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Title: The Lonely Warrior

Author: Claude Carlos Washburn

Release Date: November 17, 2019 [EBook #60719]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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                           The Lonely Warrior

                         By CLAUDE C. WASHBURN


                             [Illustration]


                           A. L. BURT COMPANY
                     Publishers           New York

        Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Brace & Company
                          Printed in U. S. A.




                          COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
                   HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.

                        PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.




                           The Lonely Warrior




                               _PROLOGUE_


                                   1

On the afternoon of the fifth day of November, 1914, Edward Carroll was
sitting as usual in his pleasant inner office, the windows of which
looked down upon the middle-western city where Mr. Carroll had lived for
forty of his fifty-six years. But he was not behaving quite as usual. At
this hour he should normally have been conferring with other men upon
matters of importance—matters concerning the cement works of which he
was vice-president, or the bank of which he was a director, or the
copper mines whose policy he principally determined. Or he should, at
the very least, have been dictating replies to half a dozen important
letters that had been placed on his desk while he was out at luncheon.
Instead, Mr. Carroll merely sat in his chair and stared oddly at a
calendar on the wall opposite, as though its large black announcement of
the date had some deep significance for him, as perhaps it had.

At last he shook his head impatiently and with a quick gesture pressed a
button in his desk. Almost at once his stenographer entered the room.

“Ruth,” said Mr. Carroll, “did you tell me a little while ago that some
one was waiting to see me?”

A faint surprise showed in the young woman’s composed face, but she
answered the question quietly. “Yes, sir. Mr. Barnett and Mr. King.”

“Well, they’ll have to wait a little or come some other time. I must see
Stacey first. He telephoned that he’d be here at three o’clock. It’s
three-five now,” Mr. Carroll observed, drawing out his watch; which was
quite unnecessary, since on the table before his eyes stood a small,
perfectly regulated clock encased in thick curved glass that magnified
its hands and characters conveniently. “When he comes send him in at
once,” he concluded.

But the stenographer had scarcely left the room when the door was opened
again and Stacey appeared.

He was a tall, handsome, well-built, young man, with blue eyes, short
brown hair, and a clear healthy complexion from which the summer tan had
even yet not quite faded. He looked, and was, well-bred and well
educated, but there was nothing unusual or distinguished in any of his
features, except perhaps in his mouth, which was finely modelled and
sensitive without being self-conscious. The only thing at all out of the
common about him was the impression he gave of restless but happy
eagerness, of being fresh and untired and curious. He appeared about
twenty-six or seven years old.

“Sit down, Stacey,” said Mr. Carroll. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the young man, and took the chair at the opposite side
of the desk.

There was a brief pause while the two gazed across at each other.
Neither could consider the other with cool detached estimation,—years
of familiarity were in the way; yet Stacey felt dimly that he was nearer
to being outside than he could remember to have been before. He studied
his father’s well-shaped head, with its thick gray hair, clipped
moustache and firm mouth, in something of the spirit in which, being an
architect, he would have studied a building. He saw his father to-day,
quite clearly, as a man of tremendous, never wasted energy, and with a
warm, generous, unspoiled heart. But it came over Stacey for the first
time that the same directness which made his father go so unerringly to
the point in business matters, discarding all non-essentials, made him
inclined to hold very positive over-simplified opinions about things in
general. Whereupon, all in this half-minute of silence, it also occurred
to Stacey that business was like mathematics, founded on definite
preassumed principles that you were always sure of, whereas
those—Stacey supposed they were there—beneath life seemed a trifle
wavering and indeterminate.

“Well, son, what was it?” asked Mr. Carroll.

“You know, father,” Stacey replied.

The older man pushed back his chair impatiently, and his face took on an
almost querulous expression that set small uncharacteristic wrinkles to
interfering oddly with its firm, deeply traced lines.

“Yes, I suppose I know what it is,” he said, “but I don’t see why you
should make me state it. You want to go to the war, and you have an
answer ready to every objection I can make. Damn it all, Stacey! It
isn’t our war! If it becomes so I’ll be the first to say: ‘Enlist!’ but
it isn’t—not yet, anyway.”

“You know you think it ought to be, father,” replied the young man
steadily. “I’ve heard you say so a score of times. Every one with any
generosity whom we know thinks it ought to be. I only want to live up to
that conviction. I believe it’s right against wrong, the—the—soul
against the machine; and so do you, or you wouldn’t have given so
generously to Belgium.”

His father did not seem to be listening. He was staring away over his
son’s head almost dreamily. “I remember when I built a play-house for
you and Julie back of the stable. You were six years old and tried to
carry two-by-fours to me. You didn’t succeed.”

He paused and looked at his son again.

“Stacey,” he went on, “I sent you to school and college for nine years,
and then for two years all over Europe, and then for three years to the
Beaux Arts in Paris. It’s taken—how old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You don’t look it. It’s taken thirty careful years to educate you.
You’re an expensive instrument ready for use. Are you going to throw all
that away to do what some untrained laborer can do as well—no, better
than you? Are all those years of training going to be to fit you for no
other service than to—to stop a machine-gun bullet?”

“They ought not to be, father,” said the young man. “They wouldn’t be in
a normal world. They were given me in a normal world for use in a normal
world. But all of a sudden the normal world has been upset. It’s been
wickedly assailed, wiped out for the moment, by the greatest crime in
history. It’s up to every one of us to help bring it back. And all over
Europe better men than I, men equally well educated, have given
themselves freely—poets, painters, thinkers,—and trained
business-men,” he added hastily.

However, it did not for an instant occur to Stacey to question the
justice of his father’s argument. It seemed to him the only considerable
argument against his going to war, and he again respectfully recognized
his father’s ability to go straight to the essential point.

“But you see, sir,” he said, “that, true as your contention is for the
world as it was—and isn’t, it doesn’t hold good now. For it would be
equally true if America were in the war, yet then you would, as you
said, be the first to want me to go.”

“But—”

“I know. America isn’t in the war—yet; but every single trivial example
like mine will help, just a little, to bring her in.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What about me, Stacey?” Mr. Carroll asked at last.

The young man gazed at his father sadly. “I know,” he said. “It’s
horrible. But all over the world it’s going on. The same question’s
being asked—and set aside—in thousands and thousands of families.
And—though it isn’t adequate compensation—you still at least have your
work; which is more than wives and mothers have.”

At this Mr. Carroll pushed his chair back sharply. “My work!” he
exclaimed angrily. “Who’s it for? For you, every bit of it! For you and
Julie.”

After all, Stacey was young and had a sense of the ridiculous; so
laughter surged up within him now and, though he kept it silent,
relieved his tensity. For he was earning a respectable salary from the
firm of architects in which he would soon have a junior partnership, and
his father had long since given him two-hundred-thousand dollars’ worth
of excellent municipal and industrial bonds, some bearing five, some
five-and-a-half per cent.; while, as for his sister Julie, she not only
had a strictly equal private fortune, but was also comfortably married
to a prosperous young lawyer. But, knowing his father, and knowing him
better than usual to-day, Stacey carefully kept his amusement to
himself.

It vanished anyway when his father added: “And Marian?”—and Stacey
winced.

“I haven’t told her yet. I’m going to tell her to-night,” he said, a
little hoarsely. “It’ll almost break her heart, I’m afraid. All the
Marians in the world are having their hearts broken to-day.”

“And all the fathers and mothers. I could pretty nearly say: ‘Thank God
your mother is not living!’”

Stacey nodded grave assent. “The individual’s gone by the board.” After
which silence fell upon both men.

At last the older man drew himself together. “What army?” he asked. “The
French?”

“No, I thought of that, since I speak French decently,” said his son
briskly, glad of the change in mood. “But I rather think—though I’m not
sure—that I’d have to join the Foreign Legion there. And sacrifice is
all very well, you know, but it needn’t be suicide. I mean to come back
alive if I can do so honorably. And of course I’ve thought of the
Canadian army. But there’s too much neighborly dislike between Canadians
and Americans. So I’m going into the English army, if they’ll take me.
I’ve a lot of friends in England, you know. I’ve visited some of them at
their homes. They’ll all be in as officers. Perhaps I can get into some
regiment where I’ll be under one of them.”

“And you leave?”

“Next Wednesday. I’ll catch the ‘Mauretania.’ Don’t be angry with me,
sir,” he begged.

His father shook his head. “No,” he replied dully, “I suppose as a
matter of fact I’d have done the same thing at your age.”

“It’s the kindest thing you could say to me,” said the young man, with a
deep sigh of relief. He rose. “I mustn’t keep you any longer now. The
office is full of people waiting to see you. I say, dad, to-night I—I
must go to see Marian, but to-morrow night let’s dine at the club
together and have champagne and then go to a show and be awfully gay!”

“All right,” said his father.

They shook hands, and Stacey departed.

But when the door had closed behind him Mr. Carroll did not at once
summon his stenographer. Instead, he sat gazing, as before Stacey’s
arrival, at the calendar on the wall opposite. At last he rose, crossed
the room, and tore off the leaf—“Nov. 5.” He folded the paper once
across and placed it carefully in his pocket-book.

Then he returned to his chair and pressed the button in his desk.


                                   2

Stacey Carroll was not more unusual than most men, but he was as much
so. The only difference was that his diversity had been fostered by his
education, and that he was not ashamed of it, but clung to it as
something of value, desiring only to suppress the appearance of it. He
was healthy and vigorous mentally as well as physically, mixed easily
with his fellows, and was as usual on the surface as were they—on the
surface. But really he was unusual in being extraordinarily sensitive to
impressions, to whatever was beautiful (provided it was also faintly
exotic)—in short, to whatever was fine and delicate and fanciful.

And if one asks how it came about that, with this characteristic, he was
content to live in the city of Vernon, which had two hundred thousand
inhabitants, was situated in Illinois, was not very beautiful, and
certainly had no touch of the exotic about it, the answer is that he was
not—with this part of him. The part was not by any means the whole.
With a great deal of the rest of him Stacey very much liked living in
Vernon. He liked many Vernon people, he liked the physical comforts of
his existence, and he did not dislike being a member of one of the
city’s most prominent families. He had a great capacity for liking both
people and things. He could perceive bad in them, but quite
instinctively his mind singled out and dwelt on the good. Moreover, it
should at once be said for Vernon that it differed from the average
middle-western city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Being close to
Chicago it was metropolitan in feeling; plays came to it and music; its
citizens—the ones Stacey knew—were sophisticated, well informed,
almost too up-to-date; the houses that they built—often with Stacey’s
help—were modern and handsome. The provincial spirit had long since
vanished from Vernon.

And, after all, Stacey’s very eccentricity—his delight in what was
wistful and lovely,—though it would certainly have been better
satisfied in Paris, was not altogether starved in Vernon, as a love of
classic line might have been. Books and music fed it; and where in the
whole world could he have found more perfect satisfaction of it than in
Marian Latimer?

For the three years that he had known her, to enter the door of the
house in which she and her parents lived had been to him like crossing
the threshold of fairy-land. Outside there might be street-cars and
motors and the smell of soft coal; within there was charm and grace and
peace—not stupid peace, tingling peace—and Marian, who embodied them
all, with so much more, and spread them about her.

Never until this evening had Stacey entered the Latimer house without
experiencing a sudden sense of buoyancy. But to-night his heart was so
heavy that it seemed to weigh his whole body down. He had a curious
feeling that he must tread carefully or he would break something.

In the narrow Colonial hallway he gave his coat and hat to the maid,
then went into the drawing-room, which was white and spacious, though
the house was small.

Mr. and Mrs. Latimer were there; Marian was not. Marian was never there.
She was always coming from somewhere else or going somewhere else—both
in space and time. At least, that was the impression she left lovingly
in Stacey. Not that she was full of futile restlessness. It was only
that her charm was the charm of movement, of running water, of a
humming-bird. Mentally as well as physically—oh, far more!—she paused
only at moments in her flittings. You hardly ever caught her. But that
made the rare moment more precious.

Her parents greeted Stacey with quiet cordiality and made him sit down
beside them in front of the open fire that, in the semi-darkness of the
room, set reflections glowing here and there across the yellow of
polished brass and the cool rich surface of statuettes.

“Marian will be down soon, I’ve no doubt,” said her father, with a low
laugh at having said it so many times before.

Stacey considered him, feeling much the same appreciation he felt for
Marian—only without the thrill and the sense of enchantment.

And, indeed, Mr. Latimer deserved appreciation. He was slim and
straight, and his head was the head of a Greek youth grown old. Curly
white hair, straight nose, short upper lip,—nothing was wrong. His
profile, at which Stacey gazed now, was clear and perfect, like
Marian’s. Until three years ago Mr. Latimer had lived, with his wife and
daughter, his books, his pictures, and his Chinese vases, in Italy; and
certainly a Florentine villa seemed the properer setting. For the life
of him Stacey could not understand why the Latimers should have returned
to live in America, and of all places in America should have chosen
Vernon, Illinois, even if it was Mr. Latimer’s birthplace. But Stacey
was devoutly grateful that they had done so. He rather thought it was
due to Mrs. Latimer, and he was glad to think so, since it gave him
something to like her for.

Mrs. Latimer, in fact, worried Stacey a little, because he could not
make her out. She, too, was handsome in a way, but she seemed to Stacey
not to be in the picture, but aloof, dispassionately commenting on
everything and every one, including himself, her daughter, her husband,
and her husband’s Chinese vases. Stacey recognized honorably that this
was probably only his fancy; for Mrs. Latimer never passed such comment
aloud. She was habitually quiet, letting others talk; but she was
certainly not stupid. Sometimes she would laugh suddenly and
spontaneously when neither Stacey nor Mr. Latimer had seen anything
amusing until her laughter caught them up, and sent them back to look
again, and made them laugh too, always appreciatively.

“You’re grave to-night, Stacey,” said Mr. Latimer, turning his eyes to
the young man’s face. “I suppose it’s this catastrophic war. Of course
it’s to your credit that you’re capable of feeling it intensely; the
fact reveals a precious un-American gift of imagination. But you’re
wrong, all the same, to let the thought of the war weigh you down, you
know. I’m increasingly convinced that each man has a world of his own
and that this is the only world in which he can profitably live. I’m
more convinced of it than ever now when I see painters and philosophers
and musicians dropping their arts and engaging in violent, quite futile
polemics on something outside their own worlds. A painter’s ideas on,
say, the correct method of building a sewer are without value; so also
are his ideas on war. He wastes his own time and that of others in
expressing them. To each man his own world. To you building noble
houses. To me collecting vases. Also we have properly an outlet for our
emotion there. We have no outlet for emotion concerning the war. That’s
harmful.”

Stacey had listened to the melodious flow of Mr. Latimer’s words with a
faint unaccustomed irritation. He could see no flaw in the argument;
logically Mr. Latimer was right. Yet, even if uselessly and wastefully,
how could one help abandoning cool logic while the terrible waves of the
war flooded in from every side? Just as that afternoon it had occurred
to Stacey that success in business entailed an over-simplified view of
life, so now it occurred to him that success in living entailed too neat
a perfection. Actually the two results were not so very far apart. How
odd! “Of course,” he added to himself, “he does not know that I _have_
found an outlet for my emotion about the war.” But Stacey was not going
to tell Mr. Latimer of this. He was going to tell Marian—if she would
only come.

“It’s the ‘_tour d’ivoire_’ theory, sir,” he said, after a brief pause.
“I dare say—”

But fingers brushed his hair and forehead, and his words ceased
abruptly, while his heart gave a bound, and a slow thrill crept over
him.

“Marian!” he cried.

But she was gone already and smiling at him mischievously from the arm
of her father’s chair.

“I wonder,” Stacey said appealingly to Mrs. Latimer, “if you’d think me
very abrupt in asking Marian to go up to the library with me. There’s
something I want to talk over with her.”

Mrs. Latimer looked at the young man steadily, for the first time since
his entrance. “No,” she said quietly, “do go.”

“I wonder,” said Marian gaily, “whether Marian is going to have anything
to say about it.” But then, before the earnestness of Stacey’s
expression, she ceased smiling and led him away.

Upstairs in the library she made him sit down in an easy chair and
perched herself on an ottoman at his feet. She was admirably quick in
responding to moods and she looked up at Stacey now with a tender
gravity. He longed to stretch out his hand and touch her and draw her to
him. But he knew that if he did so she would slip away from him to
become all motion and fluidity again; so he merely sat and gazed at her
fair curly hair, her eyes, her small mouth, and the delicate contour of
her cheeks, thinking her like a Tanagra come to life.

“Marian dearest,” he said at last, “I’ve made up my mind about
something—all alone, without asking you first, because if I’d asked you
I’d have made it up wrong, no matter what you said. Marian, I’m going to
the war.”

For just an instant the girl continued to gaze up at him, clearly not
taking it in. Then her face flamed with eagerness.

“Oh, Stacey!” she cried, her eyes shining. “Oh, Stacey!”

But Stacey’s heart had all at once grown intolerably heavy with pain.

It is true that the very next instant Marian’s mouth drooped and she
cried: “Oh, Stacey!” again in a different lower tone, and suddenly was
in the young man’s arms and kissing him tenderly.

But, though Stacey was made dizzy with love, the pain endured. As long
as he lived, he felt, he would remember that Marian’s first thought had
been that he was going to be a hero; that he was going away from her
into that horrid mess across the Atlantic, perhaps to be killed, only
her second thought. This perception did not develop into criticism of
Marian. Stacey was incapable of criticizing Marian. She was perfect. It
was simply a wound—the first the war inflicted on him.

And also he felt dimly that since this morning all the fine clarity of
his life had given place to confusion. His reaction to everything was
hopelessly different. Throughout the evening Marian was prodigal of her
grace, showered him with impulsive expressions of affection; yet,
instead of sheer loving delight in her, such things stirred him to
physical and mental desire, desire to possess this girl, body and soul.
He flushed with shame. He had never felt this way before; or, if he had,
he had not known it.

When at last it was so late that Stacey simply must not stay longer,
Marian accompanied him downstairs, her hand in his. They looked into the
drawing-room so that he might say good night to her parents, but the
room was empty. Only a single shaded lamp had been left burning, and the
fire on the hearth was flickering to ashes.

“I suppose papa’s at the club, and probably mamma has gone to bed,” said
the girl, in the hushed tone that dark and emptiness induce.

“It’s awfully late,” he replied remorsefully.

She drew away from him to a distant dim corner, from which her face
shone palely like a white flower in the night.

“Stacey,” she called softly, “come here!”

He obeyed, and all at once her slender arms were about his neck, pulling
his head down, her fragrant hair was against his face, and her lips were
pressed to his in such a willing kiss as she had never given him before.
It left him trembling from head to foot. His heart beat madly. He could
not speak.

But she could. “_Now_ will you forget me, Stacey?” she murmured, with a
low mischievous laugh.

Whatever she felt, it was certainly not what he was feeling. Well, that
was right. He was glad of that—he supposed.

In the hall, however, she did not laugh. “Oh, Stacey,” she said, “come
every day until you go! Come twice a day, three times! Come all day
long!”

He kissed her fingers and stumbled dizzily out of the door.

When he reached the sidewalk a woman, muffled in a heavy fur coat, came
toward him. “Mrs. Latimer!” he cried out in surprise, when she was close
to him.

“I wanted to speak to you alone, Stacey,” she said. “So when I heard you
leave the library I slipped on a coat and came out here.”

Stacey was genuinely touched, but also apprehensive—as one always is
toward the mother of one’s fiancée—for fear that she was going to
reprove him for something in his behavior to her daughter.

“Oh, but I’ve kept you a long time!” he stammered. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Stacey,” said Mrs. Latimer, looking gravely into the young man’s face,
“you’re going to the war.”

“How did you know?” he exclaimed.

“I’ve seen it coming for many days,” she replied, “and to-night I was
sure. You came to tell Marian.”

“Yes. How very, very good of you to want to speak to me and to wait for
me here outside!”

She shook her head. “Come! Let’s walk up and down for a few minutes,”
she said, and took his arm.

“Mrs. Latimer,” he begged, “you’re not going to tell me that I’m wrong?
It’s been so hard for me to decide. You’re not going to tell me that I
owe it to Marian to stay? It would be so sweet to stay!”

“Oh, no! Oh, no! no! no!” she replied. Then, after a pause: “How did
Marian take it?”

“She was a dear!” he said loyally, but with a sinking feeling at his
heart. “She has never been so kind to me before.”

“Was she glad you were going to be a hero?”

He started. This was uncanny. But he felt resentment, too. “Marian is so
fine,” he said a little stiffly. “She sees things in flashes. She looks
through the—the ugly facts to the glory beneath them. I’m not a hero—I
know it only too well; but Marian sees only the collective recognition
that I and a thousand others are giving of—of—the existence of
something deeper than facts—of an idea.” He shook his head, unable to
express his thought, and uneasily conscious that he was defending
Marian—not very well, either.

“My dear boy,” Mrs. Latimer returned, “please believe that I am not
blaming Marian for anything. I recognize as clearly as you do all her
fineness. Marian lives in a palace. And when you live properly in a
palace, perfectly at home there, you have palatial thoughts. But, you
see, I don’t live in a palace. I’m of coarser clay. You don’t know me
very well, Stacey, but I know you, I think. And I felt I must see you
for a few minutes.”

He was moved by her kindness and murmured his gratitude.

“But I don’t really know,” she went on, “what it is I want to say.
Nothing, perhaps. Certainly nothing that is clear. The world is a welter
of confusion.”

He nodded assent, feeling closely and comfortingly drawn to this
middle-aged woman who had always seemed aloof to him before.

Mrs. Latimer did not speak again for several minutes. “How do I know
what war does?” she continued at last. “How should you know, for that
matter? But, Stacey, if it changes you in odd deep ways that you can’t
conceive of now—nor I, either—don’t, please don’t, suffer too much and
blame yourself for the changes. There’ll be so much suffering you’ll
have to go through anyway that it would be a pity to add to it
unnecessarily.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I understand, Mrs. Latimer.”

“How in the world should you?” she replied. “I don’t, either. I only
feel something rather vaguely. But there is one thing clear, my dear
boy. I want you to be certain that you have a sincere affectionate
friend in me, who will always try her puzzled best to understand you
sympathetically. And that was really all I had to say.”

“Oh, thank you!” he cried, genuinely touched.

“Now take me home,” she added. “We must go carefully around the house
and I’ll let myself in at the back door so that Marian won’t know I’ve
been out.” She laughed. “Think of your having an assignation with your
mother-in-law and having to conceal it from her daughter!”

But when Stacey had seen Mrs. Latimer safely enter the back door of her
house, and was walking home along the deserted streets, though he felt
warmed and comforted by her unexpected intelligent friendship, he also
felt an uneasy sense of disloyalty, as though he and she had become
accomplices in a secret league against Marian.


                                   3

Stacey arrived in New York one afternoon about a week later. His boat
was to sail the next morning. He went to the small hotel on Tenth Street
where he always stayed.

“How do you do, Mr. Carroll? Glad to see you, sir,” said the clerk.

Stacey wasted no time, but dropped his suitcase in his room and set off
immediately up-town on the top of a motor-bus.

It was clear dry weather, not too cold, and the city’s buildings stood
out sharply against a brilliant sky. Stacey had never liked this
glittering hardness in the atmosphere of New York. The Metropolitan
Tower wouldn’t be so bad and the Woolworth would be bully, he had often
thought, if only they would soar up dimly into a softening haze, as they
would in Paris. The whole show was good, but not good enough to stand
this crude vivid light. Nothing could stand it—neither façades nor
human faces. It was like an immense close-up at the movies. And to-day,
since he continued to feel about him and within himself so much
confusion, this effect of physical clarity really made him uneasy.

But the discomfort soon faded and he thought only that he was to have
this whole afternoon and evening with Philip Blair. He took the stuffy
elevator in the Harlem apartment house, stepped out, and hurried down
the dark hall to Philip’s door with no other feeling than gladness.

Philip himself opened the door, and his face showed as warm a pleasure
as his guest’s. He was thin and slight almost to emaciation, with keen
prominent blue eyes, a sharp-cut nose whose nostrils seemed to sniff
like a dog’s, and a short fair moustache. He looked like a medieval
ascetic, superficially modernized. Just at present he was in
shirt-sleeves and held a pair of compasses in one hand. With the other
he shook Stacey’s eagerly.

“By Jove, I’m glad to see you!” he cried. “But why do you give me only a
day? Why didn’t you come and stay a week? Come on in!” And he led Stacey
down a narrow hall and through the dining-room into his study.

“Couldn’t do it,” Stacey replied on the way. “Whole business so sudden.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” the other assented quietly.

“What you working on?” asked Stacey, leaning over the drawing-board in
the study and fumbling abstractedly at the same time with a pile of
sketches that lay, curled up anyhow, on a table close-by.

“Public library for a village,” said Blair, pulling a sketch of the
front elevation from the rattling heap of papers, spreading it out on
the board, and holding it down flat.

Together they leaned over it. Stacey nodded. “Fine!” he said. “Awfully
good! Let’s see. It’s not for a New England village. Where is it for?
Pennsylvania?”

“Pretty near. Western New York, close to the Pennsylvania line.”

Stacey continued to examine the drawing, then began to smile, poked his
finger at it with a wide curving gesture, and finally broke into a frank
laugh. “Always the same old Phil!” he said gaily, dropping into an easy
chair. “Quite incorrigible! Don’t you ever remember how many shameful
‘_Hors Concours_’ you were always getting at the Beaux Arts, and how
disapprovingly old Fromelles used to shake his head over your _projets_,
and what they all used to think of you: ‘Too bad! Just a little vulgar!
Just a little vulgar!’”

Blair laughed with him, but after a moment Stacey became suddenly silent
and gazed with a puzzled frown at his friend, wondering how it was that
any one so physically frail as Blair could possess such creative
masculine vigor of mind.

“How are you getting on, Phil?” he asked abruptly.

Blair shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, all right enough,” he answered
lightly. “I scrape along without too much difficulty. It would be easier
in one way if I were to go in with some firm, but—”

“Never do—for you, never in the world!” Stacey interrupted, shaking his
head. “You’d feel crushed.”

“Yes, I’d rather go it on my own. I’m all right. Absolutely the only
thing that bothers me is not getting enough jobs. I don’t mean because I
need them financially, but because—you know how it is—to learn, a man
has to see his work in actual stone and brick.”

“You’re too damned good!” said Stacey hotly. “You’ve got the real stuff
in you. Here am I, prospering like a—like a pork packer, while you
struggle along unappreciated; yet you’re a thousand times better than
I.”

“You’re too generous and loyal, Stacey,” Blair returned, with a shake of
his fair head. “I couldn’t ever reach your delicacy in detail.”

