Howard Cardew was in his dressing room, sitting before the fire. His man had put out his dinner clothes and retired, and Howard was sifting before the fire rather listlessly.
In Grace's room, adjoining, he could hear movements and low voices. Before Lily's return, now and then when he was tired Grace and he had dined by the fire in her boudoir. It had been very restful. He was still in love with his wife, although, as in most marriages, there was one who gave more than the other. In this case it was Grace who gave, and Howard who received. But he loved her. He never thought of other women. Only his father had never let him forget her weaknesses.
Sometimes he was afraid that he was looking at Grace with his father's eyes, rather than his own.
He had put up a hard fight with his father. Not about Grace. That was over and done with, although it had been bad while it lasted. But his real struggle had been to preserve himself, to keep his faiths and his ideals, and even his personality. In the inessentials he had yielded easily, and so bought peace. Or perhaps a truce, of a sort. But for the essentials he was standing with a sort of dogged conviction that if he lowered his flag it would precipitate a crisis. He was not brilliant, but he was intelligent, progressive and kindly. He knew that his father considered him both stupid and obstinate.
There was going to be a strike. The quarrel now was between Anthony's curt "Let them strike," and his own conviction that a strike at this time might lead to even worse things. 'The men's demands were exorbitant. No business, no matter how big, could concede them and live. But Howard was debating another phase of the situation.
Not all the mills would go down. A careful canvass of some of the other independent concerns had shown the men eighty, ninety, even one hundred per cent, loyal. Those were the smaller plants, where there had always been a reciprocal good feeling between the owners and the men; there the men knew the owners, and the owners knew the men, who had been with them for years.
But the Cardew Mills would go down. There had been no liaison between the Cardews and the workmen. The very magnitude of the business forbade that. And for many years, too, the Cardews had shown a gross callousness to the welfare of the laborers. Long ago he had urged on his father the progressive attitude of other steel men, but Anthony had jeered, and when Howard had forced the issue and gained concessions, it was too late. The old grievances remained in too many minds. To hate the Cardews bad become a habit. Their past sins would damn them now. The strike was wrong, a wicked thing. It was without reason and without aim. The men were knocking a hole in the boat that floated them. But-
There was a tap at his door, and he called "Come in." From her babyhood Lily had had her own peculiar method of signaling that she stood without, a delicate rapid tattoo of finger nails on the panel. He watched smilingly for her entrance.
"Well!" she said. "Thank goodness you haven't started to dress. I tried to get here earlier, but my hair wouldn't go up, I want to make a good impression to-night."
"Is there a dinner on? TI didn't know it."
"Not a dinner. A young man. I came to see what you are going to wear."
"Really! Well, I haven't a great variety. The ordinary dinner dress of a gentleman doesn't lend itself to any extraordinary ornamentation. If you like, I'll pin on that medal from the Iron and Steel - Who's coming, Lily?"
"Grayson says grandfather's dining out."
"I believe so.”
"What a piece of luck! I mean - you know what he'd say if I asked him not to dress for dinner."
"Am I to gather that you are asking me?"
"You wouldn't mind, would you? He hasn't any evening clothes."
"Look here, Lily," said her father, sitting upright.
"Who is coming here to-night? And why should he upset the habits of the entire family?"
"Willy Cameron. You know, father. And he has the queerest ideas about us. Honestly. And I want him to like us, and it's such a good chance, with grandfather out."
He ignored that.
"How about our liking him?"
"Oh, you'll like him. Everybody does. You will try to make a good impression, won't you, father?"
He got up, and resting his hands on her shoulders, smiled down into her upturned face. "I will," he said. "But I think I should tell you that your anxiety arouses deep and black suspicions in my mind. Am I to understand that you have fixed your young affections on this Willy Cameron, and that you want your family to help you in your dark designs?"
Lily laughed.
"I love him," she said. "I really do. I could listen to him for hours. But people don't want to marry Willy Cameron. They just love him."
There was born in Howard's mind a vision of a nice pink and white young man, quite sexless, whom people loved but did not dream of marrying.
"I see," he said slowly. "Like a puppy."
"Not at all like a puppy.”
"I'm afraid I'm not subtle, my dear. Well, ring for Adams, and - you think he wouldn't care for the medal?"
