Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon, in the person of Pink
Denslow. She had assumed some of Elinor's cares for the day, for Elinor
herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to
attend to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Elinor's small
stock of fine china when the bell rang.
“Mr. Denslow is calling,” said Jennie. “I didn't know if you'd see him,
so I said I didn't know if you were in.”
Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was
covered with plaster dust, even to the brim of his hat, and his hands
were scratched and rough.
“Pink!” she said. “Why, what is the matter?”
For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first
time in his life perhaps, entirely indifferent to it.
“I've been digging in the ruins,” he said. “Is that man Doyle in the
house?”
Her color faded. Suddenly she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's
eyes, and the hard strained look of his mouth.
“What ruins, Pink?” she managed to ask.
“All the ruins,” he said. “You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and
the club?”
It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it
all, a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it a vision
of Jim Doyle with the morning paper, and the thing that this was not the
time for.
“That's all,” he finished. “Eleven at the club, two of them my own
fellows. In France, you know. I found one of them myself, this morning.”
He stared past her, over her head. “Killed for nothing, the way the
Germans terrorized Belgium. Haven't you seen the papers?”
“No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course. Lily, I want you to
leave here. If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them, whether
you believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that?”
She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard, and the mental shock
had brought her dizziness and a faint nausea. He stood watching her, and
when she glanced up at him it seemed to her that Pink was hard. Hard and
suspicious, and the suspicion was for her. It was incredible.
“Do you believe what they preach?” he demanded. “I've got to know, Lily.
I've suffered the tortures of the damned all night.”
“I didn't know it meant this.”
“Do you?” he repeated.
“No. You ought to know me better than that. But I don't believe that it
started here, Pink. He was very angry this morning, and he wouldn't let
me see the paper.”
“He's behind it all right,” Pink said grimly. “Maybe he didn't plant the
bombs, but his infernal influence did it, just the same. Do you mean
to say you've lived here all this time and don't know he is plotting a
revolution? What if he didn't authorize these things last night? He is
only waiting, to place a hundred bombs instead of three. A thousand,
perhaps.”
“Oh, no!”
“We've got their own statements. Department of Justice found them. The
fools, to think they can overthrow the government! Can you imagine men
planning to capture this city and hold it?”
“It wouldn't be possible, Pink?”
“It isn't possible now, but they'll make a try at it.”
There was a short pause, with Lily struggling to understand. Pink's
set face relaxed somewhat. All that night he had been fighting for his
belief in her.
“I never dreamed of it, Pink. I suppose all the talk I've heard meant
that, but I never--are you sure? About Jim Doyle, I mean.”
“We know he is behind it. We haven't got the goods on him yet, but we
know. Cameron knows. You ask him and he'll tell you.”
“Willy Cameron?”
“Yes. He's had some vision, while the rest of us--! He's got a lot of us
working now, Lily. We are on the right trail, too, although we lost some
records last night that put us back a couple of months. We'll get them,
all right. We'll smash their little revolution into a cocked hat.”
It occurred to him, then, that this house was a poor place for such a
confidence. “I'll tell you about it later. Get your things now, and let
me take you home.”
But Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy. She was
stricken with sudden conviction; the very mention of Willy Cameron gave
Pink's statements authority. But to go like that, to leave Elinor in
that house, with all that it implied, was impossible. And there was her
own private problem to dispose of.
“I'll go this afternoon, Pink. I'll promise you that. But I can't go
with you now. I can't. You'll have to take my word, that's all. And you
must believe I didn't know.”
“Of course you didn't know,” he said, sturdily. “But I hate like thunder
to go and leave you here.” He picked up his hat, reluctantly. “If I can
do anything--”
Lily's mind was working more clearly now. This was the thing Louis Akers
had been concerned with, then, a revolution against his country. But
it was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon. He was not a
killer. She knew him well, and he was not a killer. He had got to a
certain point, and then the thing had sickened him. Even without her he
would never have gone through with it. But it would be necessary now to
get his information quickly. Very quickly.