“Detail, yes,” Stacey muttered. “I—” He, too, shook his head, while his
friend gazed at him with a calm clear smile. “Lack of vulgarity is the
curse of more places than the Beaux Arts,” Stacey concluded suddenly.
“There’s a brand-new thought for you—brand-new so far as I’m concerned.
Make what you can of it, Phil.”

Philip Blair laughed. “Sounds interesting,” he said. “I’ll have to think
it over. Anyhow, you needn’t worry about me. I manage to scrape enough
together to live and keep Catherine and the boys going.”

“Where are the kiddies?”

“Out for a walk with her. They’ll be in soon.”

After this a silence, that perhaps both young men had felt lying in
wait, descended upon them. Blair was the first to meet frankly what it
stood for.

“So you’re going over into it, Stacey,” he said.

Stacey nodded. “I’ve got to.”

“Well,” said Blair slowly, after another pause, “I suppose, in view of
the tremendous issue, I ought to feel principally gladness that one bit
more of strength and courage is thrown into the right side of the
balance. But, do you know, I don’t—I can’t. Perhaps it’s because I’m
not big enough to get away from personal feelings. And yet I don’t think
it’s merely that. The truth is, Stacey, that you and I are
individualists. We were born like that and we’ve been brought up that
way. The profession we’ve chosen is individualistic—not perfectly so,
because we have to meet the ideas of our clients; but a good deal so,
all the same. For the very fact that people in general are so
standardized, unindividual, wanting in ideas of their own, makes them
leave pretty much in our hands the houses they hire us to build for
them.”

Stacey was smiling. He recognized with affectionate amusement a
characteristic of his friend’s mind—that inability to leave any side
issue of a theme unexplored before pursuing the main theme onward. How
different from Stacey’s father! And also how honest and thorough! Most
people thought that Philip had a wandering mind. He knew better.

For Philip always did come back to the theme. He was back in it now.
“We’re against the current,” he was saying sadly. “The whole trend of
the world is overwhelmingly toward collectivism, doing and feeling in
common, standardization. And yet—and yet—the unit _is_ the individual;
it can’t ever be the group. The individual’s a fact. There you have him,
complete, a world—his only one—to himself. The group’s a fiction, a
composite photograph, lifeless. Oh, I _know_ the whole trend of things
is wrong and that we’re right—so long as we harness our individualism
and don’t let it grow into a silly cult.

“Right?—wrong?” he went on musingly, staring off through the window.
“What do I mean by right and wrong? Well, I mean, I suppose, creatively
valuable, creatively harmful. And the war’s going to rush and swell the
advance of collectivism. No more art, no more thought, no more real
life! Not till long after the war is over. You’ll see.”

Well, it was what Stacey himself had told his father. But he hadn’t
perceived all that it meant. That was what you got for being
impressionistic instead of thorough, he told himself humbly.

Blair turned his eyes back slowly to his friend. “And that,” he
concluded, his thin face drawn with an expression of pain, “is
why—though I know you’ve _got_ to do it, and though I’d do it too, if I
had the bodily health—that is why I feel, above all, grief that you
must throw yourself into that inferno of awful physical and worse mental
suffering. Forgive me!” he cried remorsefully.

But the shadow that had come over Stacey’s face was not there because of
the prophecy of pain. Stacey was thinking of the contrast between
Philip’s words and Marian’s. “That’s all right, Phil,” he said quietly.
“It wasn’t what you said that bothered me. It was something else. Of
course I know what I’m going into—so far as one can know through his
imagination about something totally outside his experience. It’s a great
deal better to think of it beforehand and be ready.”

They dropped all talk of the war after this; and before long Philip’s
sons dashed in. Jack, the younger boy, who was two-and-a-half, ran at
once shyly to his father; but the older, who was five, gave his hand to
Stacey with a pretty confiding cordiality.

“How do you do, Uncle Stacey?” he said, with childish formality,
recently enough learned to demand care and effort.

“Hello, Carter,” returned Stacey, who liked the boy and liked being
called uncle.

The child leaned against his knee. “Uncle Stacey,” he exclaimed, his
soft eager face glowing, “will you do ‘Fly away, Jack! Fly away, Jill!’
for me? I think I can find them this time. I think I know where they
went.”

Philip Blair laughed. “Having achieved formality,” he said, “he puts it
behind him at once. ‘Something accomplished, something done, has earned
a night’s repose.’”

“Quite right, too,” Stacey replied. “I promise I will after just a
little while, Carter. Where’s your mother?”

“Here,” said Catherine, coming through the doorway. “It was windy out. I
had to fix my hair.”

She shook hands with Stacey, a little shyly and formally, almost like
her son.

“Let’s go into the sitting-room,” she said, in the abrupt way she had of
speaking. “There’s a pleasant fire in there.”

But when they had sat down in front of it they all became silent—all,
that is, save Jack, who, on the floor with his toys, babbled to himself
ceaselessly of a thousand important things. Even Carter was silent. He
sat on a foot-stool and gazed at Stacey from a little distance with
patient expectancy.

Stacey, however, had forgotten him. A dozen thoughts were moving through
the young man’s mind, yet not turbulently, but smoothly, without
interference, like ships on a wide river. Perhaps this was because he
was not thinking of himself at all, but of Phil and Catherine. He looked
at Catherine, sitting there across the hearth, she, too, apparently far
away in thought, and tried to study her objectively. She was tall and
dark and handsome, with high cheek-bones, a high forehead, and black
eyes set deep beneath long sweeping lashes. She had a magnificent
figure, lithe, supple and without opulence—slender, even,—but making
evident the large bony structure. So, too, with her head. It was like a
firm Mantegna drawing, revealing clearly what lay beneath the smooth
close-textured skin. Therefore in repose her face appeared even stern.
There was something sculpturesque about Catherine.

But these things were externals. What was she really like? Stacey could
not discover. In all the years that he had known her, first as Philip’s
fiancée and then as Philip’s wife, he had never got beneath her intense
shy reserve. Yet—which seemed odd—there was no sense of constraint
between them as long as Phil was there, too. Stacey could talk
impersonally with her, or, better still, sit for a long time silent with
her, as now, perfectly at ease and sure that she, too, felt at ease.
That was all, though. He could not understand the marriage. Still, he
recognized that it was a happy marriage and he admitted loyally that a
man very rarely did understand his most intimate friend’s choice of a
wife.

Sometimes, he remembered, he had tried to sum up Catherine and her
relation to Phil impressionistically. Once he had told himself that she
was like a castle and Philip like a wind blowing around it, rattling the
shutters but leaving the castle permanent and unchanged. But he felt a
touch of impatience now in the recollection of that judgment. He had
always been full of such fancies. Perhaps he had even cultivated them
and felt a small pride in them. Somehow, in these last weeks he had come
to feel almost antipathy for these baubles. What did they really
explain? What good did it do to catch a mood, even truly? What was a
mood but an evanescent unrelated thing?

But distaste for oneself does not suffice to alter one’s nature. Stacey
did not perceive that his present musings had the same quality they
disapproved of.

It was Carter who broke the silence—with a plaintive unconscious sigh.

Philip laughed, but his visitor started. “Oh, Carter, old chap,” he said
remorsefully, “I forgot all about Jack and Jill! I’m ready now. Come on
over.”

The child ran to him delightedly, all the ages and ages of tedious
waiting forgotten at once; and Stacey took a postage stamp from his
pocket, tore it carefully in half, and gummed the pieces to the nails of
his two forefingers. Experience had taught him that stamps were safer
than scraps of ordinary paper, which had an embarrassing way of coming
off.

             “Two little black-birds sitting on a hill,
             One named Jack and one named Jill.
             Fly away, Jack!—Fly away, Jill!
                    .     .     .     .     .     .
             Come back, Jack!—Come back, Jill!”

Stacey performed the magic trick over and over again, while Carter
searched unavailingly for the birds’ hiding-place, sure that he would
find it the next time, and Jack, not understanding but delighted none
the less, trotted around tirelessly after his brother, and the November
twilight crept in through the windows and darkened the room. Then it was
time for the children to go to bed, and Catherine led them away, leaving
the two men together.

After a while she came back, and they all three went in to dinner.

Stacey glanced at the table appreciatively. “Phil has one human foible,
anyway,” he said to Catherine. “He never cared what he ate, but he’s
always been fastidious about how he eats it.”

Catherine gave him a rare smile, that softened her face to beauty. “Do
you mean,” she asked, “that all the setting is good, but the dinner
itself not?”

He laughed, pleased and surprised at the disappearance of her shyness.
“You know I don’t. How can I tell what the dinner’s like when
everything’s concealed beneath those heavy silver covers?”

He stayed until very late in the evening. It had always been Catherine’s
way to disappear rather early and leave her husband and Stacey to
themselves, no doubt because she knew that she had no real part in their
intimacy. But to-night, though she went out of the room from time to
time, she invariably returned. Indeed, she seemed different to Stacey.
It was, he thought, as though one thickness of the veil between them had
been stripped away. (Oh, Stacey! Dislike of impressionism?). Once he
caught her gazing at him with a melancholy intentness; but, seeing that
he was looking, she turned her eyes away at once and stared into the
fire.

The war was not mentioned; but, because there was no feverishness in the
talk or sense of constraint upon the three, Stacey felt that this
revealed no attempt to evade the war and his share in it. The war was
there and he was going to it. This was a simple fact, conceded by all
three. There was nothing to do about it or say about it. War was not a
part of their past or woven anyhow into the fabric of their minds. Not a
bit of use for conversation.

“I’ll be down at the boat to-morrow morning,” Phil said, when at last
Stacey rose to go.

“Thanks, Phil,” Stacey replied gratefully. “Good night, Catherine, and
thank you both—ever so much. I feel—bathed in quiet happiness.”

Catherine gave him her hand, with a murmured good night, then dropped it
abruptly.

“Shy once again,” thought Stacey with kindly amusement.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When the next day all good-byes had been said, and the great ship was
sweeping out to sea, and Stacey was walking to and fro alone on the
deck, with all his thirty years of life vanishing behind him, rounded
out, ended, a completed story, while between it and his present self a
mist began to rise, like the mist that was rising between ship and
shore, he gathered up the impressions the final week had left
him—gently, as one ties together old letters before putting them away.
And, stripping them down to essentials, he could find but this:—that
there was a sweet serenity in the memory of the afternoon and evening
with the Blairs, an odd sense of comfort in the picture of Mrs. Latimer
stepping towards him beneath the arc-light in front of her house,
and—yes—comfort again in the thought of Julie—his sister, Julie, with
whom he had never had anything in common save their relationship, but
the vision of whose good-humored face, stained with tears, and of whose
ridiculous efforts to make her eight-months-old baby say good-bye to
Uncle Stacey, recurred to him now gratefully. In the thought of Marian
there was only uneasy pain. Perhaps, he reflected sadly, this was just
because she had hurt his vanity, or perhaps it was because at such a
moment of leave-taking what one demanded was merely simple affection, or
perhaps it was because intense love must be uneasy and painful.

Well. . . .

He put the letters away and closed the drawer upon them.




                                _PART I_


                               CHAPTER I

“Funny! June is June. Permanent sort of thing. Looks, in 1919,
ridiculously the same as it looked in 1914.”

So Stacey Carroll reflected idly, as he stepped out into the fresh dusty
sunlight from the pier at the foot of West Twenty-Third Street. He wore
the uniform of a captain of infantry in the American army, with the red,
white and blue ribbon of the D. S. C.

He summoned a taxi with an imperious but economical gesture of the wrist
and forefinger, spoke two words to the chauffeur, flung in his bags
lightly, and set off for the small hotel on Tenth Street. During the
whole of the brief ride he looked out of the window, observantly enough,
but he did not appear to be affected one way or another by what he saw.
At any rate his face remained impassive until, when he had descended
from the taxi and entered the hotel, the clerk at the desk shook his
hand and said: “How do you do, Captain Carroll? Glad to see you safely
back, sir,” Then Stacey smiled in an odd twisted way that did not make
the expression of his mouth more genial or bring any expression at all
into his eyes.

In his room he lighted a cigarette, laid it on an ash-tray, and set
immediately to unpacking his bags, swiftly, systematically and without
haste, pausing only for an occasional puff at the cigarette. Three
minutes before he had finished unpacking he turned on the water in the
bath-tub. The bath was ready at almost the precise moment Stacey was
ready for it. He dressed with the same smooth uninterested efficiency he
had shown in unpacking and undressing. Only once did he make any
wasteful gesture. This was when, his foot coming in contact with one of
the puttees he had laid on the floor, he deliberately kicked the puttee
across the room.

Finally, when he had bathed and dressed and everything was put away,
Stacey looked in the telephone book, then called up Philip Blair’s
number.

“Phil? This is Stacey. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . What? . . . Oh, just
now, a few minutes ago! . . . How’s that? . . . Oh, yes, perfectly
sound! No wooden leg, no false face, nothing at all! . . . Why didn’t I
_what_? (What the devil’s come over your telephone system?) . . . Oh,
write oftener! Well, I did! . . . Yes, of course. ’T’s what I telephoned
for. Sure! Be right up.”

Stacey’s voice had been cool and almost expressionless, but his face had
softened a little. After he had hung up the receiver he stood for a
moment gazing abstractedly ahead of him. Then he put on his hat and went
out of the hotel.

But he did not take a motor-bus. Instead, he set off up Fifth Avenue on
foot, with an easy sauntering gait that was faster than it looked. It
was not at all the way Stacey had walked in 1914. It was more graceful
and fluent, revealing a perfect, harmonious and unconscious command of
his whole body.

As he walked, he stared about him restlessly; but nothing that he saw
disturbed the immobility of his face until he reached the triumphal arch
at Madison Square. He gazed at this for some time with a most unpleasant
expression indeed, then approached it more closely and read the immortal
village names inscribed upon it.

“Oh, damn!” he said, and, walking quickly to the nearest subway station,
took a train for Harlem.

Same dingy apartment house, looking a little dingier after five years,
same dark elevator, same stuffy hall; and here came Phil and Catherine
running down it to meet him. Their eagerness touched Stacey. He did not
himself feel eager, though he was glad to see them.

“Well!” cried Phil. “Well! Now how—now what—I mean, what _can_ a
fellow say in these circumstances? Come along! Come on in! Hurry up
about it!”

And: “We’re so glad!” said Catherine.

They pushed him into their flat, through the dining-room, into the
sitting-room, and plumped him down in an easy chair. A table stood
beside it, with a pitcher and glasses. Ice tinkled as the table was
jostled.

“Sauterne cup,” Phil explained breathlessly. “‘Gather ye rose-buds’ and
so forth. Only a short time left, you know. Sole subject of conversation
in our great republic. Here! Drink! ‘Drink for your altars and your
fires!’ I mean to say: ‘Drink, for once dead you never—’ oh, no, that
isn’t it!” And he broke out laughing.

Catherine was calmer, or anyway more static. She had sat down on an
ottoman, elbows on knees, chin in hands, and was gazing up at Stacey.
But her face, too, glowed with pleasure.

Stacey was smiling faintly. He looked from one to the other and said to
himself that they were both just the same as four and a half years
since, for all that Phil looked older and more worn and even a little
thinner.

“You’re both awfully good to me,” he said.

“We’re awfully noisy!” exclaimed Phil remorsefully, sitting down. “We
forget that you’re tired.”

Stacey lit a cigarette. “I’m not tired, Phil,” he remarked. “I never get
tired nowadays. Nothing like military service for keeping one fit, you
know,” he added drily. “And I’m gladder to see both of you than any
other two people in the world.” He spoke with an effort. “You both all
right? Everything going well? The children?”

“Out at their aunt’s house in the country,” replied Philip, a look of
perplexity coming over his face.

There was a pause.

Then suddenly Catherine spoke, haltingly, with the way she had of being
unused to words, but earnestly. “What does it—do to a man, Stacey? As
much as—all that?”

He sighed in relief. “Wipes him out, Catherine,” he replied in an
emotionless voice. “Replaces him with some one else. Good thing that you
saw. Because I couldn’t possibly keep up the bluff. I can’t pretend with
you two.”

“Nor with any one else,” said Catherine.

“Nor with any one else.”

Philip laughed. “Well, then,” he declared, “we have with us to-day a
brand-new friend!”

But Catherine was clearly going to have things over and done with. “You
mean,” she said courageously, “that you’re—glad, a little—to see us,
but not—”

“Not the way I ought to be. Only in a vague uneasy dead way. Rotten,
isn’t it? And brutal. And bound to hurt your feelings. But what can you
expect? If I were to see a man cut in two by a bus on the Avenue I
shouldn’t feel anything at all except a little distaste. There you have
it. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“But the truth,” said Catherine, her eyes shining.

“Yes,” Stacey admitted. “There’s that to be said for it.”

Philip Blair tugged at his short blond moustache and stared at his
friend wistfully. “You don’t hurt me, Stacey,” he said at last. “And
it’s not true that you’re not fond of us. If it were true you wouldn’t
have been so honest. How do I know what they’ve done to you? You’re
all—seared over. Had to be, I suppose, or die. You’ll come back to us.
Now tell us about all the outside things. First with the English.”

“I was with them, first as an N. C. O., then as a lieutenant, up to
June, 1917. Then I transferred to our—”

“Hold on! Hold on! You got the D. S. O. How?”

“Yes, the D. S. O. On the Somme, at Bazentin-le-Grand, for going out
with ten men and cleaning up a machine-gun nest. I transferred—”

“Damn it all!” said Phil, “is that the best you can do with it? How did
you do it?”

Stacey shook his head impatiently. “And then,” he went on, “as I said, I
transferred to the American army and was made a captain. And I got the
D. S. C. ‘for cool leadership and conspicuous bravery in action.’”

A sudden change came over Stacey’s face. It woke, as it were, to
life—but to sinister life.

“I’ll tell you about _that_,” he said in a vibrant passionate voice. “I
got the D. S. C. for carrying out an order that was sheer murder, for
leading my company in a frontal attack against a perfectly worthless
position over ground rotten with machine-guns. Not half of my men got
off clear. A perfectly worthless position, I tell you, that we retired
from next day because it wasn’t possible to hold and wouldn’t have done
us any good if we could have held it.”

Well, there was capacity for emotion left in Stacey,—that was clear.
Any one’s first impression of him would have been wrong. The question
was—capacity for what emotion? A fierce chill intensity glowed in, or
perhaps behind, his face. It died down as swiftly as it had kindled.

“What a—what a ghastly blunder!” Philip Blair murmured.

Catherine said nothing.

“That’s what war is,” Stacey replied. “One blunder after another. The
side which makes the most blunders loses. A trite thought, but true.”

“Then the Germans made the most?”

“Oh, by far!”

“Strange! For a while they seemed invincible—machine-perfect.”

Stacey lit a fresh cigarette. “It was the legend they threw out. They
might have won perhaps if they hadn’t grown to believe in it
themselves,” he remarked, almost indifferently.

He laid his cigarette down suddenly and smiled. “Come!” he said, with a
hard cheerfulness, “I’ll tell you about something pleasant—the reason
I’m here only now, the reason I didn’t get my ‘majority,’ the reason
they packed me off to Italy after the Armistice, the one thing I ‘did in
the Great War’ that I’ll tell my son about. It was in the Argonne, and I
was in command of a battalion—had been for a long time. We were in a
fairly isolated position. You know what the Argonne was—woods, lightly
held as to numbers by the enemy, careful, oh, so careful, machine-gun
nests everywhere! We’d had terrible losses but had plugged on through,
little by little. Paused at last. Sat still for about a week. Being
bombarded in a desultory fashion, but comfortable enough—comparatively.
This was November. Well, on November tenth, in the morning, I learned
something that I hadn’t any business to learn,—that the Armistice was
coming absolutely. On November tenth at four P.M. I received orders to
attack the position in front of us—sweet little hill, picture-puzzle of
machine-guns—at five A.M. the next morning, November eleventh—November
eleventh! Well, I didn’t do it.”

Stacey’s smile disappeared, and his face took on again that intensity
that seemed to reveal the presence within him of some single dark
absorbing passion.

“Think of it!” he said. “The cold-blooded futile murder in such
orders—given why? How should I know? Because Headquarters didn’t care
about going through the red tape of changing their prearranged plans, I
suppose. Anyhow,” he concluded, “I didn’t obey. I stood out for once
against the machine.”

“What did they do to you when they found out?” and: “Did the soldiers
under you know?” cried Phil and Catherine simultaneously.

“Can’t say as to my men. My lieutenants knew. They’d never have split on
me. But of course I was found out. There we still were, you see, after
the Armistice, which came that very day, in the same position as before.
My colonel, a decent fellow for a Regular Army officer, did the least he
could under the circumstances—relieved me of my command and sent me as
liaison officer to Italy, one being called for about then. Whole thing
very quiet. No fuss made. I should think not! Wouldn’t I have loved a
fuss? But the fact remains,” he said, “that, having set out to ‘make the
world a better place to live in’ (wasn’t that the way my departure was
explained?—not at the time, of course; then we were to ‘keep our minds
neutral’—but posthumously, after three years) I return, having made it
a place, of no matter what sort, for a hundred young men or so still to
be alive in. They’d have been rotting in neat little graves but for me.
And that’s all. I got demobilized over there—eventually—in Italy, and
came back, a free man in spite of the uniform, on the ‘Dante.’ And here
I am.”

He leaned back and lit still another cigarette.

“And do you know what people are going to say to you?” asked Catherine
in an odd voice. “They’re going to say: ‘Stacey, you smoke too much.’”

Suddenly she buried her head in her hands and burst out sobbing.

Both men started, and Philip half rose, then sat down again, pulling his
moustache and considering her helplessly. Stacey gazed at her with a
kind of grim sadness, as if from an immense distance.

“Forgive me!” she said at last, controlling herself and wiping her eyes.
“It—it isn’t because you’re bitter, Stacey,” she went on wearily after
a moment, choosing her words with difficulty, “and, oh, not at all
because you feel—burned out and unaffectionate. It’s—Phil, you tell
him. I can’t talk.”

“It’s because Catherine is tired,” said Phil simply. “With all that
you’ve been through, it would be too much to ask you to sympathize with
what she’s been through. But, infinitely less than your experience,
that’s been a lot, too. She always looked at things squarely—more
squarely than I. And what are you going to do when the truth you’re
seeking comes marching at you with great steps from a long way off and
shows itself a bleak brutal thing?”

Stacey gazed at his friend with intellectual sympathy at least.

Phil went on slowly. “We believed in the war, too. Perhaps not quite so
ardently as you, but we believed in it. It seemed, in the big
essentials, right against wrong. We were told—oh, you know all the
things we were told, the dreams we lived on!”

“I know,” said Stacey.

“All to end in this,—this bitter merciless peace, with all the seeds of
new wars in it!”

“Well,” asked Stacey, “when you saw the futile pettiness that revealed
itself in men, and the pomposity, and the selfishness, and the
greed”—he spat the word out—“did you expect anything better?”

“Not after a while, no,” Phil replied steadily. “At first I did. When I
saw the heroism. What happened to the war? A great wrong _was_ done.
Hundreds of thousands of you went to war nobly to right it. Belgium
_was_ invaded, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t remember,” said Stacey. “I suppose so. You touched the truth
when you said we ‘went to war.’ What did we go to? Suppose one ant
massacred another and you arranged an earthquake to punish it. That’s
what happened. You see, a time came,” he continued slowly, an odd dazed
look in his eyes,—“about 1916 it began, I should think—when all the
surface seemed to have been stripped from life, one layer after another,
until there was nothing left showing but universal naked pain. Nothing
mattered except this. It was so much bigger than anything else. Belgium
didn’t matter. Prussian militarism was a word. Love and hate
disappeared, unimportant. Nothing was left but pain.”

Catherine drew a long breath. “And then?” she murmured.

“And then,” he returned, “you went on existing somehow, impersonally,
without any emotions—”

“Are you sure?” Phil broke in.

“And without one tattered shred of an illusion left. I made up a story
about it once—it must have been in 1916. Imagine a man who has always
lived in a house with a roof of beautiful stained glass, and who revels
in the soft colors that shine through. One day a tremendous hail storm
comes and shatters the glass to fragments and lets the bleak white
daylight pour in. Well, at first the man is heart-broken. But, after a
little, he thinks: ‘Anyway this is truth. This is _real_ light. I’ve
been living falsely.’ So he bends down to the marble floor to see what
has done the damage, but all that he can find is a little pool of dirty
water.”

Philip and Catherine stared at Stacey.

The latter shook his head impatiently. “But that’s all past,” he said
coolly. “That was 1916. I give you my word that I don’t think about
myself at all any more. It’s an effort, trying to. I haven’t any
thoughts, and I don’t care a rap for any one, and there isn’t anything I
want to do, but I’m jolly well not going to do anything I _don’t_ want
to do. So that’s that!”

Catherine rose. She seemed quite her calm self again. She even smiled.
And there was only a slight unsteadiness in her voice when she spoke.

“Oh, no, it isn’t, Stacey!” she said. “You don’t want to stay to dinner
with us, but you’re going to, all the same.”

He laughed. “All right,” he assented.


                               CHAPTER II

“I wish,” thought Stacey nervously, when, on the afternoon of the next
day but one, his train, slowing down, was passing through the suburbs of
Vernon, “I wish that old things would either die outright or else live.”

For there in the distance crept by, on its hill, the Endicott School,
where he had gone as a boy; here was a sudden glimpse of the Drive,
where he had often motored with Marian. And old emotions stirred feebly
within him like ghosts of their dead selves. He did not want them; they
annoyed him. They had nothing to do with Stacey Carroll, 1919. They made
him conscious of himself, that he had a self.

They were worse than anything he felt at sight of the small crowd which
awaited him as the train swept into the station. Amusement submerged all
other feelings then.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, “the conquering hero!”—and plunged down into
the tumult.

There was his father, his face rigid with repressed emotion, his hand
shaking Stacey’s vigorously. And there were half a dozen of his old
friends standing back to let the family have free play. And here was his
sister, Julie, fatter than in 1914, laughing and crying and kissing him
and trying to talk all at once, while her pleasant-faced husband, Jimmy
Prout, smilingly held out a hand across her shoulder and managed to
grasp one of Stacey’s fingers.

Did they really care so much as all this for him? Stacey wondered, with
remorse at feeling so little himself. Or was it just the dramatic
moment?

Then all at once his coolness was swept away by a gust of genuine
emotion, the last he should have felt—anger and something like horror.
For Julie had bent over and lifted high her five-year-old son, and the
child had on a tiny khaki uniform and was saluting his uncle solemnly,
fingers stiffly touching his over-seas cap.

“For God’s sake, Julie!” cried Stacey, his face white.

The proud smile suddenly vanished from his sister’s face. She stared at
him in hurt surprise. “What’s the matter, Stacey?” she stammered. “Don’t
you like him? Don’t you like Junior?”

