Doyle watched Gompers cynically.. He considered his advocacy of
patriotic cooperation between labor and the Government during the war
the skillful attitude of an opportunist. Gompers could do better with
public opinion behind him than without it. He was an opportunist, riding
the wave which would carry him farthest. Playing both ends against the
middle, and the middle, himself. He saw Gompers, watching the release
of tension that followed the armistice and seeing the great child he
had fathered, grown now and conscious of its power,--watching it, fully
aware that it had become stronger than he.
Gompers, according to Doyle, had ceased to be a leader and become a
follower, into strange and difficult paths.
The war had made labor's day. No public move was made without consulting
organized labor, and a certain element in it had grown drunk with power.
To this element Doyle appealed. It was Doyle who wrote the carefully
prepared incendiary speeches, which were learned verbatim by his
agents for delivery. For Doyle knew one thing, and knew it well. Labor,
thinking along new lines, must think along the same lines. Be taught the
same doctrines. Be pushed in one direction.
There were, then, two Doyles, one the poseur, flaunting his outrageous
doctrines with a sardonic grin, gathering about him a small circle of
the intelligentsia, and too openly heterodox to be dangerous. And the
other, secretly plotting against the city, wary, cautious, practical and
deadly, waiting to overthrow the established order and substitute for it
chaos. It was only incidental to him that old Anthony should go with the
rest.
But he found a saturnine pleasure in being old Anthony's Nemesis. He
meant to be that. He steadily widened the breach between Lily and her
family, and he watched the progress of her affair with Louis Akers with
relish. He had not sought this particular form of revenge, but Fate had
thrust it into his hands, and he meant to be worthy of the opportunity.
He was in no hurry. He had extraordinary patience, and he rather liked
sitting back and watching the slow development of his plans. It was like
chess; it was deliberate and inevitable. One made a move, and then sat
back waiting and watching while the other side countered it, or fell,
with slow agonizing, into the trap.
A few days after Lily had had her talk with Elinor, Doyle found a way to
widen the gulf between Lily and her grandfather. Elinor seldom left the
house, and Lily had done some shopping for her. The two women were in
Elinor's bedroom, opening small parcels, when he knocked and came in.
“I don't like to disturb the serenity of this happy family group,” he
said, “but I am inclined to think that a certain gentleman, standing not
far from a certain young lady's taxicab, belongs to a certain department
of our great city government. And from his unflattering lack of interest
in me, that he--”
Elinor half rose, terrified.
“Not the police, Jim?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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