“Just wait a minute, son,” he would say.
“I’ve got to make some speeches myself.
Repeat that, now. ’Sins of omission are
as great, even greater than sins of commission.
The lethargic citizen throws open the gates to revolution.’
How do you spell ’lethargic’?”
But it was not Hendricks and his campaign that kept
the F.M. of M. awake until dawn. He sat in front
of his soft coal fire, and when it died to gray-white
ash he still sat there, unconscious of the chill of
the spring night. Mostly he thought of Lily,
and of Louis Akers, big and handsome, of his insolent
eyes and his self-indulgent mouth. Into that
curious whirlpool that is the mind came now and then
other visions: His mother asleep in her chair;
the men in the War Department who had turned him down;
a girl at home who had loved him, and made him feel
desperately unhappy because he could not love her
in return. Was love always like that? If
it was what He intended, why was it so often without
reciprocation?
He took to walking about the room, according to his
old habit, and obediently Jinx followed him.
It was four by his alarm clock when Edith knocked
at his door. She was in a wrapper flung over
her nightgown, and with her hair flying loose she
looked childish and very small.
“I wish you would go to bed,” she said,
rather petulantly. “Are you sick, or anything?”
“I was thinking, Edith. I’m sorry.
I’ll go at once. Why aren’t you
asleep?”
“I don’t sleep much lately.”
Their voices were cautious. “I never
go to sleep until you’re settled down, anyhow.”
“Why not? Am I noisy?”
“It’s not that.”
She went away, a drooping, listless figure that climbed
the stairs slowly and left him in the doorway, puzzled
and uncomfortable.
At six that morning Dan, tip-toeing downstairs to
warm his left-over coffee and get his own breakfast,
heard a voice from Willy Cameron’s room, and
opened the door. Willy Cameron was sitting up
in bed with his eyes closed and his arms extended,
and was concluding a speech to a dream audience in
deep and oratorical tones.
“By God, it is time the plain people know their
power.”
Dan grinned, and, his ideas of humor being rather
primitive, he edged his way into the room and filled
the orator’s sponge with icy water from the
pitcher.
“All right, old top,” he said, “but
it is also time the plain people got up.”
Then he flung the sponge and departed with extreme
expedition.
It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers’
visit to the house that Lily’s family learned
of it.
Lily’s state of mind during that week had been
an unhappy one. She magnified the incident until
her nerves were on edge, and Grace, finding her alternating
between almost demonstrative affection and strange
aloofness, was bewildered and hurt. Mademoiselle
watched her secretly, shook her head, and set herself
to work to find out what was wrong. It was,
in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis.