“Of course I like him!” he muttered. “It’s just the uniform. Don’t put
it on him, Julie.” He swung the boy up in his arms. “Don’t salute, old
fellow!” he said, sweeping off the little cap from the blond curls.
“Give us a kiss!”

“Oh, I thought you’d like it!” said Julie wretchedly. “I trained him so
carefully to salute.”

“It’s all right, old girl!” said Stacey, putting the child down. His
wave of emotion had disappeared. He was vaguely sorry to have hurt his
sister’s feelings.

Other people had crowded up. The station rang with greetings. But,
through the insistent pressure forward of Mr. Carroll, Senior, who had
hold of his son’s arm, Stacey presently found himself at the waiting
motor car, into which the train porter (thanks to Jimmy Prout’s
directions) had piled Stacey’s bags.

“Good-bye for now,” said Julie, giving her brother another kiss. “We’re
going to take Junior home, but we’ll be out at dad’s for dinner.”

And Stacey was in the tonneau of his father’s car, with only his father
by his side. The car moved off.

Mr. Carroll drew a long breath. “Ouf!” he exclaimed. “So you’re back at
last, son!” he said, after a moment.

“Back at last. Deuce of a long time, isn’t it?”

Mr. Carroll nodded gravely. “Longer than any one can imagine. I’ve
missed you terribly, Stacey.”

The young man found himself wondering. Was it true? Was affection a real
and vivid thing? He, Stacey, had had his life, such as it was, in these
four years and a half. He had not missed his father, save in a mild way
now and then. Well, his father, too, had had his own life. His days must
have been taken up with business. He must have dined out frequently in
the evenings or have had people to dinner. Had his thoughts truly clung
to Stacey? Wasn’t it all half a convention? Between a child, helpless,
appealing, undeveloped, and a father, protective, tender, apprehensive
of a thousand infant dangers,—there, indeed, was a poignant
relationship! Afterward?

Not that Stacey was not fond of his father. He was fond of him even now,
but without pretence, decoration or melodrama. And, though he pursued
these idle thoughts in a cool detached way, he was not quite cool, not
quite detached. “You don’t look a day older, dad,” he said.

“No? I ought to. I feel older—or did till just now.” Mr. Carroll
scrutinized his son’s face affectionately. “_You_ look older, son,” he
continued, “older in a good sense—grown up, surer of yourself. It’s
made a man of you.”

Except for a faint sense of irony, this estimate produced no impression
at all on the young man. He was simply not interested in the subject.
However, his father pursued it pleasantly.

“Looking you over, five years ago, a business man would have said:
‘Charming boy, young, fresh, eager, full of ideas, but something of a
dreamer.’ To-day he’d think: ‘There’s a strong man that I could put at
the head of a big company’.”

“Careful, sir!” said Stacey. “Remember that anything you say may be used
against you. I might take you up on that.”

A sudden gleam shone in Mr. Carroll’s eyes. “You mean that?” he
demanded.

His son laughed. “Don’t really know yet. Maybe.”

“Not going back into architecture? Not enough fight in it now, eh? Want
something more vigorous.”

“Well,” said Stacey, “I’m not going back into it, architecture, at once,
anyway. Want to look around a bit first. Can’t say that I really know
what my reasons are.”

His answer was strictly truthful. He did not know his reasons—except
that he literally couldn’t have drawn plans for so much as a barn.

His father nodded, then, catching sight of a man who was walking briskly
along the sidewalk of the street down which the car was gliding, told
the chauffeur to stop, and, leaning out, called: “Colin! Oh, Colin!”

It was Colin Jeffries, president of the smelting works, president of the
power plant, vice-president and dictator of the great linseed oil mills,
head of a dozen corporations, donor to the city of its art gallery and
public library, Vernon’s first citizen. A man of fifty-five, vigorous,
keen-eyed, clean-shaven but for a short dark moustache. Not at all like
Mr. Carroll in features. As like him as one pea to another in
expression.

“My son, Colin. Captain Carroll. You remember him. Just got back. Wanted
you to shake hands with him. D. S. C.—‘for cool leadership and
conspicuous bravery in action.’”

“I know,” said Mr. Jeffries, shaking Stacey’s hand warmly and gazing
straight into his eyes. “Glad to see you back, my boy. Very genuinely
glad. Congratulations aren’t much, but you have them. We older men, who
couldn’t go, aren’t going to forget what you young men did.”

“Thanks,” said Stacey, considering him coolly. It occurred to him that
it was quite right of Mr. Jeffries to be grateful, since one thing the
young men had done was to make him considerably richer than formerly.
However, Stacey did not think this with any bitterness, or accuse the
millionaire of a self-interested patriotism or of anything else. He was
simply no longer—as he had once been—impressed by the legend of the
man. He merely scrutinized him coldly from outside and reserved
judgment.

“There’s another reason we’re glad to have you back,” Mr. Jeffries was
saying gravely. “You young men have saved the country from one danger.
We count on you to save it from another. You’ll find probably that
you’ve got to keep on saving it. Conditions are chaotic. The country’s
full of social unrest. You’ll see.” (Mr. Carroll nodded assent
emphatically.) “Malignant forces are at work secretly. It’s you boys of
the American Legion who will be the greatest factor for good in the
country’s life for the next generation. Rest? You won’t find rest. Do
you want it?”

“Not particularly, Mr. Jeffries,” Stacey replied calmly.

“Good! Good luck to you!”

“Fine man, Colin!” Mr. Carroll observed, as the car moved off again. “A
great citizen and a true friend. Not a stain on his reputation.”

Stacey did not contradict the assertion, even inwardly. He merely
reserved judgment and was not especially interested in what the result
of it would be. The only positive comment he passed (to himself) was
that Mr. Jeffries talked rather like an orator on a platform.

“Oh, by Jove!” exclaimed Mr. Carroll suddenly, “I completely forgot!
Selfish of me! Marian called me up and asked me to tell you that she
wouldn’t expect you to-night—said she realised the family had first
rights to you—but would look for you to-morrow afternoon, three-thirty.
Considerate of her, though hard on you perhaps. Nice girl, Marian, very!
Showed uncommon good sense in not coming to the station.”

But Mr. Carroll would have been dismayed had he known the effect his
apologetic explanatory remarks produced upon his son. They weighed
Stacey down. For it is the extraordinary truth that not once since
Stacey descended from the train had the thought of Marian crossed his
mind, and that to have it recalled to him now was burdensome.

However, he recovered quickly from the sudden feeling of depression.
For, being totally without any scheme of life, he lived from day to day
and met problems only as they arose. Marian was to-morrow’s problem. He
shook it off.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s right of her. Of course I want this evening
at home with you.”

But when finally they were at home Stacey and his father found little to
say to each other. Mr. Carroll was full of the nervous restlessness of
repressed affection, bustled about, made his son a cocktail (which
Stacey drank with relish), and finally threw himself down in a chair and
lit a cigar, though it was close to dinner time.

Stacey was more self-possessed, though he could not be entirely
self-possessed in this house where all the edges of things and thoughts
were blurred by memories out of childhood. He was able to recognize
clearly, with no more than a touch of sadness, that at bottom he and his
father had little in common. Stacey felt that he ought to be expansive,
communicative, but he simply could not be. Besides, he had nothing to
communicate.

Yet, if Stacey revealed no characteristic for which he may be loved, he
did reveal one for which he may be admired:—self-control. For when his
father asked him, almost shyly, about the action in which he had won his
American decoration, Stacey told the story of it, quietly, artistically,
handsomely, with even a smile on his lips, as one might tell the story
of Thermopylæ or Bunker Hill, while all the time his eyes, that gazed
off across his father’s shoulder, were seeing the unendurable picture of
the real thing. It was an achievement.

When the tale was finished the older man drew a long breath. “By Jove!”
he exclaimed in a low voice, mingled admiration and envy showing in his
face. “To live through moments like those! Wonderful! Moments you’ll
never forget!”

But Stacey, who had risen and was leaning against the empty fire-place,
gave an odd sound like a strangled laugh. He crossed the room to a tall
window, flung it wide open, and surreptitiously wiped a drop of
perspiration from his forehead. Then he turned back.

“Make me another cocktail, dad,” he said. “Do! We couldn’t get gin like
that in Italy.”

It was a relief to Stacey when Julie and her husband arrived. For he
craved of his sister now precisely what had irked him in her
formerly—her apparent absence of any inner life and her absorbed
occupation with externals. If any one had protested that she probably
did have an inner life he would have assented cheerfully. He simply did
not want to know about it or about any one else’s.

The Prouts were a little late (Julie was always a little late) and Mr.
Carroll, who had been fidgeting with increasing exasperation, greeted
his daughter wrathfully.

“Confound it, Julie! Can’t you be on time for once in a way? Isn’t it as
easy to get here at seven as at seven-ten?”

“Well, now, daddy, it wasn’t my fault,” said Julie, her voice and eyes
full of hurt innocence, while her husband grinned. “I was all ready and
then at the very last moment—”

“Pshaw!” her father interrupted. “If only you wouldn’t always have an
excuse! Come on in! Everything will be cold, of course.”

And such things put Stacey in good humor. Indeed, among them he enjoyed
himself more than later when the first two courses had been served and
his father was ready for conversation.

“Poor Jimmy!” Julie was saying. “He _was_ so unhappy not to get across!
After he’d gone through officers’ training camp they sent him to Camp
Grant and just kept him there the whole time. He was so mad, weren’t
you, Jimmy?”

“Well,” said her husband pleasantly, “it _was_ a good deal of a bore to
go through all that training and then never have a chance to use it.”

“Oh, it’ll come in handy for the next war,” Stacey observed.

“Oh, Stacey!” his sister cried, “you don’t think there’s going to be
another!”

Stacey laughed. “I was only trying to comfort you, Julie. Thought from
the way you spoke you’d like to give Jimmy a chance. Just think of
it!—there he’d be on a big white horse, waving his sword and charging
the enemy, with all his men following him and cheering madly! Wouldn’t
you like that?”

Jimmy grinned at his brother-in-law, but Julie shook her head soberly,
though perhaps she was only playing at being as ingenuous as all that.

“No,” she said firmly, “I wouldn’t. Jimmy plays a good game of golf, but
he’s no use at all on a horse—never was. And I think it would be nice
enough—now—for him to _have_ got across and _have_ had a medal, like
you, Stacey dear, so that I could say: ‘I don’t think you’ve met my
husband, Mrs. Jones. You see, he’s been in France for two years. Oh,
yes, D. S. C., _of_ course!’—but at the time I never did want him to
go, not for a minute.”

The two young men laughed again. Stacey considered his sister’s point of
view human, straightforward and sensible. Where was the good, he
wondered swiftly, in going through a lot of complicated emotions, since,
if you were honest, you always ended in just such simplicity? It was a
lot better to be simple in the first place and stay so.

But Mr. Carroll, who was in the midst of a swallow of claret, gulped
suddenly, choked, and set his glass down with a bump. “That,” he said
angrily, “is about as silly and weak and unpatriotic as anything I’ve
ever heard even you say, Julie!”

“I can’t help it, dad,” Julie returned meekly. “It’s the way I really
feel.”

“Then you should keep still about it. Nice sort of part we should have
played in the war if every wife had taken that attitude!”

Stacey, who thought his sister was being badly scolded for no reason at
all, gave her a sly friendly smile, at which her face brightened. She
recovered so quickly, indeed, and her husband had shown, throughout,
such absence of any discomfort, that Stacey concluded Julie must be
inured to this sort of harshness. He tried to remember whether his
father had always been so sharp with her, but couldn’t.

“Jimmy would have had his chance, no doubt,” Mr. Carroll remarked, “if
the war had lasted a few months longer, as it should have.” He frowned.
“I believe,” he went on solemnly, “that the Armistice will prove to be
the biggest disaster the world has ever known.” And he looked about him
fiercely.

The first time that Stacey had heard this sentiment expressed (at tea,
in Rome, at the house of an elderly American gentleman whom every one
cultivated because he mysteriously always had butter and sugar), he had
first felt genuine horror, and then immediately had flown into a white
ungovernable rage during which he said things that had reduced the
kindly old gentleman, who was used to having every one pleasant, to a
state of helpless trembling discomfort. However, by now Stacey was
growing used to the sentiment (it had been mentioned, for instance, on
the boat, and the smoking-room of the Pullman car had rung with it). It
no longer produced in him any emotion save a weary scorn.

“I’d like to have seen the Huns get a taste of their own medicine,” Mr.
Carroll continued, his eyes gleaming beneath their heavy white eyebrows.
“Only a month or two more of the war and they’d have seen _their_ soil
invaded, _their_ towns in flames, and the Allies would have marched into
Berlin. Now hear them talk! They don’t know they’re beaten!”

“I dare say they suspected it when they handed over their fleet,” said
Stacey calmly.

“You don’t agree with me, son?” Mr. Carroll exclaimed.

Stacey shook his head. “It would have cost thousands of lives more,” he
remarked, helping himself to almonds.

“Not so many! Not so many!” his father insisted.

“Some,” said Stacey. “However,” he added in a dry voice, “to do our
leaders justice, I don’t think they gave that point undue importance.
The truth was we’d have had to pause pretty soon, anyway. Our troops
were fagged, our lines of communication were impossibly long, and we’d
shot off most of our ammunition. A pause would have given the Germans a
chance to fall back on a nice short line all prepared for them, and it
would have taken another tremendous battle to break through again,—and
there was winter already upon us.”

Mr. Carroll had followed his son’s words attentively. “Well, of course,”
he said, “that’s different. I’m not a military man and I don’t pretend
to have become an expert strategist, like most of my friends at the
club. They’ll amuse you, Stacey. All the same, it’s an outrage that the
Germans should get off scot-free.”

And after this the subject of the war was dropped for a while.

Julie related personal gossip agreeably, and Jimmy Prout told an amusing
story about an eccentric client of his, and Stacey listened with
interest to both of them, but he observed that his father did not
listen. Mr. Carroll did pay his son-in-law a perfunctory semblance of
attention, but he made no pretence of even hearing what his daughter
said. And he cut short her account of a country club feud with a sudden
irrelevant remark accompanied by an impatient frown.

“We passed Colin Jeffries on the way home, Jimmy,” he said, “and stopped
to speak with him. He said a few words to Stacey about the rottenness of
conditions over here to-day, about what we’ve all got to face.”

Jimmy’s good-humored countenance became sober. He nodded. “Yes,” he
said, “it’s pretty fierce.”

But Mr. Carroll had turned again to his son. “The whole country’s full
of social unrest,” he went on angrily. “You’ve no idea, Stacey. All the
lazy worthless Have-Nots are up in arms against the Haves, and our
damned government pets them and plays right into their hands. Not a bit
of respect for the men who’ve made the country what it is. You’ll see.”

“I’ve seen something of it abroad,” Stacey remarked. “What do you
expect? You have four years and a half of universal war positively
guaranteed to turn the world into heaven, and then it ends with the
world even less heavenly than before. Of course you get unrest.”

He had spoken idly enough, without much thought as to what he said, save
that he exercised care not to plunge into the question truly, but he was
not really apathetic; he was curious about the intensity of feeling his
father displayed.

“No, but I’m talking about definite, concrete, unjustifiable
demonstrations of unrest,” Mr. Carroll continued, shaking off
generalities. “Here you have labor, the one real profiteer in the war,
getting more and more, more than it ever got, far more than its share,
yet always increasing its demands, always doing less work. Why, it takes
three men nowadays to get through a piece of work that one man could do
a few years ago. Bolshevism! Sheer Bolshevism!”

Julie bravely ventured a remark. “You remember Harry Baird, Stacey?” she
said, with a little laugh. “He’s a contractor, you know. Well, he says
that nearly all his men drive up to work in their own Fords.”

Stacey laughed, too, though he kept his eyes on his father’s face. Mr.
Carroll seemed to have relapsed into his former state of indignant
meditation.

“Now I ask you,” Julie concluded, “what more _do_ they want?”

“Why,” Stacey observed lightly, “they probably want to drive up in
Packards. You see, if you’ve had power—that is to say, if you’ve had
money—for a long time, you don’t much care whether you ride around in a
Packard or a Ford—”

“Oh, I care!” Julie broke in. “A Ford is awfully jolty.”

“Yes, you care because one is more comfortable. What I mean to say is
that a Packard isn’t to you a belligerent symbol that you’re as good as
anybody else. I dare say it is to the laborer.”

But Mr. Carroll had emerged from his thoughts and was looking at Stacey
keenly. “Son,” he said soberly, “you’ve done your duty heroically.
You’ve gone through a tremendous ordeal and you’ve gone through it
without flinching. Don’t go back on what’s right now, will you? Keep on
going straight. Don’t let yourself get infected with Bolshevism. You’re
not, are you?”

Stacey considered his father thoughtfully and with a faint but genuine
sadness—almost the only touch of a soft emotion he had felt since his
arrival. For, though his remarks to Julie had been careless and
superficial, they had just grazed the outside of something in which he
really believed, as much as he believed in anything. And it was
precisely these remarks which had alarmed Mr. Carroll. Stacey could not
make his father out, and still less did he make himself out, but,
whatever his father was, and whatever he himself was, it was clear that
an impassable gulf lay between them. They had nothing in common save
affection and memories.

Therefore, when he answered his father, he did so as gently and
circumspectly as the truth (his one remaining god) would permit; which
was rare, since in general he was careless enough of others’ feelings.

“Why, no, dad,” he said slowly, smiling at his father, “I don’t believe
I’m tainted with Bolshevism. I know almost nothing about it and don’t
trust what I do know. Propaganda for, propaganda against,—that’s all
we’re getting; not facts. In so far as I can make out the theory I don’t
like it—too crushing for the individual. What we want is more
individualism than before the war, not less. But I think it’s a mistake
to hate a word, because hate reveals fear. One ought not to be afraid of
anything. Now you’ve probably got all kinds of unrest over here, just as
everywhere else. Some of it, I dare say, is right, some wrong—mere
abuse of power. Well, nobody ever yet had power without abusing it. The
teachers in your schools, the professors in your colleges, the salaried
clerks in your offices, are restless, poor things! as well as the
laborers in your factories and the men who deliver your coal. What I’m
trying to say is that these are all different kinds of restlessness.
Don’t go and lump them together and give them a name and then shudder or
get angry at it. You’re drilling your enemies that way, handing them out
a uniform, and urging a lot of your friends to join them.”

“There’s a lot in what you say, Stacey,” said Jimmy Prout. “We’ve enough
enemies without adding to them unnecessarily. I’m all for the school
teachers myself.”

As for Mr. Carroll, he had sat silently gnawing at his gray moustache
during Stacey’s discourse, and he remained, now that it was over, still
appearing to reflect upon it. But at the sound of a sharp pop behind him
he started, shook his head as though to rid himself of troubles, and
watched the champagne being poured into his glass.

“Good!” he cried, with a smile that softened his firm handsome face, and
rose to his feet. “Here’s to Stacey, D. S. O., D. S. C., and my son!
Thank God, he back’s home again, with his duty accomplished!”


                              CHAPTER III

The evening, pleasant as it was, left Stacey with a feeling of
emptiness. When he had finally said good night to his father and gone
upstairs to his own study he wandered about it restlessly, smoking
cigarettes and staring blankly at one after another of the objects with
which he had once affectionately filled it. Everything and every one, he
said to himself, were just the same—or almost. It was inconceivable. He
had gone through something that had destroyed every particle of his
former self, and now he came back to just what he had left. Not, he
reflected, that he wanted his people changed, certainly not in the way
he was changed—whatever that was. What the devil did he want?

Well, for one thing, he would rather like to be able to feel a little
more. Toward Phil and Catherine Blair, for example. He knew that he had
treated them badly. What sort of gratitude had he returned them for
their open-hearted welcome? He shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t help
it. It was all he had felt.

Nevertheless, even though only intellectually, he was sorry. And all at
once he found something he could do about it, and felt immediate relief.
To do something had become his sole means of relief in any situation. He
sat down at the desk in his study and drew out paper and ink.

Then he paused for a moment, reflecting. Of course he might be mistaken
about it. Phil might be prospering. He remembered that he hadn’t even
asked. But he shook his head. No, the signs were clear enough. And, if
he was mistaken, it would anyway do no harm to write. He dashed off the
brief letter at once, never pausing for the best word or expression.

    “_Dear Phil: It has occurred to me that under present building
    conditions you might be having rather a struggle of it on your
    own in New York. I’m writing to know whether you would consider
    coming out here for a time—or permanently, if you can stand the
    place. I think I could find you a job with my old firm. You’d be
    a great acquisition for them, you’d bring a little more
    vulgarity into our—what’s the word?—etiolated architecture,
    and you could live through this difficult and expensive period
    without worrying about how to make both ends meet. Of course I
    know what your independence means to you, and I may be all wrong
    in assuming that you would consider abandoning it temporarily;
    but I figure that when the difficulty of existence passes a
    certain mark it becomes absorbing to the point of destroying
    most of one’s real life, and that this mark is pretty sure to be
    passed by any young man trying to be an architect on his own in
    New York City to-day._

    “_I’ll add a postscript to-morrow morning after I’ve seen
    Parkins (the head of my firm)._

    “_Good night._

                                                       “_Yours_,
                                                        “_Stacey._”

Stacey glanced the letter through swiftly, folded and addressed it, and
laid it on the desk.

Then he went to bed and fell asleep at once.

Waking early the next morning he did not lie still through those moments
of delicious indolence in which most men indulge themselves, but slipped
out of bed immediately and into his cold bath.

His body responded to the shock glowingly. It was magnificently fit. The
muscles of his back and abdomen rippled smoothly as he rubbed himself
with the rough towel. One would justly have admired Stacey as a healthy
handsome animal. And it may be that his obstinate distaste for
speculation, his barely conscious, undeliberate desire to avoid thought,
arose out of his animal instinct of self-preservation, was but the deep
determination not to allow his strong sane body to be affected by his
sick and twisted mind.

He took from the closet a pre-war suit of his, a soft gray, civilian
suit, and in regarding it felt a keener joy than he had felt in stepping
off the steamer or in seeing Phil and Catherine or in drinking champagne
last evening—a keener joy, alas, than he felt when he had donned the
clothes; for they did not seem natural and easy to his militarized body.

Then he went downstairs and out of doors into the well-kept garden. It
was still only seven o’clock and nobody was about—not even his father,
who was an early riser.

But Mr. Carroll did presently appear. “Well, you _are_ changed, Stacey!”
he called jovially, as he drew near through the tall rose bushes. “Seems
to me I remember the time when for you to get down to eight o’clock
breakfast was—hello!” And he surveyed his son critically. “Back in
civilian clothes already, eh?” he observed meditatively. “Well, that’s
right, I suppose. You _are_ a civilian again, of course. And I don’t
think much of these lads who go flaunting their uniforms about for
months after they’re out of the service, determined to wring the last
drop of credit from their performance of duty. Still . . .” He paused.
“Well,” he concluded cheerfully, “there’s one thing. You can put on all
the civilian clothes you like, but nobody with half an eye would be
deceived. You don’t look like a civilian. You look like a soldier.”

“Damn it all!” said Stacey, exasperated, “I know I do.”

His father laughed. “Come on in to breakfast. Do you still eat that
idiotic excuse for a meal you used to—coffee and two bites of a roll?”

“No,” said Stacey, “I eat bacon, eggs, fish—anything I get.”

“By Jove, you _have_ improved!” Mr. Carroll exclaimed, with another
laugh.

After breakfast Stacey drove into town with his father, but left him at
the door of the Carroll Building and walked briskly along the street
until he came to the building in which Parkins and May, the architects
with whom he had worked before the war, had their offices.

He was asked his business formally by the office-boy, new since his
time, but waved him aside and opened the door of Mr. Parkins’s private
room a little way.

“Yes?” said Mr. Parkins. “Oh, by the Lord! it’s Stacey Carroll! Come in!
Come in!” he cried, rising and holding out his hand.

Stacey was pleased at the welcome. There exists between people who have
worked hard together a camaraderie, approaching affection, but
pleasanter since it makes no demands on expression. Stacey felt it for
the men of his battalion; he had forgotten that he felt it for any one
else. The rediscovery was a small pleasant surprise. He shook the
architect’s hand cordially.

“Of course I saw by the paper this morning that you were back,” Mr.
Parkins was saying, “but I’m blessed if I expected you to get around
here to-day.”

“Thought I’d drop in,” said Stacey, collapsing lightly into a chair.
“How are you?” And he scrutinized the older man’s shrewd clean-shaven
face, which showed around the eyes little worried wrinkles, brought
there by the perpetual endeavor to reconcile clients’ ideas with some
modicum of architectural consistency.

“Pretty well! Pretty well!” Mr. Parkins replied. “These have been lean
years, as you know. No building to speak of. But we’ve got all we can do
again now and more too, even though the cost of material and labor is so
high you’d think it would be prohibitive. But a good many people have
made a good deal of money, and, after all, houses have got to be built.
There aren’t enough to go round. We surely can use you, Stacey.”

“H’m!” said Stacey. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m out of the running
for a while. Not coming back.”

“You’re not! Oh, now, look here! May and I talked it over and decided
we’d offer you a junior partnership right off the bat, and now
you—what’s wrong?”

“You’re awfully kind,” said Stacey, “but honestly I can’t—and I swear I
don’t know why. I give you my word I couldn’t draw plans for
a—bill-board at present.”

“Fiddlesticks!”

“Sorry!” Stacey remarked. “But that’s the way it is.” He smiled
ironically. “All this returned-soldier-restlessness stuff, you know.”

Mr. Parkins considered him closely. “Now what _have_ you gone and done
to yourself?” he observed at last. “You _look_ like Stacey Carroll, yet
you don’t seem quite like him. I believe,” he added, with a laugh, “I
really believe I’m half afraid of you. You’re a—”

“Little changeling, yes,” said Stacey, bored. “Now listen, Mr. Parkins,”
he went on quickly. “There’s something I want to ask you to do for me.
It’ll be a favor to me and a good turn to yourself at the same time.”
And he stated Philip Blair’s case, without mentioning his name.

“Well,” said Mr. Parkins thoughtfully, “it might be done, of course.
We’ll need a new man, since you’re not coming back for now—confound
you! But what we need is a good safe man. Is your friend—what’s his
name, by the way?”

“Philip Blair.”

Mr. Parkins uttered an exclamation. “Oh, I’ve seen _his_ work!” he said.
“Happened on a perfect wonder of a library he did in a small New York
town. The villagers disliked it immensely. I asked about him afterward.
He’s the real thing; but the idea of your recommending him to me as a
safe man! It’s outrageous!”

“He’ll be as safe as you like,” Stacey insisted. “Five years of what
he’s been trying to do would have crushed the danger out of an
anarchist. Try him.”