“Suppose,” she said, hesitatingly, “suppose I tell you that I think I am
going to be able to help you before long?”
“Help? I want you safe. This is not work for women.”
“But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally?” she persisted. “Some
one who knows all about certain plans, and has changed his views about
them?”
“One of them?”
“He has been.”
“Is he selling his information?”
“In a way, yes,” said Lily, slowly.
“Ware the fellow who sells information,” Pink said. “But we'll be glad
to have it. We need it, God knows. And--you'll leave?”
“I couldn't stay, could I?”
He kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and
self-consciously, but withal reverently. She wondered, rather dully, why
she could not love Pink. A woman would be so safe with him, so sure.
She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told her.
But little by little things came back to her; the man on guard in the
garden; the incident of the locked kitchen door; Jim Doyle once talking
angrily over a telephone in his study, although no telephone, so far as
she knew, was installed in the room; his recent mysterious absences, and
the increasing visits of the hateful Woslosky.
She went back to Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all
along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned now, he
had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw
him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on
by one of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given.
She did not love him any more; she was sorry for him.
She saw her position with the utmost clearness. To go home was to
abandon him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give, to
send him back to the enemy. She had told Pink she could secure an ally
for a price, and she was the price. There was not an ounce of melodrama
in her, as she stood facing the situation. She considered, quite simply,
that she had assumed an obligation which she must carry out. Perhaps her
pride was dictating to her also. To go crawling home, bowed to the dust,
to admit that life had beaten her, to face old Anthony's sneers and her
mother's pity--that was hard for any Cardew.
She remembered Elinor's home-comings of years ago, the strained air of
the household, the whispering servants, and Elinor herself shut away,
or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father was
out of the house.
No, she could not face that.
Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass; she faced that
uncompromisingly. She would marry Louis, and hold him to his promise,
and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come. But at the
thought of marriage she found herself trembling violently. With no love
and no real respect to build on, with an intuitive knowledge of the
man's primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which
she had always felt crystallized into something very close to dread.
But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully
determined. At Elinor's door she tapped lightly, and she heard movements
within. Then Elinor opened the door wide. She had been lying on her bed,
and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it. Lily
felt a wave of intense pity for her.
“I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Elinor,” she said.
Elinor glanced up, without surprise.
“Where could I go?”
“If you left him definitely, you could go home.”
Elinor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to
desperation.
“You know what is going on,” she said, her voice strained. “You don't
believe it is right; you know it is wicked. Clothe it in all the fine
language in the world, Aunt Elinor, and it is still wicked. If you stay
here you condone it. I won't. I am going away.”
“I wish you had never come, Lily.”
“It's too late for that,” Lily said, stonily. “But it is not too late
for you to get away.”
“I shall stay,” Elinor said, with an air of finality. But Lily made one
more effort.
“He is killing you.”
“No, he is killing himself.” Suddenly Elinor flared into a passionate
outburst. “Don't you think I know where all this is leading? Do you
believe for a moment that I think all this can lead to anything but
death? It is a madness, Lily; they are all mad, these men. Don't you
know that I have talked and argued and prayed, against it?”
“Then come away. You have done all you could, and you have failed,
haven't you?”
“It is not time for me to go,” Elinor said. And Lily, puzzled and
baffled, found herself again looking into Elinor's quiet, inscrutable
eyes.
Elinor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home, and
together they packed almost in silence. Once Elinor looked up from
folding a garment, and said:
“You said you had not understood before, but that now you do. What did
you mean?”
“Pink Denslow was here.”
“What does he know?”
“Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor? It isn't that I don't
trust you. You must believe that, but don't you see that so long as you
stay here--he said that to me--you are one of them.”
Elinor resumed her folding.
“Yes, I suppose I am one of them,” she said quietly. “And you are right.
You must not tell me anything. Pink is Henry Denslow's son, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Do they--still live in the old house?”
“Yes.”
Elinor continued her methodical work.