Lily threw out both hands dizzily, as though catching
for support. But she steadied herself.
Neither man moved.
“It is too late, Willy,” she said.
“I have just married him.”
At midnight Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired
and broken man. Grace had been lying awake in
her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained absence, and
brooding, as she now did continually, over Lily’s
absence.
At half past eleven she heard Anthony Cardew come
in and go upstairs, and for some time after that she
heard him steadily pacing back and forth overhead.
Sometimes Grace felt sorry for Anthony. He had
made himself at such cost, and now when he was old,
he had everything and yet nothing.
They had never understood women, these Cardews.
Howard was gentle with them where Anthony was hard,
but he did not understand, either. She herself,
of other blood, got along by making few demands, but
the Cardew women were as insistent in their demands
as the men. Elinor, Lily—She formed
a sudden resolution, and getting up, dressed feverishly.
She had no plan in her mind, nothing but a desperate
resolution to put Lily’s case before her grandfather,
and to beg that she be brought home without conditions.
She was frightened as she went up the stairs.
Never before had she permitted things to come to
an issue between herself and Anthony. But now
it must be done. She knocked at the door.
Anthony Cardew opened it. The room was dark,
save for one lamp burning dimly on a great mahogany
table, and Anthony’s erect figure was little
more than a blur of black and white.
“I heard you walking about,” she said
breathlessly. “May I come in and talk
to you?”
“Come in,” he said, with a sort of grave
heaviness. “Shall I light the other lamps?”
“Please don’t.”
“Will you sit down? No? Do you mind
if I do? I am very tired. I suppose it
is about Lily?”
“Yes. I can’t stand it any longer.
I can’t.”
Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very
old and very weary. A tired little old man,
almost a broken one.
“She won’t come back?”
“Not under the conditions. But she must
come back, father. To let her stay on there,
in that house, after last night—”
She had never called him “father” before.
It seemed to touch him.
“You’re a good woman, Grace,” he
said, still heavily. “We Cardews all marry
good women, but we don’t know how to treat them.
Even Howard—” His voice trailed
off. “No, she can’t stay there,”
he said, after a pause.
“But—I must tell you—she
refuses to give up that man.”
“You are a woman, Grace. You ought to
know something about girls. Does she actually
care for him, or is it because he offers the liberty
she thinks we fail to give her? Or”—he
smiled faintly— “is it Cardew pig-headedness?”