“Well,” said Mr. Parkins, “I will. I’ll try him, because I think it’s a
shame a man like that should be so hard pressed, but I know I’m making a
mistake. You can write Blair that if he wants to come I’ll give him
twenty-five hundred a year on a year’s trial.”

An odd spasm contracted Stacey’s features, but passed at once. “Oh, but
I say,” he protested, in a dead emotionless voice, “you were giving me
four thousand before the war!”

Mr. Parkins shook his head. “I’ll make it three thousand, but not a cent
beyond,” he said firmly. “Philip Blair’s a genius. A genius isn’t worth
more than three thousand to me.”

Stacey laughed. “I like the implication,” he observed.

So he added a postscript to his letter and sent it off to Phil.

At three-thirty precisely Stacey was at Marian’s house. He knew he had a
problem to face, since it was unfortunately true that he had no love
left for Marian and did not desire to marry either her or any one else.
But he had no plan and he had not said to himself that he would not
marry her. He had not said anything at all to himself. He merely went to
her house as per schedule. All that he felt was a sense of something
burdensome—and just a little faint curiosity. After all, he had loved
this girl once upon a time. That was it. “Once upon a time” exactly
expressed it. It was the way you began fairy-tales.

He was relieved, if so slender an emotion can be called relief, that it
was not Marian who opened the door of the house to him. He had been a
little afraid that Marian herself would welcome him with an impetuous
rush. But the door was opened by a maid—and not even the one the
Latimers had had in the old days, at which also Stacey somehow felt
relief.

He went into the drawing-room, hoping to find Mrs. Latimer there; for,
besides feeling that her presence would put off the demand for emotional
moments, he really did want to see her. But she was not there. The room
was empty.

He went over and stood with his back to the fire-place and looked around
him, an odd smile drawing at one corner of his mouth. For again he was
feeling the weak futile tug of old discarded emotions. These vases and
chairs and statuettes, the whole familiar setting of the room, reminded
him of what he had once felt in their presence; which is the same as
saying: what he had once been. Stacey was like a boat floating on the
water, almost solitary, almost loose, but not quite; still attached by a
frayed cord or two to his old self.

But the portières at one end of the room were parted gently, and Marian
stood between them.

Stacey caught the soft sound and saw her at once. But, as he gazed at
her, he continued to smile the same smile.

Nevertheless, what he felt was mixed. He was straightforwardly
contemptuous of her melodramatic behavior, unexpectedly struck by her
fine beauty, and stirred uneasily by memories.

Well, that half pleasurable discomfort is all that most long-parted
lovers truly feel on meeting again, no matter how earnestly in letters
they may have lashed their old emotion to keep it awake. But, since,
even though changed, they are still they, the discomfort readily grows
again to love in the renewed proximity.

Not with Stacey. He was no longer Stacey Carroll, 1914. He was a
different person. His discomfort faded, flickered and went out—all in
the brief moment of silence.

“You certainly are beautiful, Marian,” he said appreciatively, but
without moving.

“Well,” she returned, with a ripple of laughter, “I’m glad you still
think so—and feel so sure of it.” She moved slowly forward a few steps,
toward him.

His mind was quite clear now and working swiftly. He thought rapidly
that five years ago this demeanor of Marian’s would have set his heart
to throbbing with delight. He would have likened Marian to a shy, half
tamed bird, fond yet afraid of being caught. What an idiot he had been!
To-day he coldly found her behavior absurdly affected. All these little
airs and graces! Fiddlesticks! But, far more strongly than admiration of
Marian’s beauty and cool scorn of her coquetry, Stacey was feeling
elation, because it was now obvious to him that she did not love him,
probably had never loved him. Frank love would not accord with these
mincing ways.

Yet with all this only a few seconds of silence elapsed.

Stacey crossed the room to a divan and threw himself down easily into
one corner of it. “Come on over here, Marian,” he said comfortably.

She stood still and looked at him, half archly, half in a puzzled way.
“Stacey, you are—you are the most ardent lover!” she exclaimed.

“And you!” he retorted calmly. “Let’s sit down and talk over our
passion.”

Marian flushed and gave something like a pettish stamp of her small
foot. “I won’t!” she cried.

“Then don’t!” he returned, with a laugh.

However, she seemed to think better of it, for she did come slowly to
the couch and perched herself on the end opposite Stacey. She sat there
gazing at him, one foot on the upholstery, elbow on knee, her small
pointed chin resting in her cupped hand.

Stacey, still smiling, considered her. “You’re perfect like that,” he
said sincerely. “Some Greek sculptor of the Fourth Century—no, the
Third—ought to have carved you.”

“Stacey, don’t you love me any longer?” she asked softly.

“Do you love me?”

She started up. “You’re horrid!” she cried furiously. “Each time that I
ask you a question you ask me one in return. I’ve waited for you—nearly
five years—and this afternoon I looked forward to your coming and sent
everybody out of the house, and then when you come you look at me as
though I were an _objet d’art_ and laugh at me—laugh _coldly_ at me!”

“Not at _you_, Marian,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t laugh at you. I
find I don’t know you at all. Come! Forgive me for being rude. Let’s
talk everything over soberly.”

She sat down again and looked at him hostilely. “I see now why you
didn’t write oftener,” she said haughtily. “I thought it was because you
were too busy. Fancy!”

“No, you don’t see,” he replied, “and it’s difficult for me to explain,
because I don’t understand very well myself. Also the subject’s
distasteful to me. But I owe it to you to try to explain.”

“I think you do,” she said icily.

He nodded, unimpressed by her tone. “It’s like this,” he went on, with
an effort. “You’ve got to see me straight. And if I’m brutal, why, so
much the better for you. I’m not only not the laurel-crowned knight of
your flattering princess’s fancy. I’m not even the person I really was
before I went away. Every bit of sweetness and light has been burned out
of me. I don’t get delicate soft sensations out of anything any more.
The overtones that you love don’t exist for me. Nothing has any glamour.
All I can see in life is a mess of bare conflicting facts, stark naked.”

Stacey had forgotten Marian. His eyes glowed and there was a stern
beauty in his face. Yet he was only leaning abhorrently over the upper
edge of the well. He missed almost everything of importance.

While he spoke, the girl’s features had lost their expression of chill
aloofness. Her lips were parted now, and she gazed at him as though
fascinated.

“And if I tell you that I don’t love you,” he concluded fiercely, “I can
honestly swear that it’s just that I don’t—can’t—love any one or
anything. My saying so shouldn’t hurt anything but your pride, because
you don’t love me, either.”

She leaned toward him ever so little. “How do you know I don’t love
you?” she demanded softly.

“Because you create a setting, play a game, surround our meeting with
little tricks,” he returned, quite unmoved by her coaxing grace.

She gazed at him intently, her breath coming and going rapidly. “Then
you don’t—you truly don’t—even want to kiss me?” she asked.

He returned her gaze. Her coquetry did not stir him; her beauty did.
“Yes,” he said somberly, “of course I do! But not because I find you shy
and alluring. I don’t. Just because you’re beautiful and desire’s a
fact.”

He seized her small wrists and drew her toward him slowly. She struggled
fiercely at first, but then, when her face was close to his, yielded
suddenly and returned his kiss.

“_Now_ don’t you love me, Stacey?” she murmured.

“No!” he cried, releasing her. “Nor you me!”

She rose and smoothed her hair.

“You look precisely like a Tanagra,” he said admiringly.

“If you say anything more of that sort,” she burst out, “I shall hate
you!”

“You’ll do that, anyway,” he replied.

She gazed at him strangely, an expression of cruelty in her fine mouth.
“Ames Price has been imploring me—for two years now—to marry him,” she
said slowly. “I think I’ll do it. Would you mind, Stacey?”

He winced. “Mind? Of course I’d mind! Animal jealousy, too, is a
fact—nasty fact like all the rest of them! But go ahead and marry him
if you’ll be happy with him.”

Her eyes shone for a moment with triumph. Then she laughed musically.
“What a weird afternoon!” she observed, and pressed a bell in the wall.
“Come! Let’s have tea. You’re quite Byronic, Stacey!”

Well, she was a sentimentalist, no doubt, but she was no fool, Stacey
admitted to himself. Come to think of it, he was being Byronic in his
intense antagonistic desire to stand alone, freed from all ties.


                               CHAPTER IV

Mr. Latimer was talking, although it was early afternoon and therefore
not his best hour.

“The supreme importance of the arts,” he said, “is poise. There is no
poise in life itself. Life is mere tumult and shouting. And since there
is no poise there is no meaning. The arts hover above the hurly-burly,
dipping down into it a little for delicate nourishment, but no more _of_
it than a cloud, which sucks its constituent vapor from the earth, is of
the earth. In the country of the arts there is quiet. That is to say,”
he added drily, “there was. The arts at the moment have ceased to exist,
and with them has vanished all that we possessed of value.”

“No doubt,” Stacey assented politely.

But the beautifully enunciated phrases really gave him a feeling of
contempt for Mr. Latimer. And he wondered how he could ever have admired
this polished esthete. His glance wandered to Marian (the only other
person in the room, her mother being out somewhere) who was curled up in
a large chair on the other side of her father. Stacey considered the
girl’s face attentively. She stirred him by her beauty, especially when
seen thus, motionless, carved; yet left him, when everything was summed
up, feeling actively hostile.

Mr. Latimer had taken a small vase from the mantelshelf and was toying
with it abstractedly.

“Leisure,” he remarked, “is anathema to Americans. Yet leisure is all
there is of importance. It is what all men strive to attain through
labor, but, having attained, are incapable of supporting. It is too
noble for their tawdry energetic minds, and they hasten to fill it up
with meaningless movement. They even, I am told, go to witness what they
call ‘photo-plays,’ where, though themselves sitting still, they can
enjoy a vicarious restlessness and be saved from the leisure they dread.
How false an understanding of life, or, rather, what complete lack of
any understanding! The goal of life itself is, after all, just the
eternal leisure of the grave.”

“An admirable epigram,” said Stacey, with no hint of expression in his
face. “I cannot make out whether it belongs spiritually in the
eighteenth century or in the nineties of the last century.”

“In any case it does not belong in the twentieth,” Mr. Latimer returned,
a touch of irascibility in his voice. “Nor do I.” He set the vase down
almost with a bump. “I must go,” he said. “I have an appointment, and
here in America every one is always on time.” And he left them.

Marian uncurled herself gracefully. “Papa is cross,” she observed, with
a laugh. “It is only three o’clock, you see. He does not approve of
early afternoon. Let’s go to the library, Stacey. I don’t like this
room.” And she danced off up the stairs, he following.

She half knelt on a window-seat in the library and gazed out, her mood
seeming to change suddenly from hard to soft.

“The clouds drift and drift,” she said dreamily. “And sometimes they’re
majestic and white with purple shadows, as now, and sometimes they’re
black and terrible, and sometimes mere little pale ghosts of clouds. But
they’re always clouds. They haven’t anything to do with real majesty or
terror or ghosts. (Can one say ‘real ghosts,’ Stacey?) Only clouds. They
just drift and drift. I think I’d like to be a cloud.”

“Why shouldn’t you want to?” he observed callously, “It’s your father’s
theory all over again.”

She whirled around, her face mischievous. “Oh, how funny you are,
Stacey! You _won’t_ care for me any more. You’ll damn anything I do or
say. You’re an enemy, out and out,—oh, yes, you are! Yet you’d be glad
enough to kiss me this very minute.”

“Yes,” he admitted angrily.

“But you’re not going to,” she said, with haughtiness. “Not now or
ever.” She smiled. “Ames Price is coming to see me to-night. Shall I let
him kiss me? It would make him so happy. I think it’s my duty to. Come!
Let’s sit down and talk of duty, Stacey.”

And so she kept it up, as full of witchery as Circe, dazzling in the
bright rapid flash of her moods, swift and lovely as a swallow, soft at
one moment and clouded,—brilliant and gemlike the next.

Yet, through it all, Stacey, though he talked freely enough, was cold,
distant and bored. He was like a man idly watching a sorceress draw
circles and pentagons in the sand and murmur incantations. No spirits
responded. No enchantment ensued. It was merely laborious lines and
words, silly child’s play. The only thing that interested him—a
little—in the performance was the question of whether or not it was
deliberate.

Stacey had continued to go daily to see Marian. He remained unmoved by
almost everything in her that had formerly delighted him. There was no
longer any magic, any mystery. Yet he desired to be near her. Something
she did give him. But as to what it was he did not inquire.

It was a strange relationship, but it is possible that Marian found it
piquant. She seemed fascinated by Stacey, now that he was indifferent to
her.

At last the girl sank lightly down upon an ottoman near the young man’s
feet and gazed up at him, as on that day years before when he had come
to tell her he was going to the war.

“You’re the oddest person, Stacey!” she said, her eyes shining. “Just
like a great rock—a handsome rock. Why do you come to see me? You don’t
need to, you know. You’ve broken our engagement—and my heart,” she
continued elfishly. “I shall tell every one that you have. It will be in
the newspapers. ‘Returned Hero Breaks Girl’s Heart!’”

This was better. There was something cool and hard in this that appealed
to Stacey, wakened a sense of surface comradeship in him.

“H’m!” he remarked, smiling. “Your heart seems to be doing pretty
well—if you’ve got one. _Have_ you got one, Marian?”

“That’s a horrid habit you’ve acquired, Stacey,” she said gaily, “of
never answering a question, but always asking another. I asked you why
you came to see me. Well, since you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. You
come to see me just as you’d go to see the Parthenon.”

The smile faded from his face. By Jove, she was right! (Stacey Carroll,
1914, had been intelligently introspective; Stacey Carroll, 1919, could
always be surprised if some one told him truth about himself. Also
annoyed, generally. But not this time.) Yes, that was it, he supposed.
The bodily fact of Marian wakened his atrophied sense of beauty—but
differently than in the old days, austerely save for the touch of
desire.

“Now when you can see things as straight as that why do you go in so for
everything rococo?” he demanded harshly. “Why do you embroider and
sentimentalize?”

She gazed at him, her mouth compressed, her eyes brilliant with
anger—which was certainly justified. Then her expression changed and
she shrugged her shoulders, gracefully.

“So you see,” she said calmly, “you were just asking a silly careless
question a moment ago. You don’t care whether I have a heart or not.”
She smiled again. “What an odd pair we are!” she went on. “Poor me! Not
engaged any longer! Deserted after all these years! You must be sure not
to tell papa until you’ve given me time to get engaged to some one
else—Ames Price, I think you said I might marry. Papa would be too
awfully angry.”

“Why?” Stacey asked. “Is he so anxious to be rid of you?”

But at this Marian only laughed without replying.

Stacey had of course seen Mr. and Mrs. Latimer more than once by this
time. His old admiration for Marian’s father had gone, like so many
other things. He found Mr. Latimer a cultivated futile gentleman with an
interest in baubles and a talent for intelligent monologue. The only
thing about him that awakened any interest in Stacey was a kind of
irascibility that Stacey did not remember as formerly characteristic of
him. Mr. Latimer was really sharp at times, in a suave polished way,
with his daughter and his wife.

But Mrs. Latimer, though she had certainly aged, had clearly not done so
because of such trifles; for she bore her husband’s occasional pettish
outbursts with a pleasant detached tolerance. They might have been the
outbursts of characters in a book she was reading, for all the effect
they appeared to have on her.

She had welcomed Stacey with quiet happiness, and he had felt at once a
comfort in her presence which he felt in that of no one else. Yet she
had said nothing of importance to him, had talked of externals even the
time or two that they had found themselves alone together for a few
minutes.

He left the Latimer house rather early on the afternoon of this
unsatisfactory interview with Marian. Something about Marian antagonized
him strongly, even now that he was surely free; so that the impulse he
felt to seek her society repeatedly in this way revealed a bond of some
inexplicable sort and irked him.

He walked swiftly north till he came to the handsome park the entrance
to which lay at no great distance from the Latimer home. And, plunging
into the green shady paths, he felt a sudden relief. To cut loose from
it all—all streets! all men! To be free! There was no joy for him in
the full-leafed June beauty of the trees or in the bird songs among
them,—no call to comradeship. Quite otherwise. It was solely as release
that he instinctively welcomed them.

Striding aimlessly onward in this mood, Stacey suddenly heard his name
called and swung about quickly to see Mrs. Latimer sitting on a bench at
the edge of the path he followed and waving a green parasol at him.

“I couldn’t help calling to you,” she said pleasantly, “though I
oughtn’t to. You look so splendidly alone, as though you didn’t want to
see any one.”

“Oh, but yes,” he returned, “I’m glad to see you! No one else; but you!”
And he sat down on her bench.

“Now what old woman could help having her head turned by that?” she
exclaimed, with a smile.

He scrutinized her face. Yes, she had grown older, he thought, but not
ignominiously; in some way that made age seem of value. Even in regard
to her Stacey was not curious as to what experiences of body or soul lay
beneath the changes her face showed; but he accepted what she was, as a
gracious fact.

“Where have you come from, Stacey?” she asked.

“From your house,” he replied, with an acid smile.

“Oh,” she observed, “so that’s why you were marching along with the air
of being so glad to be alone! Have you broken—I mean, have you and
Marian broken off your engagement?”

“Yes,” said Stacey coolly, “I believe so.”

After this they were silent for a while.

“Oh,” he observed suddenly, as an afterthought, but really with some
little touch of human sentiment, “I hope you won’t feel hurt! I should
be sorry to hurt you.”

“I?” Mrs. Latimer exclaimed. “Gracious, no! I’m immensely relieved. I
wouldn’t have had you and Marian marry for anything in the world.”

Stacey did not know whether she was being a vixenish mother-in-law or an
unnatural mother, but he found her remark amusing taken either way, and
laughed. She laughed with him, but more gaily.

“Oh,” he added after a moment, “I forgot! Marian says we must be sure
not to let Mr. Latimer know at present.”

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Latimer, as though it were too elementary a
truth to deserve mention. “Marian’s much more intelligent than you ever
gave her credit for being,” she added, an instant later.

“Yes, I know that,” Stacey admitted freely, even though he did not see
the present application of the remark, or, indeed, why both Marian and
her mother deemed it essential that Mr. Latimer should not learn that
the engagement was off.

“Naturally,” said Mrs. Latimer thoughtfully, poking holes in the gravel
with the tip of her parasol, “I could see that things were not the same
as once. Well, that was to be expected. I shouldn’t have been at all
surprised to have you show a kind of—of fond indifference to Marian.
But what I don’t understand—there’s so much I don’t understand about
you, Stacey—is the positive hostility I’ve felt sometimes in the looks
you gave her. It was as though you hated her. Why? Poor Marian! She’s
just the same as always. Is that itself—her sameness—the reason?”

“No,” Stacey muttered, “of course not! I don’t know why.”

“Can’t you—find out why?” she asked gently.

Stacey reflected, painfully and with resentment at the need. Finally he
drew his hand across his forehead and looked at Mrs. Latimer. An odd
fanatical intensity glowed in his face.

“I don’t know,” he said, speaking thickly and with difficulty. “I hadn’t
thought. But perhaps it’s—because Marian’s perfection is so—dependent
on wealth. I see Marian,” he went on, his words suddenly pouring out,
“as a flower that you get by fairly watering the ground with money. Put
her by herself in the panting sweating world and what would she be? Her
grace is money! Her ease—money. All her charm—money! Everything in her
except her chiselled Greek beauty is money! I hate money!” And he fell
into tumultuous silence.

“So _that_ was it,” Mrs. Latimer said in a tired voice. “Poor Stacey!
Confidence for confidence,” she added abruptly, after a pause. “Have you
ever wondered why we gave up Italy and came here to live?”

“Often,” he answered, surprised. “I used to fancy it was your
decision—your feeling that Marian ought to know America.”

She smiled oddly. “_My_ decision! It would make no difference where
Marian lived. She would never at any point touch the real world. No, it
was not my decision. You see, our income, which was considered a tidy
little competence at the time Mr. Latimer inherited it, remained
stationary while the cost of everything grew and grew. America was
expensive, but in it Marian could marry money—money, Stacey! And, of
course,” she added, with a kind of bravado, “you were a splendid
_parti_!”

Stacey felt sickened by the revelation. Oddly enough, five years past,
when he had been incorrigibly romantic, it would not have disgusted him
a tenth as much as now when he was stripped clean of illusions.

“I see,” he remarked. “So to-day, with the present cost of living,
Marian simply must marry. What an economic waste to have thrown away
these five years in waiting for me! Why do you tell me this, Mrs.
Latimer?”

“Only because it’s a relief to tell somebody,” she replied, “and because
you said what you did about money, and because I wanted to show you that
one might feel as you did, with even more reason, and still live and be
tolerably happy.”

He shook his head.

“Very well, then,” she concluded desperately, “because truth is truth,
and if I ever connived at anything against you I want to tell you of
it.”

Stacey smiled. “You’re much more girlish than your daughter,” he said.

They were silent for a long while.

Then: “Did you have an awful, awful time, Stacey?” she asked softly.

He started. “Where? In France? Oh, yes, of course,” he replied, in a
matter-of-fact voice.

“I thought of you so often,” she went on. “It must be dreadful to be an
idealist and then see all your ideals go—violently—one by one—”

“Violently, yes,” he interrupted coolly. “Not one by one.”

“Crushed to death by facts—not average facts, all the horrible evil
facts herded together and organized until they must have seemed normal!”

“Oh,” he said, “facts are facts! They aren’t either evil or good. And
you’re much too polite in saying that I was an idealist.
‘Sentimentalist’ is the right word. Can’t say that the method employed
to remove my illusions was particularly gentle, but I’m grateful enough
for the removal.”

There was a look of pain on Mrs. Latimer’s face. “No! No!” she cried.
“It isn’t fair! There’s good disillusionment and bad! It’s good to have
false prettiness, false sentiment—whatever is false—scrubbed off, but
it isn’t good, it isn’t fair to a man, to see only pain and death and
agony and mud for four years and be made to feel that that’s all there
is of true. It isn’t fair! It isn’t!”

Stacey’s face was pale but calm and touched with a distant haughty scorn
of all things. “Oh, it wasn’t only that!” he said in a chill voice. “I
doubt if that was even the profoundest lesson in disillusionment. That
was the lesson of pain and brutality and ugliness and
fatigue—incredible fatigue. It even had gleams of relief—flashes of
lightning in chaos. Men showed themselves beasts, but with a capacity
for enduring more suffering than you’d have thought possible. There was
funk, of course,—individual cowardice and rank, bestial, mass terror,
just as there was mass cruelty. But there was amazing heroism, too. And
the men did carry on in spite of everything. Oh, no, the trouble with
the front line was the senselessness of squandering so much life. The
place to get real disillusionment—where you learned the senselessness
_and_ sordidness of life itself—was behind the lines, back where things
were neat and pretty, where the officers had feuds over questions of
personal prestige, and stupid fools gave orders disposing of men’s
lives, and the peasants gouged the soldiers for all they were worth. Or
back in Paris where the shop-keepers gouged every one. And the Y. M. C.
A. with their silly sloppy Christianity—all for the best in the best of
all possible worlds! Or down in Italy, where butter and sugar were
rationed down to the minutest fragments and there wasn’t enough so that
women and children could always get even those tiny rations, and yet
some people had butter on their table in quantities three times a day
and bought sugar in five-kilo packages at their back doors at six times
the established price. _And_ the American Red Cross with its silly
pompous ‘majors’ and ‘colonels’ out for decorations! ‘Colonel’ So-and-So
thought he’d been slighted, and ‘Major’ Thingumbob absolutely _was_
going to be given a place on the balcony when that ceremony came off, by
God he was or know the reason why! _And_ the Committee on Public
Misinformation! And no coal to run trains enough to carry the people who
absolutely had to travel, and President Wilson coming to Rome with a
million journalists!” He laughed harshly. “Or, for the matter of
that,—America! I haven’t seen very much of it yet, but I gather—oh, I
gather a great deal!”

Stacey paused at last. But he did not look crushed or dejected by his
enumeration of abuses. He looked more alive than before. He looked like
a young, evil, disdainful god.

It was Mrs. Latimer whose face was white. “Poor Stacey!” she murmured
brokenly. “All true, no doubt, but not the whole truth! Poor Stacey!”

“Poor me?” he asked. “Why? I’m all right, and free—or almost.”

“Free, or almost?” she repeated.

He frowned. “Wisps of old things hang around futilely and bother me a
trifle—like soft fog around a ship, but I’ll get rid of them,” he said
confidently.

“So as to be free?”

“Yes.”

She reflected for a moment. “Why do you want to be free?” she asked
timidly. “What will you do with freedom, Stacey?”

“Do with it? Nothing! It’s an end in itself. Isn’t it aim enough to want
to get rid of association with the kind of thing I’ve been chronicling?”

She shook her head. “It might be. It isn’t _your_ aim, Stacey. And
anyway one can’t be free. Oh, Stacey, forgive an old woman who is fond
of you,—but you—you’ve come back a different person than you went
away, and indeed you must, to live, follow that old, old advice: ‘Know
Thyself’!”

He stared at her sullenly.

“I know you’re determined not to, but you must!” she cried.

“Haven’t I,” he said coldly, “been regaling you with reams about
myself?”

She shook her head again. “You haven’t even scratched the surface. It’s
late, my dear boy,” she added. “Please take me home.”


                               CHAPTER V

Philip Blair and Stacey had been hunting houses. Catherine and the boys
were to come on when one had been found and enough furniture rented to
live with until their own could be shipped.

Houses to let were scarce, applicants numerous, and rents high. But
Stacey employed obstinate pressure and actually presented his friend
with a choice of three. Which, better than anything else, indicates the
position of the Carroll family in Vernon.

The thing was done, the lease signed, and the agent had left them; but
Phil and Stacey stood for a little while on the wooden porch of Phil’s
new house, looking down at the city.

Vernon was, for the most part, flat, but one hill of moderate eminence
it did possess, which, in the narrow early days when the city was young
and a man was deemed successful if he had at sixty amassed a fortune of
a hundred thousand dollars, had been the supreme centre of fashion, as
was evidenced by the towers (to say nothing of the lightning rods) on
the now dingy frame houses. Stacey himself had lived on this hill when a
small boy, and the school he had attended still crowned it. But those
were the days when Vernon’s best citizens boasted that Vernon had a
population of a hundred thousand (which it did not have). Now Vernon had
two hundred and twenty-five or perhaps two hundred and fifty thousand,
and its best citizens did not much care. The crowded business section
had flowed to the foot of the hill and even burst like a wave upon it,
spattering its slopes with small garages and second-rate shops. Noise
rose and the odor of smoke. Fashion had long since departed—to the edge
of the city, where the Carrolls lived, or still farther, to the hills
that rose beyond.

Stacey withdrew his eyes from the prospect and glanced sharply about him
at the porch, the steps, and the small front yard. “Sordid kind of place
to have to live in,” he remarked. “Sorry I can’t get anything better for
you.”