"I think he'd love it. He'd probably think some king gave it to you. I'm sure he believes that you and grandfather habitually hobnob with kings." She turned to go out. "He doesn't approve of kings."
"You are making me extremely uneasy," was her father's shot. "I only hope I acquit myself well."
"Hurry, then. He is sure to be exactly on the hour." Howard was still smiling slightly to himself when, a half-hour later, he descended the staircase. But he had some difficulty first in reconciling his preconceived idea of Willy with the tall young man, with the faint unevenness of step, who responded to his greeting so calmly and so easily. "We are always glad to see any of Lily's friends."
"It is very good of you to let me come, sir."
Why, the girl was blind. This was a man, a fine, up-standing fellow, with a clean- cut, sensitive face, and honest, almost beautiful eyes. How did women judge men, anyhow?
And, try as he would, Howard Cardew could find no fault with Willy Cameron that night. He tried him out on a number of things. In religion, for instance, he was orthodox, although he felt that the church had not come up fully during the war.
"Religion isn't a matter only of churches any more," said Mr. Cameron. "It has to go out into the streets, I think, sir. It's a-well, Christ left the tabernacle, you remember."
That was all right. Howard felt that himself sometimes. He was a vestryman at Saint Peter's, and although he felt very devout during the service, especially during the offertory, when the music filled the fine old building, he was often conscious that he shed his spirituality at the door, when he glanced at the sky to see what were the prospects for an afternoon's golf.
In politics Willy Cameron was less satisfactory.
"I haven't decided, yet," he said. "I voted for Mr. Wilson in 1916, but although I suppose parties are necessary, I don't like to feel that I am party-bound. Anyhow, the old party lines are gone. I rather look - "
He stopped. That terrible speech of Edith Boyd's still rankled.
"Go on, Willy," said Lily. "I told them they'd love to you talk.”
"That's really all, sir," said Willy Cameron, unhappily. "I am a Scot, and to start a
Scot on reform is fatal."
"Ah, you believe in reform?"
"We are not doing very well as we are, sir."
"I should like extremely to know how you feel about things," said Howard, gravely.
"Only this: So long as one party is, or is considered, the representative of capital, the vested interests, and the other of labor, the great mass of the people who are neither the one nor the other cannot be adequately represented."
"And the solution?"
"Perhaps a new party. Or better still, a liberalizing of the Republican."
"Before long," said Lily suddenly, "there will be no state. There will be enough for everybody, and nobody will have too much."
Howard smiled at her indulgently.
"How do you expect to accomplish this ideal condition?"
"That's the difficulty about it," said Lily, thoughtfully. "It means a revolution. It would be peaceful, though. The thing to do is to convince people that it is simple justice, and then they will divide what they have."
"Why, Lily!" Grace's voice was anxious. "That's Socialism."
But Howard only smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject. Every one had these attacks of idealism in youth. They were the exaggerated altruism of adolescence; a part of its dreams and aspirations. He changed the subject.
"I like the boy," he said to Grace, later, over the cribbage board in the morning room. "He has character, and a queer sort of magnetism. It mightn't be a bad thing - "
Grace was counting.
"I forgot to tell you; I think she refused Pink Denslow the other day."
"I rather gathered, from the way she spoke of young Cameron, that she isn't interested there either."
"Not a bit," said Grace, complacently. "You needn't worry about him."
Howard smiled. He was often conscious that after all the years of their common life, his wife's mind and his traveled along parallel lines that never met.
Willy Cameron was extremely happy. He had brought his pipe along, although without much hope, but the moment they were settled by the library fire Lily had suggested it.
"You know you can't talk unless you have it in your hand to wave around," she said. "And I want to know such a lot of things. Where you live, and all that."
"I live in a boarding house. More house than board, really. And the work's all right. I'm going to study metallurgy some day. There are night courses at the college, only I haven't many nights."
He had lighted his pipe, and kept his eyes on it mostly, or on the fire. He was afraid to look at Lily, because there was something he could not keep out of his eyes, but must keep from her. It had been both better and worse than he had anticipated, seeing her in her home. Lily herself had not changed. She was her wonderful self, in spite of her frock and her surroundings. But the house, her people, with their ease of wealth and position, Grace's slight condescension, the elaborate simpli