CHAPTER IX

Lily Cardew inspected curiously the east side neighborhood through which the taxi was passing.  She knew vaguely that she was in the vicinity of one of the Cardew mills, but she had never visited any of the Cardew plants.  She had never been permitted to do so.  Perhaps the neighborhood would have impressed her more had she not seen, in the camp, that life can be stripped sometimes to its essentials, and still have lost very little.  But the dinginess depressed her.  Smoke was in the atmosphere, like a heavy fog.  Soot lay on the window-sills, and mingled with street dust to form little black whirlpools in the wind.  Even the white river steamers, guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were gray with soft coal smoke.  The foam of the river falling in broken cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly white in contrast.

Everywhere she began to see her own name.  “Cardew” was on the ore hopper cars that were moving slowly along a railroad spur.  One of the steamers bore “Anthony Cardew” in tall black letters on its side.  There was a narrow street called “Cardew Way.”

Aunt Elinor lived on Cardew Way.  She wondered if Aunt Elinor found that curious, as she did.  Did she resent these ever-present reminders of her lost family?  Did she have any bitterness because the very grayness of her skies was making her hard old father richer and more powerful?

Yet there was comfort, stability and a certain dignity about Aunt Elinor’s house when she reached it.  It stood in the district, but not of it, withdrawn from the street in a small open space which gave indication of being a flower garden in summer.  There were two large gaunt trees on either side of a brick walk, and that walk had been swept to the last degree of neatness.  The steps were freshly scoured, and a small brass door-plate, like a doctor’s sign, was as bright as rubbing could make it.  “James Doyle,” she read.

Suddenly she was glad she had come.  The little brick house looked anything but tragic, with its shining windows, its white curtains and its evenly drawn shades.  Through the windows on the right came a flickering light, warm and rosy.  There must be a coal fire there.  She loved a coal fire.

She had braced herself to meet Aunt Elinor at the door, but an elderly woman opened it.

“Mrs. Doyle is in,” she said; “just step inside.”

She did not ask Lily’s name, but left her in the dark little hall and creaked up the stairs.  Lily hesitated.  Then, feeling that Aunt Elinor might not like to find her so unceremoniously received, she pushed open a door which was only partly closed, and made a step into the room.  Only then did she see that it was occupied.  A man sat by the fire, reading.  He was holding his book low, to get the light from the fire, and he turned slowly to glance at Lily.  He had clearly expected some one else.  Elinor, probably.