Philip Blair smiled his pleasant gentle smile. “You know you don’t think
that, Stacey,” he returned. “You’re only saying what you take to be the
proper thing. At heart you don’t feel that it matters in the least where
one lives.”

“No, I suppose not,” Stacey assented absently. He was again staring off
at the city. It stretched out, monotonous and unbroken save where the
afternoon sunlight glittered on the two converging branches of its
sluggish river.

“I wish,” said Phil shyly, after a pause, “that you’d let me thank
you—for this whole business.”

“For God’s sake, don’t!” Stacey exclaimed sharply. “Thank me if I give
you anything real—peace or—or freedom. Don’t thank me for anything to
do with money!”

Indeed, he did not want to be thanked. Gratitude was a bond, the
recognition of gratitude a bond.

Phil looked at him sadly, but Stacey did not see; his eyes were still
fixed on the city.

“The solidity,” he muttered at last, “the damned solidity of it! Did you
ever see anything like it?” he burst out, turning on Phil.

“The solidity of what?”

“Of that! Of the city! I didn’t feel it at first when I got back. It’s
getting on my nerves now. There are churches in it where men preach at
it, and lecture halls where men talk at it, and auditoriums where it’s
sung at and played at,—faugh! Children with puffed-out cheeks trying to
blow down a house! Why, look at it! It’s only sixty years old, yet it’s
more eternally unchangeable than the Pyramids!”

“Well,” said Phil slowly, “what’s wrong with that? Why should it
change?”

“Why? The whole world has gone through agony, has been wrenched and torn
until not one atom of it, not one emotion, not one value, remains as it
was,—and here is this damned ignoble changeless place that doesn’t know
there’s been a war—or pretends not to know, so that it won’t be
expected to change. Nothing can change it, I tell you,—but bombs!”

“But,” Phil asked steadily, “how do you want to change it? What do you
want to do for it?”

“Nothing!” Stacey cried. “I don’t want to change it, either for better
or worse. Nobody can change what a war like this couldn’t change. I
want,” he concluded, his eyes glowing strangely, “to wipe it out,
annihilate it! Bombs, I said. Nothing else is any good.”

A look of pain crossed Philip Blair’s face. “I think,” he said, “that
you’re a little mad, Stacey.”

“Maybe,” said Stacey, with a short laugh.

“Because it isn’t only Vernon you’d have to destroy. Everything’s that
way—unchanging. It has to be, I suppose, to endure. People have their
own lives. They can’t change so very much. Even mothers don’t die
because their sons have died. They suffer for a while, then forget.
Vernon and the Middle-West shock you now because they’ve been too
removed and too unimaginative to suffer at the war. They’ve scarcely
felt the war. While you’ve been in places all raw with pain. But they,
too, will get over it and be like Vernon. It isn’t Vernon you’d have to
destroy. It’s all humanity.”

Stacey’s face was inscrutable. Not a muscle in it had moved. But his
eyes had grown dark with a kind of shadow. “Maybe,” he said again
quietly. “Come on! Let’s go.”

They went down the steps and along the brief board-walk to Stacey’s car,
which was parked before the house.

Dinner was at seven, and they were in the living-room at ten minutes to.
It was the one admonition Stacey had given Phil on the latter’s arrival
the day before. “Do as you please in everything—only be on time at
meals,” he had said.

Mr. Carroll was waiting for them, with cocktails ready to pour. He was
in a genial mood and nodded appreciatively at the younger men’s
promptness. “Pleasure to have to do with people who understand that
seven means seven,” he observed. “You wouldn’t believe, Blair, the
trouble I used to have with Stacey. He was almost as bad as his sister
in his contempt for time.” He poured the cocktails. “Make them myself
nowadays,” he explained. “I have profound respect for Parker, but I
don’t want to strain his integrity too much. You can’t even trust the
men at the club not to rifle one another’s lockers. Not that Parker
wouldn’t make a more creditable member than a good many of them.”

They laughed.

“Dare say,” remarked Stacey. “But now this question of being on time,—I
can see two sides to it.”

“Two?” his father exclaimed. “Not a bit of it! There’s only one side.”

“No, it’s a matter of two opposing theories of life. One is that you
should always be on time so as to avoid inconveniencing one another and
wasting energy and having dishes get cold. The other is that you
shouldn’t worry too much about promptness or you let time get the upper
hand of you and run your life.”

“Fiddlesticks!” Mr. Carroll interrupted, “It will run your life more if
you neglect it.”

“Yes, that’s a point for you. I knew an Italian family in Rome,
delightful people,—several branches of the family there were—lived all
over the city. They were always going places together _en masse_. But it
took them forever to get assembled. Once they stood in the rain in three
separate bunches in three distinct and distant parts of Rome because
they’d all forgotten at just what time they were to meet and where. No,
you’re a slave if you disregard time and a slave if you bow down to it.
You’re had either way.”

“Pshaw!” said Mr. Carroll.

“I rather think that there’s a little more to it,” Phil observed
quietly. “I think Mr. Carroll’s side is right. It _is_ better to be
prompt. But not because you save time that way and are more efficient.
Rather because you establish an apparent medium of smoothness to live
in, make everything _seem_ permanent, eternal and of value. To have the
nine-seven train pull gently out of the Pennsylvania Station at
precisely nine-seven gives you a feeling of confidence, a sense that
everything’s going to be all right. An illusion, of course, but
essential. A lot of bohemian marriages break up just because they don’t
have it there, stable and making marriage seem stable.”

Mr. Carroll nodded. “Something in that, maybe,” he observed.

But dinner was announced, and they went in.

“Did you find a house?” Mr. Carroll inquired after a while.

“Yes,” said Phil. “I’m awfully pleased.”

“Where?”

Stacey told him.

Mr. Carroll fairly snorted. “Stacey, I’m ashamed of you!” he cried.
“Blair can’t live in a hovel like that. He can’t surround his children
with all that coal-dust and noise.”

“I give you my word, Mr. Carroll,” Phil protested, “that it’s a lot
better than where we’ve been living. I really like the place. I can run
a lawn-mower in the evening.”

But the older man shook his head impatiently. “Now look here!” he said.
“This house of mine is three times too big for Stacey and me, especially
since Julie married. You bring your wife and children here to
live—anyway until you can find something really decent or build if you
decide to stay.”

Philip Blair flushed slightly. “I never heard of anything quite so
generous as that, sir,” he replied, a trifle unsteadily, “but I can’t
possibly accept.” And there was a gentle decision in his voice.

“Well, well, well! I’d have been glad to have you,” said Mr. Carroll,
and dropped the subject.

Stacey recognized that his father’s offer was more than ordinarily
generous, especially since Mr. Carroll liked to lead his own life. And
he would have lived up to it, Stacey knew. He would have tried to crush
Phil’s opinions into the mold of his own and he would certainly have
been cross if Phil or Catherine were late at meals or showed Bolshevik
leanings, but in his own way, and with externals, he would have been
both impetuously and consistently generous. He would probably even have
given Phil a key to the wine-cellar. All this Stacey understood, and
with it his father. But his understanding was intellectual. He should
have felt a warm glow, but he did not. The only emotion he felt was a
faint sadness at feeling nothing. “Dead!” he muttered to himself. “Dead
as they make ’em!”

Yet he would not really have chosen to feel.

At coffee time a friend of Mr. Carroll’s dropped in to play pinochle,
and Phil and Stacey went upstairs.

But Stacey was restless. He wanted to see Marian and resented the
desire—another bond that he could not shake free of. Moreover, he knew
that in Marian’s presence he should dislike her. So the endurance of the
desire was doubly exasperating. All this lack of harmony—even of common
sense!

“I think I’ll go over to see Marian Latimer,” he said at last to Phil.
“Be glad to have you come along. Really, you know.”

“Thanks,” returned Phil, “no. I’m a bit fagged. Quite sincere about it.
Run along.”

“I’ll find out first whether she’s in,” Stacey said, and lifted the
receiver of the telephone on his desk. They were in his study. “If she
isn’t I’ll go to a movie,” he added, while waiting for his number.

He got the house and, after a minute, Marian. She laughed musically in
response to his question. “Why, yes, come! Do come!” she said.

Her laughter made him angry—but not with her, with himself. It was not
her recognition of her power over him that he minded. It was that power
itself.

He walked to her house—a matter of a mile. He never used a motor car
nowadays if he could get anywhere without one. Swift walking calmed the
persistent fever of his blood.

Mr. and Mrs. Latimer were in the drawing-room, and he stood there for a
few minutes, chatting with them.

“Marian is in the library,” said Mr. Latimer presently. “She left word
that you were to go up as soon as you came.”

“Ames Price is there, too,” Mrs. Latimer put in quietly.

“All right,” said Stacey, with apparent equanimity. “Thanks.”

But he saw Mr. Latimer flash a sudden glance of anger at his wife, who,
however, went on with her knitting calmly.

“So that’s the way the land lies,” Stacey reflected, as he climbed the
stairs. “Papa has been told, or, more likely, has found out. Decent of
Mrs. Latimer, very!” Nevertheless, he was unhappy.

He knocked at the library door, and Marian called to him to enter.

She was curled up in her favorite arm-chair, and Ames Price was rising
from a smaller chair near-by.

Marian gave Stacey a look of mischievous defiance. But he went over and
shook hands with her so pleasantly and coolly that her eyes grew
suddenly puzzled.

“Hello, Ames,” he said then, shaking his rival’s hand. “Haven’t seen you
for years. How’ve you been?”

“First-class!” replied the other, eyeing Stacey doubtfully. “You look
pretty fit.”

He was a tall, fair, loosely built man of forty, smooth-shaven and
slightly bald. Stacey had known him in a casual way for years, but all
that he really knew about him was that he had inherited money, had
managed it well enough, was said to be a bit fast—but not excessively,
and played an admirable game of golf. So far as Stacey or any one else
was aware, there had been (except for golf) no passions in Ames’s life.
Stacey felt a little sorry for him, that he should have been overwhelmed
now by this one. Marian would make him uncomfortable. She would demand a
great variety of emotions of him.

But, in spite of himself, Stacey also felt a hot jealousy. By Jove,
Marian _was_ beautiful!

“I suppose,” said Ames, with proper politeness, “that you must have had
a pretty rough time in France. You were over the deuce of a while. I
didn’t get across myself—division just about to sail when the Armistice
came along.”

There was a touch of constraint in his tone. Stacey understood it at
once. It was as though Ames had said: “You come back a hero. What chance
have I got against you?”

“Oh, well,” Stacey returned, pleasantly enough, “that’s all done with
now. Here we all are again. There’s no change in anything, really.”

He glanced at Marian. She was surveying the situation distantly, with a
faint amused smile. Stacey’s own sensations beneath his calm demeanor
were turbulent and mixed. He desired Marian keenly, hated to let her go,
yet felt an antagonism for her that his desire increased rather than
diminished. He was jealous of Ames, yet not in the least hostile toward
him,—almost kindly, in fact.

“Going to build houses again?” Ames asked.

Stacey considered him for a moment, then Marian, and in that moment
wrenched himself free.

“No,” he said, “I believe I’ll go away—travel. Funny thing, but a long
stretch of the war-stuff turns a man into a rather solitary animal.
Maybe it’s the noise of the guns that’s shut him off for so long from
companionship.”

He was not really thinking, except vaguely, of leaving Vernon, and had
spoken principally to reassure Ames; for which uncharacteristically
benevolent act he was immediately rewarded. The other man’s face relaxed
from anxiety into an expression so blissful as to be silly. In spite of
his conflicting emotions, Stacey could hardly keep from laughing.

“We shall all be awfully sorry to have you go, Stacey,” said Marian
gently. “I shall, especially.”

This might be directed at Ames (Marian was certain to spend a great deal
of time in hurting Ames), but Stacey did not think it was. For it was a
simple remark, simply phrased. And Marian sat there, quiet, carved,
thinking no doubt that Stacey liked her best that way.

Well, he did.

Before long he rose to go. He would have liked to remain and look at
Marian, but he had a well developed sense of fair play. Let Ames be
happy! And deeper than this was the feeling that since he, Stacey, had
decided for freedom he had better begin to act on the decision at once.
That was it—act! do something! It was the only release from everything.

But when he rose Marian rose too, and accompanied him out into the hall,
and closed the door behind her. Ames did not seem to mind. When Marian
excused herself his rather vacuous face was as radiant as before. What
more natural than that a girl should find it fitting to say good-bye to
an outgrown lover of her early youth?

Ames would not, perhaps, have been so calm about it had he witnessed the
setting and details. For outside the door Marian paused only for an
instant to look up at Stacey, then, with a gesture of her hand to him,
hurried down the hall a few yards, stopped abruptly at a door that
opened off from it, turned the knob gently, and, giving first one swift
glance up and down the hall, pulled Stacey a little way into the room
beyond.

He gazed around him quickly. There was no light save that which came
from the hall. It was Marian’s bedroom.

He turned on her and seized her wrists, his heart beating violently. But
his hostility rose, wave for wave, with his passion. What a trick to
play on him! Deliberate! Deliberate!

But she stood there, close to him, perfectly still, looking up into his
eyes. The corners of her mouth trembled a little.

They kissed, madly.

“Good-bye, Stacey,” she murmured faintly, when he had released her.
“Don’t think I was—trying to hold you. I wasn’t. I only wanted to say
good-bye—like this. I think you’re—right—and I won’t hate you—any
more than I can help. Good-bye!” And, with another swift glance up and
down, she drew him back into the hall.

But when she was already half way to the library door she turned and
came back a step or two. Her eyes were wet, but her mouth had curved
into a mischievous smile.

“Poor Ames!” she said, and was gone.

Stacey managed to leave the house without seeing either Mr. or Mrs.
Latimer. He walked away swiftly. And when the confusion of his senses
wore off he began to see into things a little more deeply than before.
He saw his feeling toward Marian as it really was and as, he perceived,
Marian had understood it—animal desire and love of beauty. Desire was a
bond. It hurt to have it go. Stacey felt a painful emptiness, as though
he had torn something violently from his heart. Yet he also felt a kind
of exultation.


                               CHAPTER VI

Life in Vernon went on and on, and Stacey watched it proceed. But his
attitude remained one of scornful indifference through which flickered
occasional gleams of sudden eager interest, anger or hate. The
perception of greed was one of the things that stirred him most
frequently, and it grew within him until it amounted almost to a fixed
idea. His hatred of money, its symbol, became fanatical. He would have
renounced his own income entirely, except that he did not want to throw
himself into the mêlée just yet, but somehow to see things through from
outside—though through to where, he could not have said. As it was, he
retained two hundred dollars a month and sent the rest to the relief
fund for Viennese children. In this he was making no effort to live up
to a principle, to conform himself to some ideal of life; if he had
been, he would have sent all. He was, almost solely, striving for
freedom from something he hated. Not quite solely, however, or why did
he make this particular disposition of the money? He refused to answer
the question. He would be free from what he loved as well as from what
he hated.

One carefully covered-up aspect of life in Vernon did interest Stacey.
Existence there _seemed_ the same as formerly, people thought it
was—though perhaps a few of them only pretended to think so; but at
bottom certain fundamental relationships were shaken. Men paid eighteen
dollars for a pair of shoes for which five years back they would have
paid seven, or, not buying them, would next day have to pay
twenty-three; women would offer sixty dollars a month for a maid, then
not get her. The majority said that the cost of living was outrageous
and servants scarce, and went superbly on as before. But Stacey grinned
at them malignantly. He stamped on the ground and heard a hollow sound.

Therefore, although by this time his father talked to him almost with
constraint and gave him often a wistful puzzled glance, Stacey himself
felt a juster appreciation of his father than at first. Mr. Carroll was
partizan down to the tips of his toes, but he did know that more was
abroad than mere surface changes. His angry thought of Bolshevism was an
obsession. And, knowing his father’s nature to be kindly and impulsive,
Stacey gave him credit for something more than the mere desire to hold
what he had got,—which Stacey thought he discerned beneath the
vehemence of most perturbed capitalists—Colin Jeffries, for instance.
No, Mr. Carroll was in arms for principles he believed in.

As for Stacey, he neither believed in them nor in those that opposed
them. It was unfortunate. He would have been much happier if he could
have thrown himself actively into the fray on one side or the other. Not
because he craved human association; he did not. He was singularly
solitary and aloof—with a white-hot kind of aloofness. But because he
craved action.

There was strike after strike of labor in Vernon. They became almost the
only subject of conversation. Even women discussed them, at teas or in
their electrics as they drove to the movies. There was no coal for a
while; then the workmen in all the mills struck; then the river
dock-hands went out, and were promptly joined by the truck and dray men.
This last strike tied up nearly everything.

Stacey was interested. He walked down to strike headquarters one
afternoon and faced one of the sullen groups of men gathered in the
dishevelled yard before the low brick building.

“What is it you fellows want?” he asked curiously.

There ensued a rumble of hostile voices and some sharp cries. “Beat it,
you bum!” “Get to hell out of here, you damned aristocrat!”

“Oh, shut up! I want to know,” Stacey said impatiently. “You must have
some idea about it.”

The rumble became a roar, a man struck out at Stacey, and Stacey
promptly knocked him down. There was a general mix-up during which
Stacey was surprised to find a man—one of the laborers, so far as he
had time to see—fighting efficiently on his side.

The police, who must have been close-at-hand, presently smashed up the
affray and rescued the two, whereupon Stacey, rather battered, but
happier than he had been for a long while, swung about to investigate
his comrade-in-arms.

“By the Lord! Burnham!” he cried, with real pleasure.

“The same, Captain,” said the other, instinctively raising his hand in
salute, then dropping it again awkwardly.

But Stacey seized the hand and wrung it. Burnham had been first sergeant
in one of his two companies.

Stacey gave his name to the police, observed that he was much obliged
but that there was nothing to make a fuss about, and walked away with
Burnham.

“Quite like old times, eh?” he remarked.

“Oh, this!” said Burnham, and spat scornfully.

“What are you doing up here?” Stacey demanded. “Thought you lived in
Omaha.”

“Well, I did. And my wife and kids are still there with my wife’s
sister. But I heard there was good work with better pay up here, so I
come up to see, and I was drivin’ a truck, and then the boys went out—”

“Oh, look here!” cried Stacey. “Then you were one of them! I swear I’m
sorry! This will put you in bad with the others, won’t it?”

Burnham grinned. “They won’t exactly be coming around and begging me to
have another drink of ginger extract on them,” he admitted. “It don’t
matter, Captain, honest it don’t! I was going back to Omaha anyway.”

Stacey stopped walking and stared at him curiously. “Why on earth did
you side with me?” he asked.

“I dunno,” said the other, looking down and shuffling with his feet on
the sidewalk. “Habit, I guess. No,” he added, looking Stacey in the eye,
while a dull flush spread over his face, “no, it ain’t that. I’d go
anywhere you went, Captain, even if it was straight to hell. Pshaw, hell
would be a song compared with some of the places I’ve gone with you!”

Stacey was touched and also disturbed. What a responsibility! Here was a
bond with a vengeance!

“I’m blessed if I know why,” he murmured, and they walked on. “And yet,”
he exclaimed suddenly, “you’ve been here in Vernon for I don’t know how
long and haven’t even come to see me! Is hell the only place you’ll
accompany me to? Have you got a special preference for it?”

Burnham hung his head. “Well, you see,” he muttered, “you’re such a
confounded swell up here, Captain!”

Stacey again paused abruptly and turned on the man. “Damn you, Burnham,
I’m not!” he cried. “What do you say that for?”

“Well,” said Burnham apologetically, “maybe you don’t want to be, maybe
you ain’t, but I guess you’ll have a hell of a time not to be. Looks to
me like every one’s gone back the way they was before.”

Stacey felt profoundly discouraged, the comment was so obviously true.

“Was that what the men down there had against me?” he inquired almost
humbly, walking on once more.

“Sure!” Burnham assented. “The boys are all right, but they’re touchy.
And you blow in, not meaning any harm—but they didn’t know that, not
knowing you like I know you—and you ask them what the matter is, like a
man giving orders, and they get sore.”

Sullen anger with himself crept over Stacey. It was all true enough. He
_had_ spoken to the men crisply, like one in authority. There was no use
in explaining to them, or even to Burnham, that this was not because he
was a Vernon Carroll but because he could not rid himself of the
military habit of command in word and thought. There was no use in
explaining anything to anybody. Bonds? He was tied hand and foot with
them!

“By the way,” he asked quietly, “what _is_ it they want, Burnham?”

“They’re getting seventy cents an hour—my crowd, I mean. They want
eighty.”

“I see.”

They continued, in silence, until at last they reached the Carroll
house. Burnham paused to look up at it.

“Some place, Captain!” he observed appreciatively.

“You know it?”

“Yes, I—I’ve been by here before,” said Burnham sheepishly.

“Oh, you’ve been by here before, have you?” Stacey returned sharply.
“Well, you’re not going by this time. You’re coming in.”

“No, now listen, Captain! I’m going to take the ten P.M. for Omaha.”

“Well, you can start for it from here as well as from anywhere else.
Come now! March!”

Newspaper reporters were ringing Stacey insistently on the telephone.

“Pshaw!” he answered. “Nothing to it. Went down to strike headquarters
to ask silly questions, and got into a baby fracas, as I deserved to. No
casualties. No, I can’t tell you any more. There isn’t any more to
tell.”

He took Burnham up to his study and made him sit down. “Now I tell you
what we’ll do,” he said. “About nine-fifteen or so we’ll drive around to
your boarding-house or wherever it is you’ve been living and pick up
your things—”

Burnham was grinning. “Gee, Captain, you’re innocent, considering what
kind of things you’ve been through!” he interrupted. “D’you think after
what’s happened that I’d find any of my stuff there? I’d find a bunch of
the boys waiting to beat me up.”

“Oh!” said Stacey. And, paying no heed to Burnham’s embarrassed
protestations, he pulled a travelling-bag from a closet and packed it.
“Oh, shut up!” he said finally. “Go into the bath-room there and wash.
You’re even dirtier than I am.”

Presently the door of the study was thrown open and Mr. Carroll hurried
in, red-faced and out of breath. “I’ve just heard,” he panted. “Did
those damned scoundrels do you any—”

“Sh!” said Stacey, raising his finger to his lip, as Burnham came out of
the bath-room. “Father, this is Burnham, my first sergeant—C
Company—and as good a man as I’ve run up against. Incidentally, though
he’s one of the boys who’re striking, he turned in and fought them with
me this afternoon. Whole thing very silly. Neither of us hurt at all.
Burnham will stay to dinner.”

Mr. Carroll looked at Burnham keenly and held out his hand. “I’m glad to
know you, Sergeant,” he said.

“_American Legion Veteran Attacked By Strikers!_” announced the
newspaper headlines next morning.

“_The striking dock and dray men added another outrage to their
intolerable behavior when they yesterday violently attacked former
Captain Stacey Carroll, D.S.C., a hero of_ _numerous battles in the late
World War and son of Edward H. Carroll of this city. Captain Carroll had
gone to strike headquarters at 13 Plumb Street at about five o’clock
yesterday afternoon in a generous attempt to learn the men’s side of the
case. His friendly questions, however, were met by a brutal assault.
This time, however, the strikers mistook their man, and the only result
of the attempted outrage is that Michael Dennis (24) has a broken nose,
Vladimir Sarovitch (20) a black and blue facial coloring that improves
his former appearance, while Lorenzo Cecchi (21) is in the City Hospital
with a fractured wrist. The public will be relieved to learn that
Captain Carroll is uninjured except for a few superficial bruises.
Dennis and Sarovitch were arrested on a charge of assault and battery
but were promptly released on bail, money, as is well known, being
plentiful at strike headquarters._

“_This brutal and uncalled-for assault upon a hero of the World War
marks_” . . . etc.

Stacey was infuriated. He wrote a sharp fetter to the paper, then, with
grudging common sense, tore it up and wrote another milder one in which
he protested that the whole affair was due to a misunderstanding and was
anyway too unimportant to deserve mention in the press.

He went to the hospital to see Cecchi, a handsome dark-haired Neapolitan
who stared at him angrily at first out of immense black eyes till Stacey
apologized to him in Italian, after which the two conversed in that
language with an increasing good humor that was heightened by their
puzzled pauses over Stacey’s mistakes and Cecchi’s dialect. The
interview put them almost on terms of intimacy. Stacey gave the
Neapolitan, who had fought in the Battle of the Piave, some Austrian
bank-notes printed in Italian for use in Venetia during the invasion,
and Cecchi responded with a tiny silver medal of the Madonna.

“_Accidenti alla stampa!_” (damn newspapers!) they agreed heartily.

But Stacey’s pleasant frame of mind on leaving the hospital was
destroyed by his glimpse of the morning paper’s noon edition. His letter
was there, but ruined by the caption above: “_Captain Carroll’s Generous
Reply—Makes Light of Cowardly Attack—Would Exonerate Strikers_,” and
by the fulsome eulogy of his behavior that followed. A vibrant editorial
completed the wreck, insisting that while the personal magnanimity shown
in Captain Carroll’s letter must appeal to every red-blooded citizen,
the time had at last come when law and order must be . . . etc.

Without the slightest desire to align himself either on one side or the
other, save that he felt a little more personal sympathy with the
strikers, who anyway lived in touch with the few realities of life, than
with their opponents, Stacey saw himself established irremediably as a
Saint-George-like champion of law and order. He damned the press more
earnestly than before. He lunched at the club with his father, whose
eyes shone with approval of him, and he had, moreover, to undergo an
ordeal of praise and congratulation from his father’s friends, together
with briefer, less intense words from men of his own age. (The younger
men, he told himself, were anyhow less grandiloquent nowadays than the
older, though perhaps this was only because they _were_ younger). Once
or twice he tried impatiently to explain the silly business as it really
was, but unavailingly. Anything he said was taken, he saw, as merely a
further proof of his generosity. He gave up the attempt sulkily. Clearly
his position was fixed. People had made up their minds about him, his
reputation was solidly established, and nothing he might henceforth do
could affect it. It struck him that the levity with which people
acquired convictions would be ghastly if it were not so ridiculous.

Deserting the club with a feeling of relief, he wandered aimlessly about
the city. But toward five o’clock, being caught in a sudden rain-shower,
he took refuge in Philip Blair’s house.

As a matter of fact, there were other houses closer-by that would have
afforded shelter, and it was at least partly from preference that he
chose this one. He had not regained his old warm affection for Phil and
Catherine, but their society was like a temporary balm applied to his
fevered restless mind. No touch of greed was in them. They were, Stacey
concluded, hardly human.

Phil had not yet returned from the office, but Catherine was at home
with her two sons—Carter, now nine years old, and Jack, who was seven.

