“No. But something has happened. Don't look like that, Grace. It's not—”
“She hasn't married that man?”
“No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there. Even Elinor—” he checked himself. “I'll tell you after dinner.”
Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech rather at length.
“So far as I can make out, Howard,” he said, “this man Hendricks is getting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him who gets over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought off. He goes around shouting that he's a plain man, after the support of the plain people. Although I'm damned if I know what he means by that.”
Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away from home as possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature, merely staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to his lawyers with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master even in his own home. His employees would not work for him, his family disobeyed him, his government held him up and shook him. In the good old days—
“I'm going out,” he said, as he rose from the table. “Grace, that chef is worse than the last. You'd better send him off.”
“I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are no servants anywhere.”
“Try New York.”
“I have tried—it is useless.”