“Thank you for keeping our guests as dry as possible.” In the ballroom on the other side of the doors, the band struck up another song. Richard tried to catch the tune over the sound of the voices inside, but he didn’t recognize it. He smiled at the girls. “Of course it rains like this in Wilmington too,” he said, “but you’d never know it by how my future in-laws are acting.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and walked across the lobby toward the entryway. As if by instinct, Grace and Nadia both stepped toward the door so they could open it should Mr. McAdam want to step outside, but Richard was not yet ready to step outside. Instead, he stood by the chair where Grace had just been sitting and pulled back the curtain and looked out the window at the evening. It was near dark, the rain still falling in great smacks against the already sodden earth.
“I’m expecting a few more guests,” Richard said. He let the curtain close and turned back to Grace and Nadia. “Do you know Mr. Guyon?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
Richard wasn’t surprised. Everyone in town—even those not in textiles—knew Hugo Guyon by now, the superintendent at Loray Mill, a northerner but still one of the most powerful men in the city, a man now mired in the politics of the strike that had unfolded over the past few months with violent speed.
“And you’ve heard about the strike?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Grace said.
Nadia nodded her head yes. “I’ve heard about it too.”
“Well, apparently my future in-laws heard about it as well, but it seems that hearing about it wasn’t good enough. When they left the Armington this evening they asked the driver to take them by the mill so they could see the strike for themselves. The people picketing in front of the mill weren’t too happy at the sight of a big black limousine cruising by for an eyeful.” He pictured the scene as he’d been imagining it since first hearing of it only an hour or so earlier: the screaming, dirty faces of women and children pressed against the car’s windows, fists beating against the glass, knees and feet kicking against the doors. He stifled a smile. Something about the fear he’d seen on the Lytles’ faces had pleased him. “The strikers left a nice dent in the front left fender and busted out one of the headlights. Nearly scared the Lytles to death. Mrs. Lytle was still crying when they arrived.” He shook his head and fought the smile again.
“Can you imagine that?” he asked. “Wanting to see something like a strike, as if it’s a spectacle or a parade or a baseball game? Wanting to see the tent colony? Can you imagine it in this weather? This rain? All those haggard people, sopping wet, those smoky oil lamps. Mr. Lytle said it looked like the Allied front.” He shook his head. “That man has no idea what war looks like.”
It suddenly came to his mind that Claire must have told the Lytles about the group of strikers she’d encountered in Washington during the tour with Lee Overman. She’d cried when she’d told Richard about how poor and hungry they looked, about how she feared that something bad was going to happen to them after some singer had confronted the senator. Claire had to have told Paul as well, and Paul had to have told his father, and George Lytle just had to see the tragedy of humanity for himself.
Outside, the rain had ended and the silence of its not falling now filled the lobby. The music stopped and the ballroom broke into applause.
Headlights flashed across the windowpanes, followed by the sound of an automobile coming to a stop in one of the parking areas. Richard turned and looked at both Nadia and Grace. “Thank you so much for your help this evening,” he said. “Tell your father I said as much when you see him. I’m sure he’s tucked away in the kitchen overseeing dinner. He always does such a wonderful job for us. Tonight’s no exception.”
He opened the front door and stepped into the night. Water dripped from the canopy of pine boughs that shadowed the already dark lawn in front of the club. He stood beneath the portico without moving. White columns ran along the porch on either side of him. He peered into the darkness in search of the car whose headlights he’d just seen and whose tires on the wet road he’d just heard. In the distance, raindrops glimmered on the hoods of the automobiles parked beneath the pines. A door slammed shut, then another, and Richard heard footsteps approaching. He held his breath and steeled his nerves. The silhouettes grew closer and Richard recognized the Wrights, an older couple from his and Katherine’s church, a man and woman with whom his parents had been close friends before they’d passed. Mr. Wright saw Richard standing on the porch and raised his hand in greeting. His other hand grasped his wife’s elbow as if steering her down the wet path toward the stairs.
“Hello, Richard,” Mr. Wright said, his thin face and gray mustache lit by the light coming from behind Richard. Mrs. Wright looked out at Richard from beneath a plum-colored pillbox hat, a spray of yellow flowers set into its brim. “I’m sorry we’re late,” Mr. Wright said. “Wanted to wait out the rain. Didn’t know we’d be waiting this long.”
“Oh, it’s perfectly all right,” Richard said, smiling, exhaling. Although no one would ever know, it embarrassed him to be so relieved at seeing the couple instead of Guyon. “Dinner hasn’t started yet. It’s just been music and dancing so far.”
“Then we haven’t missed a thing,” Mr. Wright said. He laughed. “I’m not one for dancing, but I’ve never been one to miss a meal.”
Richard offered Mrs. Wright his hand and helped her up the steps, and then he moved aside and opened the door. Mrs. Wright smiled and congratulated him, and Mr. Wright shook his hand. Richard closed the door behind the couple, then he turned and faced the night again.
He worried that he’d be unable to hide this jumpy nervousness when he confronted Guyon and asked him to cover the cost of the Lytles’ damaged car. Although Guyon wasn’t a mill operator and owner like Richard was, he had spent the past decade as superintendent at Loray, one of the largest mills in the country and easily the largest in the state.