She welcomed him with her pleasant smile, that was like light shining
coolly through an alabaster bowl, but also with characteristic
constraint. She was only perfectly at ease with him when Phil, too, was
present and less demand for expression was thus put upon her. “Shy,”
thought Stacey once again. “Shy as Truth herself!” But he did not mind
her shyness; he liked it. Being with Catherine was like bathing in a
bottomless pool of clear translucent water. Fancies such as this,
resembling those among which he had formerly lived so familiarly, came
to him now only when he was with the Blairs. The fact should have
revealed to him much that was obscure in himself; but it did not.

There was no constraint in Carter’s and Jack’s greetings.

“Uncle Stacey,” cried Carter immediately, “I got A in arithmetic on my
report in New York and A in reading and B-Plus in spelling!”

“Well, that’s good,” said Stacey. “What did you get in conduct?”

Catherine smiled.

“C-Plus,” said Carter in a small voice. But his depression did not last
long. “Uncle Stacey,” he exclaimed, “do ‘Fly away, Jack! Fly away,
Jill!’ for him.” He pointed to his brother. “I bet he can’t guess the
secret! I bet he’ll look all over the room for them!” And Carter grinned
a delighted toothless grin.

“H’m!” observed Stacey, obediently making the necessary preparations, “I
remember some one else who looked all over the room for them a few years
ago.”

“I guess you mean me,” Carter replied. “Well, I guess I did. I guess I
was awful stupid maybe.”

“Carter,” said his mother, with a laugh, “there aren’t that many
‘guesses’ in the whole dictionary.”

Presently Phil arrived. He looked tired with the heat, but his thin face
brightened when he saw Stacey there playing with the boys.

“Stacey, you’re a fraud!” he said. “What sort of behavior is this for a
misanthrope? You ought to be gloating over what Jack and Carter will
grow up to be.”

Catherine put an end to the game and sent the boys out to play on the
porch. “Yes,” she said, as she closed the door upon them, “I guess
Stacey doesn’t mean all he says. I guess he’s really kind-hearted. I
guess he likes children, maybe.”

Phil stared at his wife and smiled. “For heaven’s sake, Catherine,” he
demanded, “what’s come over your English?”

Stacey laughed. “Corrupting effect of Carter,” he explained. “Yes, of
course I like children.”

“Would you like to have some of your own?” Phil asked.

Stacey reflected, frowning. “Yes,” he replied at last, “I think so. Just
one, a boy, so that I could try bringing him up.”

Phil and Catherine both laughed.

“Upon my word,” said the former, “this is delightful! Fancy finding you
not merely humanly usual but positively universal—a bachelor with
theories on education! What is your present theory, my son?”

Stacey smiled. However, it had become difficult for him to smile, and
when he did so his face took on uneasy lines. He was not at his best
when smiling. He was at his best when his face remained impassive and
soldierly.

“Oh,” he said drily, “it’s a romantic enough theory, quite
Rousseau-like. I’ve just invented it this minute. If I had a son I
should take him to live in the country, in some place where the
landscape was neither too grand, and thus apt to arouse vast disturbing
aspirations in him, nor yet ignominious and depressing, like these dingy
middle-western plains. I would have him live among trees, that are
handsome and do no harm, and associate familiarly with a great many
kindly simple-minded animals such as dogs, cows and horses, with a few
cultivated elegant animals such as cats, and—less frequently and
intimately—with one or two goats, who are old, sophisticated and
skeptical, the _libres penseurs_ among animals.”

“And with no humans at all, eh?”

“Well,” said Stacey dubiously, “perhaps now and then an occasional, very
choice human, such as you or Catherine, just to show him what human
beings _can_ become,—but rarely, Phil, rarely!”

“Thanks, from Catherine and myself,” Phil observed, with a rather weary
smile, “but I’d rather you’d select some one else. I should be
profoundly unwilling to pose as an example.”

“And I!” echoed Catherine. “Besides, I shouldn’t have time. I should
have to be getting dinner for Phil and the boys—just as I must do now.”
And she rose. “I’ve not been able to find a maid yet.”

But Stacey, considering Catherine and Phil, perceived, with a softening
touch of sympathy, that they were both very tired and that no doubt he
had been adding to their fatigue. These two lived with a life of their
own, apart, serene, modestly adding their few grains of pure gold to
that appallingly small treasure which represented the sole remainder of
all these ages and ages of human existence. Yet because they did so,
thought Stacey, because they were clear pin-points of light in chaos,
all life was against them, chillingly indifferent where not actively
hostile. The blackness swirled about with a malignant, dully sentient
desire to engulf and extinguish them. They were repaid for their
foolhardy torch-bearing, their unforgivable sin of having some meaning,
by being ground down beneath the sordid difficulties of bare existence.
Ames Price, who played golf, or Jimmy Prout, who tried law suits, or
Colin Jeffries, who handled a dozen corporations of no value to life,
had carpets unrolled obsequiously before them as they walked; while Phil
must wear his genius frayed on hack labor and Catherine must cook for
her family in a small hot kitchen. “What a brute of a world! What an
ugly perverse mess of a world!” thought Stacey, with a fierce sick
disgust. Worth nothing! Its hard won treasure was too tiny to justify
such a colossal grovelling incoherence.

But while Stacey was reflecting moodily in this manner Catherine had
gone into the kitchen. Stacey could hear her there, moving pots and
pans. Suddenly he sprang up and went out after her.

“Look here, Catherine!” he said. “It’s too hot to cook this evening!
Come on out with me. We’ll all go and have dinner at a chop-suey place.
The boys, too, of course.”

She looked at him doubtfully for just a moment, then smiled. “Thank you,
Stacey,” she said simply. “That will be awfully pleasant. I think Phil
is pretty tired. I’ll go and get the boys ready.”


                              CHAPTER VII

Stacey and Mrs. Latimer were having tea together. But, since Stacey had
ceased to visit the Latimer home, they were having it at the “Sign of
the Purple Parrot.”

This was a small but expensive tea-room recently opened on the fifth
floor of a building close to the river front, and Stacey, as he entered
it (for the first time), glanced swiftly about at its white walls, low
white ceiling, small-paned windows with hangings of purple-figured
cretonne, and at the purple wooden parrot on a tall standard in the
centre of the room. A silver vase containing a single yellow rose
decorated each of the ten or twelve little tables. Finally Stacey turned
in mute amazement to his companion, since it was she who had suggested
the place.

“They have very good tea,” she said, with an amused smile.

However, Miss Wilcox, proprietor of the tea-room, advanced toward them.
“I’m so glad you’ve come early, before any one else, Mrs. Latimer,” she
said, “because you can have one of the two tables out on the balcony.
I’m sure you’d like that. They’re always the first to go.”

And accordingly they went outside and sat down in wicker chairs beneath
a purple and white awning.

“Don’t you think it’s a nice idea,” asked Miss Wilcox, standing near
them, “to try and use our river esthetically, Captain Carroll? It _is_
Captain Carroll, isn’t it? I recognized you from your photograph. We’re
honored to have you come. It seems such a shame to have this magnificent
river and then use it solely for ugly business purposes. But that’s so
often true in America, I think. Saint Louis is the same way. I should so
like to have my modest little effort followed by others.”

Stacey said politely that he hoped it would be, and Miss Wilcox
presently moved away.

“You mustn’t mind her, poor thing!” Mrs. Latimer observed kindly. “She’s
devoted to her institution. It’s her child.”

“Preposterous virgin birth!” murmured Stacey, gazing down at the river.

It sweltered in the intense August sunlight. Barges and tugs moved up
and down its sallow waters, and vast warehouses flanked it. Across on
the further side was a train yard with multitudes of red freight cars,
idle or with engines shunting them about. Trucks and drays rattled over
the cobble stones of the streets leading down to the river (the strike
having been settled some weeks since), and shouts rose and the odor of
grease. And Stacey, turning away from it to order tea and scones from a
capped and aproned maid who had come to his side, looked at her as
though he did not believe in her.

“A movie world, Mrs. Latimer,” he remarked finally.

“Yes,” she said, “it is silly, isn’t it? This painted parrot, and the
tea roses, and the tiny, fussy, white-and-purple room, trying to make
itself noticed by that immense fierce reality out there! But it doesn’t
do any harm, and I thought the incongruity of it might amuse you. Where
has your sense of humor gone, Stacey? Once you would have laughed gaily
at this.”

“Where does a china tea-cup go in an earthquake?” he responded absently,
looking down again at the river, then back at the room. “No, of course
there’s no harm in it,” he said, after a moment, “since it is so
obviously absurd, but you might, I suppose, take it as a fantastic
caricature of something—”

But Miss Wilcox was seating people at the other table of the balcony.
“. . . so often true in America, I think,” she was saying. “I _should_
like to have my modest little effort followed by others.”

Mrs. Latimer smiled, but Stacey did not. He waited impassively until
Miss Wilcox had finished speaking and had walked away.

“Now in the movies,” he continued, “you are presented with standards of
behavior—sweetness and light, purity unsoiled, virtue triumphant, best
of all possible worlds—that have nothing to do with real life. Seems
impossible that real men and women could have posed for the pictures.
You’d think the contrast with the promiscuity of their actual California
divorce-court lives would be too strong. Not a bit of it! Well, that’s
all right—if people like that kind of thing. Personally, I think it’s
sickening. No matter how abominable real life is, I’d a thousand times
rather have to live in it than in a Pollyanna, Mary Pickford,
glad-and-tender world! Faugh!”

“So should I,” said Mrs. Latimer. “But if weary people find release in
such tawdry fairy-tales—”

“Sure! Let them! Nobody’s business! But there’s the trouble. The silly
stuff isn’t just taken as release. It gets accepted as truth. I mean to
say, the ideals and standards are taken as those of real people. How in
heaven’s name they can be by any member of a movie audience who knows
anything about himself, I swear I can’t imagine, but they are.”

“Ah, but that’s the point!” said Mrs. Latimer gently. “They don’t know
themselves. Even you don’t know yourself, Stacey.”

“I know enough about myself to see that I’m not like that. And what
results? That any glimpse of truth is condemned as rotten, abnormal,
pathological. For the movies are only a glowing example of a spirit that
corrupts everything. Why, if a novelist were to take any man alive—I
don’t say me, but somebody better—Jimmy Prout, for instance—and tell
the whole truth about him, the ghastly things he did and the ghastlier
ones he wanted to do but didn’t dare, what a row there’d be! The
reviewers would call the book abominable, the hero a hopeless rotter,
though every one of them has done or wanted to do things just as bad. A
movie world, Mrs. Latimer! No truth in it!”

“Yes,” she said, “no doubt. I’d like it different, honester. But what
harm does the pretence do? It even sets a standard of a sort, doesn’t
it?”

“What harm?” he cried. “Why, it makes people shocked at German
atrocities, as though they were sins committed by some alien inhuman
monsters. Down with Prussianism? As much as you like! I’m glad we beat
the Germans. So far, so good. But how about the Prussianism in
ourselves? A movie world! A smug, lying, movie world!”

“But there is kindliness in it, too,” she said wistfully, “and
generosity. I’ve met them both.”

“Yes,” Stacey assented somberly, “there is—in sudden impulses, more
frequent, I’ll even concede, than these passing gusts of bestiality.
But, so far as I can see, there’s only one real force, one motive, in
life, that stays on and on and never dies. Greed!” he concluded
fiercely.

Mrs. Latimer gazed at him for a moment in silence.

“And still you don’t see it all,” she said at last very gently. “You
won’t look deeply enough into yourself. If you did you’d see the
splendid spectacle of the human soul fighting all this that you
describe—and without quarter, dear Stacey, as long as you have breath
in you. Has your hatred of greed and lies no significance?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, drawing his hand across his forehead. “And I
don’t see that I’m doing any splendid fighting. I don’t know what to
fight. I merely fume impotently.” But the wild look of pain had
disappeared from his eyes.

He fell to wondering about his companion. No optimist, surely. Doubtful
of most things, but sweet and mellow in her skepticism. How had she
attained such serenity?

“You must know Catherine, my friend Philip Blair’s wife,” he said
suddenly. “You will like her, and she you. There’s truth in the hearts
of both of you, and yet you’re different, somehow.”

“When you do say pretty things, they’re pleasant to hear, Stacey,” Mrs.
Latimer replied, with a faint girlish blush, “because you seem not ever
to be saying them for effect.”

Soon they rose to go. Neither of them had so much as alluded to the fact
that Marian was to be married to Ames Price in a few weeks.

That same evening Stacey attended a meeting of the American Legion. His
life was like that now, inconsequential. He went pointlessly from one
unrelated fact to another.

Being in a far from constructive frame of mind, he had nothing against
the Legion and nothing in favor of it. It had indeed occurred to him
that if an organization founded on no common conviction, but on the mere
fact that its members had all been in the army, should come to exert
political influence, that influence would certainly be confusing and
might be harmful; on the contrary, if the young men who had been
soldiers wanted to play together, why not? But these were idle thoughts.
At heart he did not care one way or the other about the Legion. If he
had shown more interest he might perhaps, in view of his record, have
been elected commander of the post; but this is doubtful. He was a
wealthy son of a wealthy father, and class antagonisms were not absent
from the Legion.

Up to now he had attended only one meeting, but he had learned that
to-night a protest was to be presented against the engagement of Fritz
Kreisler to play in Vernon in the coming autumn; and Stacey, disgusted,
was out to see if there was anything he could do to head off such
nonsense.

It was a full meeting. There were several hundred men in the large hall
when Stacey entered, and tobacco smoke hung over them in a dull blue
mist. The commander of the post was already in the chair, and the
business of reading minutes was under way. Stacey dropped into a seat
and waited abstractedly.

He did not have long to wait. Excitement buzzed in a group near the
centre of the room, and a young captain sprang up. Stacey knew him by
sight. His unit was that to which Jimmy Prout had belonged. It had never
left Camp Grant.

“Mr. Commander and Comrades!” he began tensely. “You know what I want to
say. It’s about this business of letting an enemy come here and take our
money, just as if nothing had ever happened. You know who I mean. I mean
Kreisler. Kreisler was our enemy in the war. It doesn’t make any
difference that he didn’t happen to fight against Americans or that he
was out of it before we went in. He was on the wrong side. He supported
the side that did all the—the atrocities you know about. And what I
want to say is that if we’re asked to give him our support and our money
it’s an outrage. And so,” he added, unfolding a paper, “I propose the
following motion:

“We, the members of the John Harton Post of the American Legion, hereby
express our amazement and strong disapproval of the action of the
manager of the Park Street Theatre in engaging Fritz Kreisler, recently
a soldier in the Austrian army, to play at a concert in the city of
Vernon less than one year after the conclusion of a great war during
which thousands of American lives were sacrificed to defeat the very
principles that Herr Kreisler supported. And we hereby request the
manager of said theatre to cancel Herr Kreisler’s engagement, and notify
him that failure to do so will result in an attitude of marked
disinclination to patronize said theatre on the part of the members of
this post.”

And the young captain sat down amid applause, during which half a dozen
voices seconded the motion.

“Are there any remarks?” asked the chairman calmly.

Stacey was smiling a little at the contrast between the phraseology of
the introduction and that of the motion, but, half risen in his seat, he
was also looking about him keenly. It did not strike him that the
tensity was universal. There were sluggish centres of indifference in
the hall, and not many remarks were being made.

Presently he rose to his feet, obtained recognition, and made his way to
the front of the room amid some considerable interest.

“I quite agree with Captain Small,” he said, leaning against the
chairman’s desk, “that it doesn’t make any difference that Kreisler was
an Austrian instead of a German, and that the unit in which he fought
never faced an American unit. Aside from that, I disagree with him in
everything. It strikes me that for this post to pass any such motion as
that proposed would be silly. Kreisler fought against us? Well, what of
it? So did a lot of other good men. If we don’t admit that we depreciate
our own achievement. Gentlemen, I call to your attention the advice
given some months since by a newspaper in Rome. ‘There are a large
number of people sitting in a large number of offices, and especially
those who never saw service at the front,’ this paper said, ‘who ought
to be made to write: _The war is over! The war is over!_ twenty times a
day until they get the fact into their heads’.”

There was a murmur of laughter; but Captain Small was on his feet,
protesting angrily. “Mr. Commander!” he cried, “I object to the
insinuation that Captain Carroll has made—I mean to say, that I never
saw active service. If I didn’t it wasn’t my fault, and I—”

The chairman rapped with his gavel. “I am sure Captain Carroll intended
no such suggestion,” he observed. “Go on, Captain.”

“Certainly not,” said Stacey coolly. “It was through no fault of Captain
Small’s that he did not get to France. He was, I believe, one of the
first to volunteer upon America’s entry into the war. But, having made
that perfectly clear, and since the point has arisen, I call it to your
attention that both the proposer of this motion and those who seconded
it happen to be men who, though through no fault of their own, did not
see fighting.”

A rumble of voices interrupted him, but he waved his hand for silence.

“Wait a minute! Let me finish! I say this not to create dissension, but
because I want to show that I’m speaking not just for myself but for the
point of view of the men who had the luck—good or bad—to fight the
Germans in Flanders and the Argonne.”

He leaned forward and scrutinized the faces of the audience swiftly.
There was something compelling in his presence. Undoubtedly he dominated
the crowd, even against their will.

“You Franck!” he called sharply. “Are you against letting Kreisler
play?”

“N-naw!” stammered the man addressed, startled.

“And you, Davies? You, Markovitch? You, Einstein? Jones? Thorburtson?”

“No!”—“No!”—shakes of the head—negatives all.

“Bruce?”

“Jesus Christ! no, Captain! Let him play and—”

Laughter broke out tumultuously, and the chairman pounded with his
gavel.

“That’s all,” said Stacey, and sat down.

“I think,” said the commander, when silence had been partly restored,
“that it would be unfortunate to divide this organization up into those
who saw fighting and those who did not. We should stick together in
everything.” But his words were perfunctory. He had been severely
wounded at Les Eparges. “All in favor of the motion signify by saying
Aye. Opposed, No.”

The motion was lost.

Stacey had won. But he was under no illusions. He had won by force, and
he had made more enemies than friends. When he left the hall at the end
of the meeting he was a solitary figure at whom men looked from a
distance. He did not care. He preferred his solitude.

But outside, at the foot of the steps, Edwards, the commander, caught up
with him and limped off beside him. He was a mechanic and a student,
self-educated, and popular with labor. In high quarters he was solemnly
suspected of being a socialist.

“What you said was right enough, Carroll,” he observed meditatively.
“The trouble was with the way you said it. Too much outside. Too harsh
and scornful.”

“Quite true,” Stacey assented. “That happens to be the way I personally
am—harsh and scornful.”

Edwards shook his head. “You saw too much of it, I guess, Carroll,” he
remarked. “Four whole years, wasn’t it? God in heaven! And more mud than
we ever saw. Years more of mud! Filthy thing, the war, wasn’t it?”

Stacey laughed shortly. “Wait twenty years and see how people talk about
it,” he said. “Banners waving! Steel-capped heroes! Glory! Glory! We’ll
be talking that way, too.”

They walked on in silence.

“Oh, by the way, Edwards,” said Stacey suddenly, “you’re a labor man. I
wish to God you’d set me right about that strike business. The thing was
too silly the way it got into those rotten papers. I—”

Edwards was laughing quietly. “Pshaw!” he interrupted. “Do you think we
don’t know the facts? That’s one thing we do know. The boys aren’t down
on you. They’re not even down on Burnham now, though he did turn against
them. Can’t say that you’re personally popular—too harsh and scornful,
but you’re respected.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Stacey, with genuine relief.

“You ought to crawl through the needle’s eye and come in with us,”
Edwards added, after a moment. “I don’t believe you give a damn for your
money.”

“You do, though,—you labor people,” Stacey returned coldly. “You’re out
for all you can get, regardless. How do you expect me to take sides
either for or against you? Greed on one hand, greed on the other.
Everywhere.”

“Saw too much of it, Carroll,” Edwards repeated. “Years too much.
’Night. I turn down here.”


                              CHAPTER VIII

Marian was married at Saint Grace’s early in September, and Stacey was
present at the wedding.

A number of people looked at him curiously, for it was known to some
that he and the bride had formerly been engaged; but they found nothing
in Stacey’s face or bearing to reward them. There was general interest
in the wedding, since Ames Price and Marian Latimer were both prominent;
there were no excited whispered comments. No gossip linked Stacey’s name
with Marian’s. And, indeed, it is an odd fact that it was difficult for
a man and still more difficult for a woman to get talked about adversely
in Vernon. This was particularly true if they were socially prominent.
In that case they must do something almost publicly scandalous, must
literally be “asking for it.” Which unfortunately does not signify that
morals were any higher in Vernon than elsewhere.

Stacey’s sensations were as mixed as ever. He was able to perceive the
smooth elegance of the show, made up of the flowers, the soft light
creeping through the stained glass windows of the handsome church, the
rustling of costly dresses, the low murmur of fashionable voices, the
smiles, the easy greetings, the ushers, and the discreet music of the
organ. And he was even able to note that, though Marian was fetching
enough to arouse at her appearance on her father’s arm a sudden hum of
admiration before silence fell softly, she was not really at her best in
that trailing lace-and-satin wedding gown. No, she was more beautiful in
a plain tailor-made suit with a short skirt. She would have looked best
of all with her fair hair drawn back simply and bound with a ribbon,
bare armed, and with a kirtle falling only to her knees. But beneath the
surface calm of Stacey’s mind fire smoldered. He was angrily stirred,
angrily jealous; for he had not freed himself completely from desire of
Marian. Had he, after all, been a fool to renounce her? he wondered. He
might have stood there by her side in Ames’s place. But at this he
caught himself up scornfully. What? he thought brutally. Deliberately
chain himself and her to a life of hopeless incompatibility because he
desired to possess this girl’s beautiful body? Was the craving of his
whole soul for freedom less passionate than the mere craving of his
senses for satisfaction?

Poor Stacey! Contradictory, stormy, inharmonious! Made up of
dissonances. Repelled by Marian, yet desiring her; avid of freedom, but
avid, too, of hate—an enslaving bond if ever there was one; more
passionately and truly in love with beauty than ever before, yet
destructive of it in himself; full of power with nowhere to direct it;
hard and bitter, yet honestly anguished by the pain in the world.

The ceremony over, he made his way out of the church as quickly as
possible, but paused for a moment on the sidewalk to glance at the
interminable line of handsome waiting motor cars. The irony in their
expensive patronage of one of Christ’s churches made him suddenly smile.
Then he set off on foot for the Latimer house, where the reception would
be held.

It was very well done, he thought,—adequate, handsome,—er—elegant,
without being vulgarly lavish; roses enough, but not “bowers” of
roses—though “bowers” was what the paper next morning would say there
had been; champagne punch, but not tubs and pools of it; decent air of
gaiety, but no riot. Well, you could count on Mr. Latimer to carry the
thing off in the right way. It was what he was for. Fifty-odd years of
careful training, with never a moment wasted, had fitted him for the
task.

Stacey wondered what Mrs. Latimer thought about it all. Oh, she would
probably be as detached as always, humorously but not unkindly amused by
it. However, he had no chance to find out. Mrs. Latimer was much too
busy receiving.

His one real curiosity was to know how Marian would look at him when, in
the line, he shook her hand and Ames’s. He decided that she would be
candid, simple and virginal, as became a bride, with no hint of anything
in her greeting. But he was wrong. He was unfair to Marian, fancying her
far more deliberate than she really was. The swift look she gave him was
strange and enigmatic, and stirred him. There was a touch of defiance in
it, as though she had said: “Well, you would have it this way! Do you
like what you’ve done?” And he could not blame her if the words she
spoke were merely the proper words. There were people all about.

Later he came upon his sister, Julie.

“Oh, Stacey,” she said, “why couldn’t you be nice and go with me to the
wedding? Jimmy’s out of town, so I went all alone. I saw you across the
church from me and thought I’d pick you up afterward, but when I came
out I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

He smiled at the protective solicitude in her tone. “Oh, well,” he
returned, “I’ll drive back with you to your house for a little chat when
you’re ready to go.”

“I’m ready now,” she said quickly, and they went out to her electric.

No one else had ventured to make any comment to Stacey when Marian’s
engagement to Ames Price had been announced; even Mr. Carroll had only
looked at his son in an odd puzzled way. But Julie had ventured. She had
asserted loyally that Stacey was much too good for Marian, and that
Marian didn’t care whom she married so long as he had money. He had
reflected at the time that, though Julie simplified things down to bare
essentials, it was essentials that she selected. She was not unlike
their father in this, he thought. She returned to the subject now, as
they glided along the city streets.

“I don’t care!” she broke out hotly. “I think she’s horrid! Of course I
know it must have been you who broke off the engagement—now wasn’t it,
Stacey? Why won’t you admit it? Why, _anybody_ would be _proud_ to marry
you!—but then for her to go and marry a stupid person like Ames Price,
old enough to be her father, too, less than three months later,—why, I
think it’s cheap! That’s what Marian is—cheap!”

Stacey laughed, amused at her desire to comfort him. He enjoyed being
with his sister; nor was there anything patronizing in his feeling for
her. He was not doing so admirably with a complex mind that he could
afford to look comfortably down upon Julie for having a simple mind. And
she was not stupid. He thought she did rather well with life.

“Oh,” he observed, “Ames isn’t as old as all that! He’s only forty or
thereabouts. I’m almost thirty-five.”

“Well, he looks hundreds of years older—”

“Here! Take care!” Stacey interrupted, stretching out his hand toward
the lever, as the car barely grazed by a heavily laden motor-van.
“Julie, you’re a public menace!”

“—than you, and he can’t do a thing except play golf.”

Stacey laughed again, this time at Julie’s imperturbable calm.
“Everything’s all right, old girl,” he said, “and you needn’t try to
apply balm to my bruised heart, though it’s nice of you to want to.”

And they got out, having reached the Prouts’ handsome brick residence,
the plans for which Stacey had drawn.

But the maid who opened the door for them followed them into the
living-room. “Mis’ Prout,” she announced tragically, “Annie’s going to
leave!”

“Is she?” said Julie, drawing off her gloves. “Well, that’s a nuisance.
Excuse me a minute, Stacey dear, while I telephone. Go mix yourself a
high-ball. You’ll find everything on the sideboard in the dining-room.”
And she sat down at a small mahogany desk and opened a tiny cupboard
that concealed a telephone.

Stacey obeyed and presently returned with his glass to the living-room,
where he listened to his sister call up two employment agencies to make
application for a cook, and telephone an advertisement to two
newspapers.

“You really are a wonder, Jule!” he said, when she had closed the desk.
“Calm and efficient as they make ’em.”

“Oh,” she returned, opening her eyes wide in surprise, “that’s nothing!
It happens so often that I should be a silly if I were upset by it now.
Perhaps you noticed that I didn’t even have to look the telephone
numbers up in the book. Now we can talk.”

