The
fools!”
Elinor saw her then, and made a gesture of warning. But it was too late.
Lily had a certain quality of directness, and it did not occur to her to
dissemble.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked, and went at once to Elinor. She had once
or twice before this stood between them for Elinor's protection.
“Everything is as happy as a May morning,” Doyle sneered. “Your Aunt
Elinor has an unpleasant habit of weeping for joy.”
Lily stiffened, but Elinor touched her arm.
“Sit down and eat your breakfast, Lily,” she said, and left the room.
Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily. He did not know how much she
had heard, how much she knew. At the moment he did not care. He had
a reckless impulse to tell her the truth, but his habitual caution
prevailed. He forced a cold smile.
“Don't bother your pretty head about politics,” he said.
Lily was equally cold. Her dislike of him had been growing for weeks,
coupled to a new and strange distrust.
“Politics? You seem to take your politics very hard.”
“I do,” he said urbanely. “Particularly when I am fighting my wife's
family. May I pour you some coffee?”
And pour it he did, eyeing her furtively the while, and brought it to
her.
“May I give you a word of advice, Lily?” he said. “Don't treat your
husband to tears at breakfast--unless you want to see him romping off to
some other woman.”
“If he cared to do that I shouldn't want him anyhow.”
“You're a self-sufficient child, aren't you? Well, the best of us do it,
sometimes.”
He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts, and he went out,
carrying the newspaper with him.
Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a
menace. With all her theories he knew that a word of the truth would
send her flying, breathless with outrage, out of his door. He could
quite plainly visualize that home-coming of hers. The instant steps that
would be taken against him, old Anthony on the wire appealing to the
governor, Howard closeted with the Chief of Police, an instant closing
of the net. And he was not ready for the clash.
No. She must stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling
and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced
the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and
not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in
the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself
the head, not of the nation--there would be no nation, as such--but of
the country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they
were, showed him the ease with which the new force could be applied.
He was drunk with power.