And against it, what?
On toward morning he remembered something, and sat
bolt upright in bed. Edith had once said something
about knowing of a secret telephone. She had
known Louis Akers very well. He might have told
her what she knew, or have shown her, in some braggart
moment. A certain type of man was unable to keep
a secret from a woman. But that would imply—For
the first time he wondered what Edith’s relations
with Louis Akers might have been.
The surface peace of the house on Cardew Way, the
even tenor of her days there, the feeling she had
of sanctuary did not offset Lily’s clear knowledge
that she had done a cruel and an impulsive thing.
Even her grandfather, whose anger had driven her away,
she remembered now as a feeble old man, fighting his
losing battle in a changing world, and yet with a
sort of mistaken heroism hoisting his colors to the
end.
She had determined, that first night in Elinor’s
immaculate guest room, to go back the next day.
They had been right at home, by all the tenets to
which they adhered so religiously. She had broken
the unwritten law not to break bread with an enemy
of her house. She had done what they had expressly
forbidden, done it over and over.
“On top of all this,” old Anthony had
said, after reading the tale of her delinquencies
from some notes in his hand, “you dined last
night openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same
Louis Akers, a man openly my enemy, and openly of
impure life.”
“I do not believe he is your enemy.”
“He is one of the band of anarchists who have
repeatedly threatened to kill me.”
“Oh, Lily, Lily!” said her mother.
But it was to her father, standing grave and still,
that Lily replied.
“I don’t believe that, father. He
is not a murderer. If you would let him come
here—”
“Never in this house,” said old Anthony,
savagely crushing notes in his hand. “He
will come here over my dead body.”
“You have no right to condemn a man unheard.”
“Unheard! I tell you I know all about
him. The man is an anarchist, a rake, a—dog.”
“Just a moment, father,” Howard had put
in, quietly. “Lily, do you care for this
man? I mean by that, do you want to marry him?”
“He has asked me. I have not given him
any answer yet. I don’t want to marry
a man my family will not receive. It wouldn’t
be fair to him.”
Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and
led him to a bitterness of language that turned Lily
cold and obstinate. She heard him through, with
her father vainly trying to break in and save the
situation; then she said, coldly:
“I am sorry you feel that way about it,”
and turned and left the room.
She had made no plan, of course. She hated doing
theatrical things. But shut in her bedroom with
the doors locked, Anthony’s furious words came
back, his threats, his bitter sneers. She felt
strangely alone, too. In all the great house
she had no one to support her. Mademoiselle,
her father and mother, even the servants, were tacitly
aligned with the opposition. Except Ellen.
She had felt lately that Ellen, in her humble way,
had espoused her cause.