But just at this moment the maid returned to announce the visit of a
Miss Loeffler, who followed close upon the maid’s heels.

“Hello, Irene,” said Julie pleasantly. “Glad you dropped in. You don’t
know my brother, Stacey, do you?”

Miss Loeffler gave Stacey a nod and a brief firm shake of the hand, then
threw herself down on the davenport, crossed her legs, and swung the
right one vigorously. She looked about twenty-four years old, had dark
bobbed hair, a small pretty face with restless dark eyes and a petulant
mouth, and wore a brown street suit with a very short skirt.

“Of course I don’t approve of you, Captain Carroll,” she said crisply,
“because you _are_ Captain Carroll, a tool of militarism in the late
capitalistic war. No, I’m glad to meet you, but I don’t approve of you.”

“No, you wouldn’t, of course, Irene,” Julie observed placidly.

“Oh, well,” said Stacey, “even pity from you’s more dear than that from
another.”

“Naturally, if you quoted any one at me, it would have to be some one
hopelessly old-fashioned, like Shelley. Can I have a high-ball, Julie?”
she asked, jumping up. All her movements were abrupt, like her voice.

“Of course,” said Julie. “Oh, no, Stacey, don’t try to get it for her.
Irene will be cross if you do.”

Nevertheless, he followed Miss Loeffler into the dining-room and at
least stood by while she mixed her high-ball.

Suddenly, in the midst of the operation, she turned to him and gazed
into his eyes. “What are you really like, Mr. Carroll?” she demanded
intensely.

“Awfully orderly,” he replied, reaching out to restrain her hand that
held the silver water-bottle. “Can’t bear to see things spilled.”

“Huh!” she said disdainfully.

They went back to the living-room and sat down again.

“See you’ve both been to the wedding,” remarked Miss Loeffler. “You look
it. Have a lingering odor of ceremony about you. All very smooth and
elegant, I suppose?” And she lighted a cigarette.

Julie was crocheting. “No, Irene,” she said, “you needn’t go around
pretending to despise weddings and then come here and try to worm a
description of this one out of me. If you wanted to know what it was
like you ought to have gone to it and seen for yourself.”

Stacey laughed, as much at his sister’s keenness as at her guest’s
eccentricity. But Miss Loeffler was vexed.

“I don’t pretend!” she asserted hotly. “I do dislike weddings. And if I
ever want to go and live with a man I shall, without making a silly fuss
about it, and then when either he or I get bored we’ll simply break
off.”

Julie sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll find it a very nervous wearing life,”
she remarked calmly. “I shouldn’t care for it myself, but then I’m—”

“Oh, perfectly hopeless, Julie! You belong back in the
eighteen-eighties. What do you think about it, Mr. Carroll?”

“About marriage?” Stacey asked. “Nothing at all. Doesn’t interest me.
But I should say you people were at least as Victorian as Julie. You’re
quite as excited about the necessity of not having a ceremony as
old-fashioned people are about having one.”

Miss Loeffler insisted angrily that this was not true, but presently
grew calmer.

“Anyway, you’re right about one thing,” she said, finishing her
high-ball, then setting the glass down on the floor and dropping her
cigarette end into it. “The whole question’s overstressed. We’ve got
other bigger things to think about. Well, I must go. Just dropped in for
a minute. See you again soon, Julie. You going, Mr. Carroll? Give you a
lift if you are.”

“Thanks,” said Stacey, getting up. He found the girl physically
attractive, and he was glad of anything that would keep his thoughts
from Marian. He followed her to her handsome run-about, and they set off
swiftly.

“Of course,” she said, “I don’t expect to have a car much longer.”

“No?”

“No. When we have Soviets in America I suppose such cars as remain will
all be in the service of the public. Of course they may put me to
driving one, but more likely I’ll have to cobble shoes or something.”

“And a very good thing, too,” said Stacey. “Pleasant occupation, nice
leathery smell, and lots of time to reflect on universal subjects.”

She frowned. “You don’t believe in me at all, do you?” she demanded,
looking at him petulantly. “You think we’re all—”

But in her excitement she had pressed her foot on the accelerator
instead of the brake, so that they dashed past a policeman who had
raised his hand to stop them, swerved madly around the front of a
trolley-car that was approaching on the cross street, sent pedestrians
flying to left and right, and returned to a normal speed only a hundred
yards farther along the avenue, fortunately not crowded, that they were
following.

Stacey sighed. “There’s not a pin to choose between you and Julie,” he
remarked patiently. “You both try to kill me the same afternoon.”

Miss Loeffler laughed girlishly. “That _was_ stupid of me,” she
admitted. “And you were quite the calmest thing I’ve ever seen. But
truly,” she went on earnestly, keeping the car, however, at a discreet
twelve miles an hour, “it’s serious. You’d be surprised to know how much
is stirring deep, deep down right here in Vernon, that you’d think was a
positive stronghold of capitalism. Come with me now, will you?” she said
eagerly, “and let me show you?”

“Show me what?”

“People who are really thinking, people who get together and see things
straight—the social revolution, Bolshevism.”

“Dear me!” said Stacey. “I knew Vernon was no longer provincial, but I
had no idea it was so metropolitan as all that.”

“Oh, you can laugh!” she returned darkly, “but you’ll see. Of course you
understand we trust your discretion.”

“Of course.”

She turned off from the avenue and stopped the car before an office
building. “We meet here,” she announced, “in an ordinary office-room,
because it’s so conspicuous that it’s perfectly safe.” And they went up
in the elevator.

The large room which they presently entered had been given the semblance
of a club. There were numerous easy chairs around the floor, chintz
curtains at the windows, and across one end of the room a huge oak table
with a vase of flowers and many books and periodicals. Fifteen or twenty
people were in the room, some standing, some sprawling in the chairs,
two or three perched on the edge of the table. The air was heavy with
cigarette smoke.

“Comrade Loeffler!” several voices shouted, as Irene and Stacey entered.

“And with a new comrade in tow!” cried some one.

“Well, he isn’t exactly a comrade,” said Irene. “I just brought him
along because he’s so aggravating and skeptical. But he’s perfectly
safe. Stacey Carroll, comrades.” And with a proprietary air she drew him
over to one end of the room. He rather liked Miss Loeffler. There was
something so girlish beneath her pose.

Stacey looked about him idly. All but five of the persons in the room
were women. He knew a few of them by sight, and the faces of others were
vaguely familiar to him; but he had been away from Vernon for so long
and so utterly cut off from it mentally that it was hard for him to
remember old acquaintances. Doubtless he had met nearly all these people
formerly—he didn’t know. Anyway, they were of a younger generation than
he—in the twenties, most of them. He observed that the majority of the
women wore their hair bobbed.

“Why so much bobbing of hair, Miss Loeffler? Is it a symbol of freedom?”

“I suppose you might call it that,” she replied, sitting on the arm of
his leather chair. “If you were unlucky enough to be a woman you’d
appreciate the advantages of wearing your hair short.”

“It’s rather becoming to you,” he observed. “Can’t say I think it is to
all of them.”

“It’s stupid and old-fashioned to pay compliments,” she returned coldly.
“They don’t interest me at all.”

“Sorry,” said Stacey, “but it’s difficult not to, with all this air of
freedom about, and you sitting so close to me.”

She jumped up angrily, but then after a moment defiantly resumed her
seat on the arm of his chair.

One of the young men, Comrade Leslie Vane, approached them. He wore a
flowing black tie beneath a very low soft collar. Stacey knew him. He
was a poet—published things occasionally in the “Pagan” and the
“Touchstone”—and the son of John Vane, the big flour man. People in
Vernon were very nice about it, but naturally at heart they felt sorry
for Mr. Vane, Senior, who was extremely well liked, and rejoiced that at
any rate his other son, John, Junior, was normal. Stacey was rather
inclined to share Vernon’s point of view in this.

“Hello, Stacey,” said Vane languidly. “Glad to see a militarist with an
open mind, anyhow. First example I’ve met with.”

Stacey reflected, as he acknowledged the greeting, that when the
Middle-West turned esthetic it became mournfully old-fashioned.
Positively Leslie Vane was going back all of twenty-five years in search
of a style.

“Sure!” he said. “I’m open to conviction, but what do you want to
convince me of?”

“Oh,” drawled Vane, “the papers have all been read; you’re late. There’s
only just general talk going on now, but it may do you some good if
you’ll listen.”

A little group had gathered around them, and the smoky air became full
of words, among which “Soviets,” “proletariat,” and “Bolshevism”
predominated.

Stacey, too bored to listen, fell to wondering for a moment about real
Bolshevism. He shook his head. No use, that either. He didn’t care if
change did come. In a way he would be furiously delighted if order was
upset,—things were so silly. But he didn’t believe in any millennium or
even in improvement through change. What had the war accomplished?

“—and so that, most of all,” some woman was saying, “is the true lesson
of Holy Russia. What do you think of it, Mr. Carroll? I _won’t_ call you
Captain.”

He started. “Of Bolshevism? The—er—coming social revolution. Oh,
you’ll all be raped, then cut in little pieces, and Comrade Leslie will
have his throat cut. Not because Bolshevism is so especially worse than
anything else, but because that’s what always happens when any kind of
violence gets loose. And, do you know? I don’t care a damn whether it
comes or not!”

He meant what he said, as much as he meant anything at all in respect to
these futile idiots, but, since there was no passion in his words and
his face remained expressionless, his remarks were delightedly deemed a
skilful evasion of the question (“My dear, how _could_ he say what he
really thought—he a captain and a Carroll?”) and an amusing pleasantry.
His bold use of the word “rape,” too, was much appreciated.

But such comments were made after his departure. For neither Miss
Loeffler’s physical attractiveness nor conversation with the fashionable
followers of Lenin could any longer distract his mind from Marian. She
and Ames would be sitting close together now in the drawing-room of a
Pullman car. . . .

He escaped from the club and went home.

However, he felt an amused curiosity to know what his sister’s attitude
had been toward her impetuous visitor, so he called Julie up on the
telephone.

“What do you think about that wild creature that broke in on us to-day?”
he asked.

“Irene?” said Julie’s calm voice. “Oh, she’s just a goose, but she’s
really quite nice and sweet and young at heart.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” he assented. “Occurred to me, though, that
I’d better call you up and let you know that she hadn’t eloped with me
or done me any real harm—though she nearly ran us into a street-car.
Quite a good time.”

“Now, Stacey, listen!” said Julie anxiously. “You won’t go and fall in
love with Irene, will you?”

He laughed. “I won’t do anything without asking you about it first,
Jule. I lean on you, you know.”

And the odd thing about it was that in a way he did.


                               CHAPTER IX

One morning some three weeks later Stacey received a night letter from
Omaha. It was addressed “Honorable Stacey Carroll” and read:

“_My husband Jim is awfully sick with flu and I am afraid he is going to
die. He keeps asking for you though he is out of his head and does not
know what he says. Please, Captain Carroll, come if you can because then
he might get well. Gertrude Burnham._”

Stacey wasted no time. He sent a telegram to say that he was starting
immediately, telephoned for a lower berth on the evening train, and
pulled a suitcase from a closet. But in the midst of his neat methodical
packing he suddenly paused and gazed abstractedly away. It had occurred
to him that perhaps if Burnham could see him as he had been in France
the sick man might be more likely to recognize him and might even—who
could tell?—draw a little strength from the old revived relationship of
command and protectiveness. Stacey took out the things he had already
packed, chose a larger bag, and put in his uniform at the bottom.

He arrived in Omaha early the next morning, drove to a hotel, unpacked
his bag, put on his uniform, and took a taxi to Burnham’s address.

The taxi stopped in front of a small dilapidated wooden house in a
shabby quarter surprisingly near the centre of town. Stacey descended
and paid the chauffeur.

But before he had time to reach the door of the house it opened and a
woman hurried out to meet him. She was thin, haggard, dishevelled,
though not slovenly, with a worn face and worn eyes about which strayed
limp locks of black hair, but there were faded traces of fineness in
her. Stacey remembered that Burnham had always spoken of his wife with
pride. She had, he often said, had a high-school education.

“Oh, Captain Carroll,” she cried, “it’s awful good of you to come, sir!
I knew I oughtn’t to’ve asked you, but I didn’t know _what_ to do!”

“Of course you ought,” Stacey returned briefly, shaking her hand.

“And you wore your uniform, too,” she added, with a pale half-smile.
“That was just right. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have thought of
that.”

They entered the house, in which the Burnhams occupied one-half of the
second floor. Three small children, shabby and not very clean, with
frightened faces, were waiting for them just inside, and stared at
Stacey.

“I keep them looking better than this, Captain Carroll, when
everything’s all right,” Mrs. Burnham explained apologetically, and they
all climbed the stairs in silence.

As they went, Stacey reflected swiftly on a number of things,—that what
life did to Burnham was very like what it did to Phil, and that a lot of
criminal rubbish was being talked about the prosperous workingman. Why,
thought Stacey, even his father, who was a kindly man, declared bitterly
that workmen were buying silk shirts to-day and denounced them as
profiteers! Well, suppose a man did earn six dollars a day for manual
labor, suppose he even earned it regularly for six days in every week
(which he didn’t), how much was that a year? Let’s see. Eighteen hundred
and some dollars, on which, with the price of everything gone wild, he
was supposed to raise a family and live in luxury. What rot! Stacey
himself, who lived at home, had a car that his father had given him, and
cared little for luxuries, felt pinched with two hundred dollars a
month. Oh, damn money!

They reached the top of the stairs and paused before a door through
which came a strange murmuring voice.

“Jim won’t know you, sir,—not now,” said Mrs. Burnham, “but if you’d be
willing just to sit there a while, maybe—”

“Of course,” said Stacey. “You have a good doctor?”

“Yes, sir. At least, I guess he’s good. They don’t any of them seem much
help. He’ll be here at ten o’clock.”

They went in, Stacey and Mrs. Burnham; the children were left outside
the door. Burnham, flushed with fever, lay tossing and muttering on a
narrow bed. Stacey looked down at him and lifted his hot hand, but there
was no recognition in the man’s eyes.

“I’ll sit here,” said Stacey after a moment, drawing up a chair beside
the bed.

The woman silently took another chair, and they remained so for an hour
and a half, neither of them speaking, she rising at regular intervals to
press a spoonful of medicine between her husband’s teeth, until the
doctor arrived.

He was brusque, had keen eyes, and appeared competent. Stacey drew him
aside at the conclusion of the visit.

“Any chance?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “fifty-fifty. He’s as likely to recover as not.
Splendid physique! There’s nothing much I can do except to give
stimulants in case of sudden collapse. We don’t know anything about flu
really, you know, and this pneumonia that follows on flu. I’ve seen
hundreds die of it—I was in France, too,—and hundreds get well,—both
without any reason. Served under you?”

“My first sergeant. Good man,—no better! Do your best for him.”

“It’s a strong bond, isn’t it?”

Stacey nodded. “Oughtn’t he to have a nurse?”

“It would be a great deal better. He’d have more of a chance.”

“Then send one around, will you please? At my expense, of course.”

“All right,” said the doctor, shook hands with Stacey, and departed.

The conversation had taken place in the hallway outside the door. When
Stacey reëntered the sick room Mrs. Burnham gazed at him wistfully.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Jim’s got a good chance. The doctor’s going
to send a nurse.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she opened her mouth as though to speak,
but closed it again, with only a strangled: “Thanks,” and turned her
head away. After a time she got up.

“I’ll go down and cook some dinner,” she said. “You’ll excuse me, sir,
if it isn’t much, won’t you? I haven’t had time to—”

“No,” he broke in, “you’re too tired to cook. Please go out and get some
lunch for yourself and the children if you know of some delicatessen
place,—and for me, too.” And he drew out his purse.

But at this her face colored. “No sir,” she said, with just a hint of
resentment, “I couldn’t.”

He thrust a five-dollar bill upon her. “Do as I tell you,” he said
imperiously. “This is no time for silly pride. Go on, and mind you get
good things and plenty of them.”

She cowered beneath his sternness and went meekly. And Stacey reflected
grimly that pride was a decorative handsome emotion that flourished
ornamentally, a highly esteemed orchid, in luxury. It couldn’t grow well
in poverty, came up sickly and scrawny,—the soil was too weak.

Half an hour later he heard her climb the stairs again and move quietly
about the next room. Presently she returned to the bedroom.

“Will you go in there now, sir?” she said. “Everything’s ready for you.
Here’s your change—two dollars and sixty-four cents.”

“No, no, please!” he replied. “Keep it for to-morrow.”

He wanted to insist on her eating first, but thought best not to try, so
he went, without comment, through the door she indicated into another
bedroom—the only other, he supposed,—that obviously also served as
dining-room and parlor. Dishes were disposed neatly on a table, with
sandwiches, Bologna sausage, eggs, coffee, and doughnuts.

He sat down, then looked up, listening, with a smile, and suddenly rose,
crossed the room, and flung open another door. The kitchenette. And
there, as he had thought, were the three children, sitting, very
terrified at his discovery of them, close together on a small bench.

“Hello,” he said, “you’re out here, are you? Well, come on! Let’s eat
together. Only I think we’d better do it in this room or your mother
will hear us.”

“She said we was to wait and not make a noise,” observed the oldest girl
in a small voice.

“Well, we won’t wait,” Stacey remarked. “There are doughnuts, you know.
You come on in with me,” he said to the girl who had spoken, “on your
tip-toes, and help fix the plates.”

She obeyed timidly.

“First we’ll fix one for your mother,” he whispered, and she nodded, her
lips pressed together.

He and the three children ate gravely in the kitchenette. Then Stacey
rose. “I’ll go back to your father now,” he said, “and send your mother
out.”

“Your plate is ready for you, Mrs. Burnham. And the children have
eaten,” he announced in a triumphant whisper.

She gasped, then suddenly her mouth curved prettily into a smile—the
first he had seen her give. Stacey sat down again by the bedside.

Burnham seemed a little calmer now, and his incoherent muttering had
ceased, but he looked very exhausted, and Stacey was relieved when about
one o’clock the nurse arrived.

The three of them sat there silently all the hot afternoon, with only
short intervals of release when Stacey stretched his legs in the hall or
Mrs. Burnham went out to keep an eye on the children. There was no
change in the sick man. The nurse said that the crisis would probably be
reached next day.

At six o’clock Stacey left the house, asking the nurse to telephone him
in case of a serious change. He walked back to his hotel.

He was abstracted, an isolated personality, growing more isolated with
every month that passed in his life; so that now he saw little of his
surroundings and glanced but carelessly both at the depressing quarter
from which he had set out and at the prosperous business section he
presently entered. He merely thought, idly, that the city seemed a
characterless place, like all other middle-western cities. And the
imposing court-house, of white marble, that he passed shortly before
reaching his hotel, did not impress him. It did, indeed, occur to him
once that there was a certain tensity in the air, like that which
characterizes a city in boom times, but the observation, purely
involuntary, did not particularly interest him. It interested him not at
all when later, glancing through the front page of a local paper, he
learned the cause of the tensity—trouble with the negroes, “Another
Dastardly Assault!”

Early the next morning he was back at Burnham’s house. The man seemed
worse, Stacey thought with a touch of real sadness,—more feverish, more
restless. There was no capacity for smiling, even faintly, left in Mrs.
Burnham. The nurse, cool, professional, would express no opinion; and
the doctor, too, when he came, was noncommittal.

“Before to-night there ought to be a decision one way or the other,” he
said to Stacey. “I’ll come again at four. Call me up earlier if
necessary.”

There was nothing to do but wait, and Stacey again settled himself in a
chair near the foot of the bed.

The crisis came early in the afternoon. Burnham tossed and kicked
furiously, and his incoherent muttering grew louder. Suddenly he raised
himself on the palms of his hands into a half-sitting posture and stared
directly at Stacey—or not really at him, through him.

“By God, Captain!” he cried wildly, in a high unnatural voice, “you’ve
got nerve! Might’ve been shot . . . shot . . . shot! What hell you care?
You wouldn’t do it!” He panted. “Not you, Captain! Said I’d follow you
to hell. Nerve . . . nerve . . . nerve. . . .” His voice trailed away to
silence, while the nurse leaned over him, pressing his shoulders down
firmly.

Stacey had started at the words. They were spoken, he knew, in delirium,
not to him but to a shadow vanished eleven months since, but Stacey
understood them. Burnham knew, then, did he, about that Argonne attack?
Good! Probably no other kind of approbation from any source would have
touched Stacey, even faintly. This, for an instant, made him thrill with
a fierce proud happiness. The next moment there was nothing left in his
consciousness but concern for his friend.

But Burnham lay quiet now, his color less vivid, his breath coming and
going easily, and the nurse looked at Stacey and Mrs. Burnham with a
smile.

“I think he’ll get along all right now,” she said pleasantly.

Stacey wiped his forehead, and Mrs. Burnham, collapsing into a chair,
laid her head on a table and wept softly.

“Fine!” said the doctor, when he came. “He’ll get well now. Just a
question of time.”

The next morning, when Mrs. Burnham opened the door to Stacey, he
observed that she was wearing a clean dress and had done her hair quite
prettily.

“Then Jim’s a lot better, isn’t he?” he asked, with a smile.

She flushed. “Yes,” she said. “He slept right through the night. Only
woke up once for just a minute, then went back to sleep again. Oh, I’m
so glad, Captain Carroll!” Her eyes filled. “And so grateful to you,
sir!”

“Oh, please!” said Stacey, embarrassed.

Late in the morning Burnham opened his eyes slowly and let them wander
curiously about the room. They rested on Stacey, and a puzzled
expression came into them, then, after a moment, recognition, and the
man tried to raise his hand in salute.

“Where’s the devil, sir?” he asked, in a thin voice. Then he smiled.
“Funny!” he said. “I thought I was in hell.” And he began to laugh
weakly.

“Shut up, Burnham!” Stacey commanded sternly, “and lie still!”

“Oh, all right, Captain, all right!” Burnham returned, still laughing,
and went to sleep again at once.

Stacey was rather tired in the evenings now from sitting so monotonously
still all day. He resented the excitement that he felt throbbing in the
streets and the nervous buzz of the groups through which he had to elbow
his way in the hotel lobby. His one recreation consisted in changing to
civilian clothes for dinner; for he always wore his uniform when he went
to the Burnhams’. It happened that the regiment in which he had
commanded a battalion had been recruited from this part of the country,
so that there were perhaps twenty-five of his men living right here in
Omaha, among them a first lieutenant whom he had sincerely liked. And,
ignorant though he was and knew himself to be of these men’s real
personalities, he was bound to each of them—worst as well as best—by a
closer bond than that which held him to Philip Blair or to Marian or to
Mrs. Latimer. He would have given lavishly of his money or his
time—nonsense! of something real! his freedom or his strength!—to any
of these men who needed it; and not in the least from a sense of
duty,—inevitably, as a matter of course. Yet he had no companionable
desire to see them. He made no attempt to look them up. He spent his
evenings in bed, reading “War and Peace,” which in former days he had
not cared for but now found singularly satisfying—more satisfying than
any book by his old idol, Dostoieffsky.

Burnham’s recovery was extraordinary. On the third day after the crisis
the doctor refused jovially to waste more time in visiting him—the
nurse had been dismissed the day before—and told him to eat, talk and
do as he pleased, short of getting up.

“I think,” observed Stacey that afternoon, “that I’ll pull out to-night
on the midnight. You’re as fit as ever, Burnham.”

He was, indeed, restless and anxious to go. Here, sitting near Burnham,
chatting casually of trivial things, he was strangely at peace; but an
increasing turmoil that he felt in the city each evening exasperated
him.

The man looked at him wistfully, then across at his wife. “Gerty,” he
said, “you go out with the kids for a little while, will you? I got to
talk to the Captain.”

She obeyed, but her face had flushed and her eyes were resentful.

“Now you’ve done it!” said Stacey cheerfully. “Fat lot of popularity
I’ll have with Gertrude from now on!”

Burnham laughed. “Funny thing, ain’t it, Captain?” he observed. “They
can’t seem to get onto it at all, women can’t. They go and get jealous,
like Gerty now.”

“Can’t get onto what?”

“Why, this—this here what-do-you-call-it.”

“Relationship?”

“Uh-huh, I guess that’s the word. It ain’t got a thing to do with them.”
He paused. “Maybe that’s why they don’t like it,” he concluded.

“Philosopher!” said Stacey. “Analyzing the female heart. You’ll be
writing for the magazines next.”

“Sure!” Burnham grinned, then frowned. “All the same, I don’t get onto
it very well myself,” he continued. “Now you’d think that I ought to be
feeling all upset with gratitude to you, the way Gerty is, and worried
about you wasting so much of your time and money. Well, I don’t feel
that way at all. Damned if I do! I just feel friendly and pleasant
and—natural-like. And of course some day I’m going to pay you back the
money you spent on the nurse ’n’ doctor, but it don’t seem important,
somehow, like it does to Gerty. If it was something you cared about,
Captain, I’d get up now, the way I am, and work all day to get it for
you, but Christ! you don’t care a damn for money!”

“Oh, shut up, Burnham!” said Stacey, laughing. “How you do run on!”
Nevertheless, the man’s words were pleasant to him, and reënforced his
own strangely peaceful mood.

“Seems sort of noisy out-doors to-day,” Burnham remarked suddenly.
“What’s the row, I wonder?”

And, indeed, through the window a dull and sullen murmur, that was like
a deep note held steadily in an organ, did enter and penetrate the room.

“Oh,” replied Stacey quickly, “I don’t know! It’s a noisy city.”

Burnham lay silent for a long time. Then he turned his eyes slowly to
Stacey. And in them and in his voice when he spoke again was apparent a
timidity which his huge bulk and rough unshaven face made somehow
touching.

“Captain,” he said hesitantly, “there was something I wanted to say to
you, only I don’t know if I’ve got the nerve. We boys was always kind of
scared of you, you know,—oh, not because you was a captain!—fat lot of
respect we had for captains _as_ captains!—but just because—oh, I
dunno! And it’s kind of hard to say anything to you that’s kind of
personal, as you might say. All the same, I’ll take a chance.” He rushed
on with his words to get it over. “What I want to say is that some of us
know all about that attack that—didn’t come off.” He paused
apprehensively, but with a sigh of relief.

However, Stacey was as friendly as before. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I
know you do. You let that out Wednesday in a lot of wild talk you were
spouting.”

“Well, what do you know about that?” Burnham exclaimed. “And me who
wouldn’t have told even Gerty! Did any one—”

“No, no, it’s all right! No one else understood. And I’m glad you know.”

“’N’ that’s why I said what I did about going with you to hell or
anywhere else. I ain’t the only one, Captain. There’s Morgan and Jones
and Petitvalle and Isaacs and all the rest of C Company that knows,
who’d fight to go along, too. Oh, it would be a nice little family
party!” And Burnham laughed gaily.

Well, Stacey had said to Phil months ago that this was the one exploit
of which he was proud, but he had said so haughtily, with his heart full
of bitterness. Just now his heart was calm, as though cleansed. He was
almost happy. Yet he could hardly have accounted for his state of mind,
even had he cared to try. It was not, certainly, that his vanity was
flattered. Perhaps it was, in part, that when Stacey had related the
episode to Philip Blair his defiance of the machine was first in his
thoughts, while now the stress was on the human results of that
defiance. Perhaps Burnham’s simple assertion of loyalty released Stacey
from his obsessing perception of greed, greed everywhere.

But the noise outside had increased. Rolling waves of sound entered.

“What in hell is going on?” Burnham exclaimed. “Tell me, Captain! You
know all right.”

“Well,” said Stacey doubtfully, but thinking it on the whole better not
to have the invalid aggravated by unsatisfied curiosity, “there’s been a
lot of race trouble here lately. Just now it seems to be mostly about
some negro—name of Brown—said to have assaulted a woman. He’s shut up
in the court-house jail, I believe. Sounds as though some sort of
demonstration—”

But at this moment a scattered crackling sound broke out in the
distance. Burnham sat up quickly, and Stacey crossed to the window and
looked out.

“Some sort of demonstration?” said Burnham. “Some sort of riot! That’s
shooting.”

Stacey nodded, pulled down the window sash, and came back to his chair.

Mrs. Burnham entered the room hurriedly, but, though frightened, she had
not forgotten her grievance. “I suppose I can come in now,” she said,
“since there’s a war or something going on.”

“Sure!” returned her husband, laughing. “It’s nothing, Gerty.”

Darkness fell while they sat there together, Mrs. Burnham soon ashamed
of her pettishness and trying to think up little things she could do for
Stacey, Burnham stretching his arms and legs to feel their returning
strength, all three chatting about the most casual matters. A lamp
sputtered alight in the street and shone in upon them.

Oddly, Stacey thought of that afternoon with Phil and Catherine in New
York five years ago. He had the same sense of calm now as then.

But this sea of sound that roared dully in the distance, at times
swelling for a moment so that Mrs. Burnham turned her eyes
apprehensively to Stacey,—it had been absent then. Had it, though? What
else was the war? Stacey thought fancifully.

“Well, I’ve really got to go now,” he remarked, and rose.

Mrs. Burnham tried stammeringly to express her gratitude, but Burnham
only gripped Stacey’s hand and smiled.

“May I say good-bye to the children?” asked Stacey, and Mrs. Burnham,
too, smiled at this and went in search of them.

“Now look here, Captain!” said her husband anxiously in a low voice as
soon as she had left the room, “you won’t get mixed up in that mess in
the streets, will you?”

Stacey shook his head. “No, no, I’ll be all right,” he replied
reassuringly.

The noise outside continued.


                               CHAPTER X

Stacey glanced up and down the street, but it lay quiet and empty in the
brightness of its regularly spaced arc-lights. The noise came from the
direction of the centre of town, and as this was also the direction of
his hotel he sighed and set off toward it. He sighed because he felt
himself stepping back into the old shadow from the rare brightness of
his recent mood. It occurred to him that life was like that, some one
had said,—a handful of peaceful islands scattered stingily over a
tumultuous sea. Which figure reveals how little he knew himself—what he
was and what he wanted. For at heart he did not crave repose.

He turned a corner, the rumble of sound became a roar, and he was on the
edge of the crowd. Some distance down the street into which he had
emerged, on the left at its intersection by another wider thoroughfare,
he could make out a corner of the white marble court-house that had left
him unimpressed. And one side of this building—the east, it must
be—stretched along flush with the street that Stacey followed. But all
about and obscuring such part of the structure as lay within his vision
there was now a black howling throng, while, over all, smoke hung. And
even here, where Stacey stood, the crowd was dense. Traffic had ceased.
Motor cars stood motionless. Men had scrambled up the sides of them and
clung there, all staring in one direction; and from the windows of the
houses flanking the street more people leaned and gazed.

Here the crowd was not yet a mass—groups only; but as Stacey went
forward toward the court-house, which was perhaps an eighth of a mile
away, it thickened, so that to traverse it became increasingly
difficult. And as it thickened its temper grew manifestly warmer. A
confusion of cries agitated it. Sometimes they burst into a
refrain—“Nigger! Nigger! We want that nigger!” Arms were thrown up,
gesticulating wildly. And there were little centres of local interest—a
man suddenly hauling himself up to the shoulders of another for a view
and thrown down again fiercely, snarling contests over invaded personal
rights, animal-like squeals of women at the crushing pressure upon them.
The sweating faces had a bestial look beneath the arc-lights, and a
sourish human odor tainted the warm air. Noise! Noise!

Stacey was not feeling anger—only a deep disgust, disgust of crowds,
sick disgust of all humanity. His emotion was the more acute for its
contrast with the mood he had felt in Burnham’s house. He was like a man
who has made a longer jump by taking a running start. So this was the
kind of thing on which perpetual peace and leagues of nations were to be
founded, was it? he thought coldly. He would have gone back out of its
contamination, having certainly no desire to witness the spectacle it
clamored for, save that he had some desperate idea of perhaps being able
to assist the few who must somewhere be standing off the multitude. So
he fought his way forward, inch by inch, helped perhaps a very little by
the fact that he was in uniform, using his shoulders and elbows
mercilessly in cold contempt of his victims, shrieked at, cursed at,
struck at even, but making progress, until at last he came, panting, to
the corner of his own street and that other wider avenue. He could get
no farther, either ahead or to the left. The crowd was a solid wall. And
to return was equally impossible. He could only stay where he was and
hope that something might happen, some movement in the mob, that would
make it possible for him to push through suddenly and reach the
court-house.

He stood on tip-toe and looked about him. He was almost at the corner,
close to the right hand edge of the street, and he perceived that here
the latter was flanked by the side wall of what he took to be a theatre.
In the wall, some two or three feet above the ground, were embrasures,
vantage points held with difficulty by tightly wedged groups. As Stacey
looked, a sudden backward surge of the crowd swept down and away two
such members of one group, and Stacey, diving desperately in, himself
struggled up to the place and held it against all contestants.

All events were submerged beneath a roar of voices, a sea of noise that
broke in echoing waves against the sides of the buildings. It was an
emotion in itself, irrespective of its cause. It hypnotized the crowd,
produced a singular wild stare in men’s eyes, made their movements
jerky, their own involuntary addition to the noise raucous. It did not
hypnotize Stacey, because he was aloof, remote, and also because he was
too familiar with noise. Yet, he, too, had undergone its terrible
spell—early in the war, before he had grown hard enough to bear the
unbearable. He knew bitterly well what Siegfried Sassoon meant by: “I’m
going stark, staring mad because of the guns.”

Stacey threw one last contemptuous glance at the mob beneath him, then
gazed off over their heads at the court-house.

The first thing he noted was that it was on fire, smoke creeping dully
from its ground-floor windows; the second, that fighting was going on
inside it, since the south door, that opening on the wide cross-street,
was shattered, while through it rushed in or were driven back mad
struggling clusters of men.

“Good for the police!” thought Stacey. “Oh, by God! I wish I were
there!”

Two firemen appeared at a third-floor window, and from the nozzle of the
hose they held a stream shot down upon the crowd. There was a wild
surging movement that swept to the crowd even here, pushing it back upon
itself tumultuously. Snarls of anger rose. There were struggles,
shrieks, fists striking out, mad efforts of individuals to keep from
being crushed. And up ahead on the left the lighted air was shadowed by
the bricks and stones hurled through it against the court-house. The
court-house windows shattered in fragments. Stacey could not hear them
crash—the noise of voices submerged all other sounds, as it was
submerging thought—but he could see the jagged black gaps appear and
the shining rain of glass. He held his place in the embrasure with
difficulty, clinging to an iron ring in the wall and to his nearest
companion.

Then suddenly a vast exultant roar shook the crowd. The stream of water
had ceased.

“Cut it! We’ve cut their damned hose! Cut! Cut it!”

The crowd was wilder now, frenzied. Stacey, looking down, saw faces
convulsed, venomous, filthy with ugliness. He felt a shudder of loathing
and recollected with passionate assent what Anatole France had called
life—“a sickness, a leprosy, a mold on the face of the earth.”

“Nigger! Give us that nigger!”

Time passed. Stacey, knowing mobs, thought that perhaps eventually this
one would wear itself out on its own emotion, begin to break up into
individuals sick with fatigue, and little by little disperse. But he
soon perceived that it had too varied a spectacle to witness, an immense
vicious vaudeville, something new every few minutes,—a ladder thrown
against the court-house wall, half scaled by eight or ten youths, pushed
slowly back by the defenders, and crashing over at last to earth, the
scalers leaping off wildly as it fell; a rush through the door;
fighting; shots.

Even so, the mob had sullen moments when its roar sank to a rumble, but
again it occurred to Stacey that it was being lashed up afresh by
leaders. There was a young man on a white horse there in the street
before the besieged building. Twice he wheeled his horse about and
harangued the crowd. His voice was inaudible here, but the emotion he
created immediately around him swept on, like something tangible, beyond
the reach of his words, and his gestures stirred men to renewed frenzy.
Also it struck Stacey that, while here at the corner the crowd was
jammed beyond hope of penetration, there on the left, just before the
south side of the court-house, where the fight was sharpest, was room to
move. There were rushes, assaults. The fighting part of the mob was
relatively small. Oh, they all wanted the negro, damn them! They wanted
blood and torture. But as spectators. If only he could get there!

And at this thought, that there were deliberate leaders, anger began to
rise in Stacey, who till now had felt only disgust and scorn.

But a sudden whirling streamer of red light curved into a broken window
of the court-house and a dull explosion made the air throb. A red glare
flamed up inside the building, and a great “Ah-h-h!” came from the
crowd.

“By God! look at it!”—“A bomb! Oh, _Christ_! a bomb!”—“Oh, _look_ at
her burn!”—“Nigger, we’ll get him now!”—“Oh, _nigger_!”—“A-e-e-e!”
Shouts, leaps, struggles, madness.

The crowd could afford to wait now, thought Stacey, looking on grimly,
as black smoke poured from windows and rose in clouds, begriming the
marble walls.

It was late. How long had he been here in this filth? Two hours? Three?
Stacey looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. He gazed back wearily down the
street, in a sullen despair beneath which anger smoldered. An outrage to
be born into such a world! And he could not take refuge in himself. He
hated himself as he hated this mob. Oh, he did not, of course, feel with
them now! What was a black man’s life or a white man’s—any man’s—his
own—Philip Blair’s, even—to deserve such clamor? He was hard, crusted
over with bitterness. But there had been times in France when . . .

A sudden frenzied shriek from the mob made him start and turn his eyes
back to the court-house. On the steps at its entrance, that opening on
the street which Stacey had followed, alone in the lurid smoky light
stood a man—rather stout, not tall, but impressive in his solitude.

“The mayor!”—“It’s the mayor!”—“Smith!”—“Mayor!” came in a shattered
volley of cries from all about.

Then in one fierce burst of sound: “Nigger! Give us that nigger! Nigger!
Nigger!”

And, after this, dwindling sound, save from the storm centre at the
south entrance where the news could not be known; finally a semblance of
silence. Stacey could not hear the man’s voice when he spoke—“I can’t
do that, boys!” he learned later the words had been—but he could see
him shake his head and could see the firm negative gesture he made with
both extended hands.

An immense insane howl of anger burst out. A crowd surged up the east
steps, and the solitary figure disappeared among them, dragged down in a
chaotic black mass of assailants.

A thrill of exultation and anger ran through Stacey. By God! he’d stood
them off! One living man with a soul of his own against the mob! And he
was to be dragged down like that? killed for it? Beside himself, Stacey
leaped to the ground and fought madly to break through to the one man on
the scene. Impossible! Far from pushing forward, he was caught in a
sudden retreating surge of the throng and swept back, back, raging, down
the street, to the edge of a narrow roofed-in alley that led out of it
behind the theatre building. Here he held his own once more.

Mad cries of wrath against the mayor came from all about him. “Nigger
lover!”—“_Get_ the nigger lover!”—“Lynch him!”

Close to Stacey a heavy red-faced man was shaking his clenched fists
high in the air. “Oh, _lynch_ him! The God-damn _son_ of a bitch! Oh,
nigger lover! Oh, _kill_ him! _Lynch_ him!” he shrieked, his voice
hoarse, his face purple, convulsed, incredibly bestial.

And suddenly a white ungovernable rage flared up in Stacey. There was
nothing left of his personality but rage. He seized the man about the
waist, and, helped by a new surge of the crowd, half flung him, half was
swept with him, back into the narrow dark entrance of the alley and down
it.

The momentum gathered from the crowd hurled both forward, staggering,
and separated them. But Stacey was upon his man again instantly. They
were perhaps thirty yards down the alley in a semi-obscurity.

“Here! You! What d’you—?”

Stacey merely dived, in hot silence, for the man’s throat, and fastened
his hands upon it tensely.

The victim struck out wildly, gasped, kicked, but Stacey bent him back
and leaned over, sinking his thumbs deeper and deeper with every ounce
of his great strength into the fleshy throat. And, as he pressed, he had
the delirious exultant delusion that he was strangling all humanity. His
teeth were set. His eyes were terrible with hatred.

The man’s face grew violet, his eyes protruded loathsomely, his gurgling
mouth opened to press out a swollen tongue. Then all at once he relaxed
weakly, his whole body limp. Stacey flung him off, and he fell in a
sprawled motionless heap to the ground.

Stacey looked down for a moment and pushed the body with the toe of his
shoe, then turned away, wiping his hands on his handkerchief. He was
quite calm again, fierce, but with no further impulse to kill.

He did not go back and fight his way into the crowd once more. Where was
the use? He could not break through. Instead, he followed the alley in,
leaving the roar of the crowd behind him, and came out eventually into
another street, parallel with the one he had left. It, too, was crowded,
but not densely like the first. Stacey made his way off from it swiftly,
and before long reached still another street, empty, silent.

But from back over there behind the intervening house-walls came yet
wilder noise and crackling volleys of shots. They had got the negro,
Stacey supposed.

He strode on for a long, long time—half an hour? an hour?—heedless of
direction, turning corners aimlessly, until at last he was walking up a
street down which, toward him, people were flowing in groups, talking
loudly. The show was over, no doubt, the audience dispersing.

He heard excited comments. “The nigger got his, all right!”—“Damn shame
about the mayor!”—“Oh, I dunno! Too damn fresh!”

Stacey whirled about and caught the man who had said it was a shame.
“Did they kill the mayor?” he demanded.

The man addressed stared, open-mouthed, with frightened eyes at Stacey’s
stern face. “N-no!” he stammered. “They hung him up tw-twice, but he
was—was cut down. He’s all right, I guess. Th-they got him away. I said
it was a damned shame,” he added weakly, trying to release himself from
Stacey’s grasp.

Stacey did not reply, but withdrew his hand and strode on, his teeth
set.

Again he walked aimlessly for a long while, but at last, making a wide
curve, he turned back toward the noise that still came in broken waves
from the riot centre.

Finally, led by the glow of the fire, he approached the court-house once
more, but now from the north. On this side it was not flush with the
street but set in some fifty yards behind an ornamental grass-plot.

Street, grass-plot and curving walks were covered with a howling throng,
not so thick as to prevent passage, but rushing wildly this way and that
under the red light from the burning building.

The centre of the confusion Stacey presently made out to be a motor car
careering about through the crowd, that shouted exultantly and stumbled
back out of its path.

All at once it bore down on Stacey. He sprang aside to avoid it, then,
looking back, saw that after it, at the end of a rope, trailed a
shapeless bumping object.

The rope that towed this curious object caught for a moment on an
electric light pole, the car came to a temporary halt, and Stacey,
bending over to look at the thing more closely, perceived that it was
the charred, naked and limbless torso of a man.

Three hysterical girls, their hats awry, their arms linked, pushed him
out of the way and kicked, squealing, at the dead flesh.

Stacey left the scene.

He found a small lunch-room open in a neighboring street. It was crowded
with genial exulting ex-rioters. But Stacey pressed up to the counter,
ordered sandwiches and coffee, and gulped them down ravenously. He was
frankly famished. This did not shock him. He was too familiar with the
physical effects of emotion even to give it a thought. And, indeed, so
far as emotion went, he had, despite his almost impassive bearing, gone
through more of it than the mob itself. For the mob had hated the negro
and the mayor; Stacey had been consumed with hatred of the colossal mob
itself—and of all men, all human life.

He left the lunch-room and went to his hotel. As he reached its doorway
there was an echoing tramp of steady feet, and he turned to see a
company of infantry march past. He saluted, and the officer marching
beside the men saluted in return, gravely.

“It’s time!” thought Stacey bitterly. “If I’d had two men and a
machine-gun I could have cleared the street.”

He had thought he was done with all sympathy for armies. Error! He would
have given his right hand to-night to be in command of his battalion.
Not because he cared for law and order. He didn’t give _that_ for law
and order! But because he could have saved the mayor—one brave man, a
living individual—from the collective beast. And because he could have
saved the negro. But mostly because he could have killed! killed!

He entered the hotel. Here, too, though the hour was late, were excited
groups. Stacey pushed through them and up to the desk.

“The key to four hundred and twelve,” he demanded peremptorily.

But the clerk, his elbows on the desk, was listening to the voluble
conversation of a group of commercial travellers and paid no attention.

Stacey seized a paper-weight, lifted it, and flung it down with a crash.
“Damn you! The key to four-twelve, I said! And be quick about it!”

The clerk jumped. “Y-yes, sir,” he stammered, and reached a trembling
hand for the key.

Probably at a normal moment he would have asserted his right to respect
as a free American citizen. To-night things were rather strange.


                               CHAPTER XI

The next morning, after Stacey had bathed, he stood for a moment,
reflecting, then again put on his uniform. In the midst of dressing he
paused to look in the telephone directory for the name of the lieutenant
whom he had especially liked in his first company and who, he
remembered, lived in Omaha. He called up the number.

“Curtis Traile’s house? . . . Oh, this Traile? Good! Stacey Carroll
talking.”

He heard a joyful exclamation. “It is! What are you doing here? Where
are you?”

Stacey told him.

“Then you—you saw all that mess last night?”

“Yes,” said Stacey drily. “Listen, Traile! Can I see you this morning?
If you’ll tell me how to get to where you live I’ll—”

“You _will_ not! I’ll be around at the hotel for you inside of twenty
minutes.”

“All right. Thanks. You’ll find me in the dining-room. ’Bye!”

Stacey went down into the dining-room and ordered breakfast. Then he
unfolded a newspaper. Outwardly he appeared as unmoved as ever. It was
only when he came upon the one piece of news he cared about—“_Mayor’s
Condition Serious! Still Unconscious at Three This Morning! Doctors
Hopeful!_”—that a ripple of emotion passed over his face. He ate his
breakfast calmly.

But on page four he happened upon a small item cursorily recorded which
he read with interest.

“_At twelve-thirty this morning after the termination of_ _the riot
Sergeant of Police Bassett, who was patrolling Seventeenth Street, heard
groans issuing from the covered alley leading in behind the Boyd
Theatre. On investigating he discovered that they came from a man lying
in the alley in a semi-unconscious condition and apparently suffering
from attempted strangulation. When able to speak he at first gave his
name as John Smith and claimed to have been assaulted, at what time he
could not say, by a man wearing U. S. Army uniform. Later he admitted he
was Adolph Kraft of 1102 Chicago Street and withdrew his first story,
declaring that he was attacked by an unknown man while endeavoring to
restrain the rioters from further violence. He was taken to Ford
Hospital, where his condition was said to be serious but not critical.
The police attach little credence to either story told by Kraft,
believing his injury to be the result of some personal vengeance carried
out during the confusion of the riot. Kraft was formerly a bar-tender
and so far as known has no present occupation. He has been twice
convicted of petty offences._”

“So I didn’t kill him, after all,” thought Stacey. “Doesn’t appear that
he’d have been much of a loss.” But he reflected dispassionately, merely
as noting a fact, that in his assault he had shown the same overwhelming
desire to kill that had possessed the mob. That the cause was different
on his part did not matter a straw. His intense will to murder had been
the same as theirs. Too bad! Not detached enough! Not detached enough!
He should have slain the man coldly.

A cordial voice interrupted his meditations. “Well, _Cap_tain!—I say!
You’re in uniform! You of all people! How come?”

“Hello, Traile,” said Stacey, looking up and shaking hands.

The lieutenant was young and had a fresh pleasant expression when, as
now, he was smiling. When, as a moment later, his face grew sober again
there was a certain gravity in it, as though a curtain had been
dropped,—a hint of the same shadow that hung about Stacey. And this odd
contrast in the young man’s face between buoyant youthfulness and weary
knowledge impressed Stacey, since he had not seen Traile for many
months, and was therefore now seeing him freshly.

“This is fine!” Traile continued swiftly. “But it was pretty rotten of
you to be here so long and never let me know. Oh, I know all about it
now, you see! Dropped around at Burnham’s on the way here.”

“How is he?”

“Fine! He told me about your coming and staying with him. Confound it!
he might have let _me_ know he was sick! But no! his wife had to go and
wire you!” Traile concluded ruefully, pausing for breath. He sat down.

“Have some breakfast?”

“Thanks, no. I’ve eaten. Then you—you saw all that last night?”

Stacey nodded. “Have you read the estimable comment in the morning
paper?” he asked. “Listen!—‘_Whatever the provocation it does not
warrant any band of men taking the law into their own hands unless they
are prepared to face the judgment of their fellow citizens for such an
act._’ Seems sufficiently moderate, don’t you think?”

Traile flushed. “Isn’t that damnable!” he blurted out boyishly. “You
must think I live in a rotten town!”

“No,” said Stacey somberly, “I wish I did think so. If that were all
there was to it we could band together cheerfully to blow up Omaha.”

“I tell you what, Captain!” Traile cried, his face stern. “We’re going
after the leaders if we can get them—going after them hard! There are
scores of names listed already; there’ll be twice as many by to-night.
General Wood’s been ordered here. Arriving to-morrow morning. And
meanwhile we’re organizing the Legion men.”

Stacey nodded. “I thought you would be. That’s what I particularly
wanted to see you about. I’m not from here, of course, but I want you to
let me in on it.”

Traile’s face radiated a sudden joyful surprise. “You, Captain?” he
exclaimed.

“Why not?” asked Stacey coolly, lighting a cigarette.

“Well,” stammered the other, “I—of course we’ll take you in with a
rush. You’re in uniform, too. How come?”

Stacey looked at him thoughtfully. “You needn’t be embarrassed, Traile,”
he said. “You’re quite right. I _don’t_ like army stuff and I _don’t_
care a fig about helping maintain law and order in this pleasant world.
But _if_,” he said, his eyes and voice hard, “I can do any fighting
against a thousand beasts that tortured one lone individual, and
especially that mauled and half killed the one man who stood up to
them”—his teeth snapped together—“why, then, I’d like to; that’s all,”
he concluded in his normal voice.

Traile stared at him for a moment in silence. “Come home with me,” he
said, and rose.

“Sure!” remarked Stacey calmly. “Just give me time to sign my check.”

Traile’s car was outside. They entered it and drove swiftly off.

“Just to show you the way some of us feel about this,” the lieutenant
remarked presently, “I’ll tell you that I’ve been ’phoning steadily ever
since six-thirty this morning. That’s why you got me so promptly when
you called up.”

“To our boys?”

Traile nodded.

“What results?”

The lieutenant frowned, gave the car a sudden exasperated burst of
speed, then slowed down somewhat. “Unsatisfactory. Hang it, they won’t
come! Only two of ’em, Mills and Jackson, who’re at my house now.”

“Did you really think they’d volunteer?”

“No,” said Traile shortly, “I didn’t. The ones who’ll jump at the job
will be the sweet lads who drilled in safe camps and never so much as
saw a transport.”

“Oh, well,” Stacey replied coolly, “that wasn’t their fault, and no
more’s their point of view. You’re a funny cuss, Traile! Here you are,
wanting men to show up, yet I’m blessed if you aren’t railing at the
ones who do and praising your men because they don’t!”

“That’s right,” admitted the other, laughing sheepishly. “But then,
aren’t we all that—funny cusses, I mean—we chaps who saw the real
show?” he added meditatively. “Anyhow, will _you_ try them, Captain?
Maybe,” he concluded diffidently, “they’ll come for you.”

Stacey nodded. “I’ll try,” he assented. “How many enlisted men of C
Company, your company, live here?”

“Twelve,” said Traile promptly.

“And how many of D Company—do you happen to know?”

“Ten. Here we are.”

They turned into a curved driveway leading up to a handsome residence.
Traile hurried Stacey out of the car and down the hall of the house to
the library.

“Here’s who I made you wait for, boys!” he cried. “You didn’t know—eh?”

The two men in the room sprang to salute, surprise and unmistakable
pleasure in their faces.

Stacey felt a sudden touch of gratitude, that was like the warm trickle
of a brook into an ice-bound lake. Yet he said little enough to the men
in the way of greeting—only a word or two, and shook their hands. Then
he plunged at once into business.

“Mills,” he said, “can you and Jackson corral all the men of your
company and of D Company too, and get them around here to see me,
without obligation to anything—say at noon sharp—that all right,
Lieutenant?” Traile nodded.

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

“All right. Let’s make out a list, Lieutenant.”

“Now what’s to do?” Traile remarked impatiently when the men had
departed. He was walking nervously about the room.

“Do?” said Stacey. “Nothing,—unless you can give me a drink.”

“You bet I can!” the other cried boyishly, and pushed a bell in the
wall. “Leagues and leagues of wine-cellar. Family away in Maine. Whole
house to myself. Great! Come in, Blake. Scotch, please,—V.O.P.—and
glasses and ice and all that sort of thing.” He flung himself down in a
chair. “Funny! Ever since I got back I feel as though I had to be doing
something all the time, and yet there isn’t a damned thing I really want
to do. _You_ feel that way at all, Captain?”

“Yes,” said Stacey, smoking moodily. “Now let’s see,” he added in a
different tone. “Where do we stand? What’s the state of affairs in
town?”

Traile sat up, alert again. “Two companies of troops from Fort Crook
patrolling the city—couldn’t get here last night in time to do any
good,” he added bitterly, “because permission had to be granted from
Washington first.”

“I recognize the well-loved system.”

“Uh-huh. General Wood arriving to-morrow morning. No definite plan of
action to be adopted till he gets here. Listing of names of suspects
going on rapidly, however.”

Stacey nodded. “Do you think,” he asked meditatively, “that we’ll have a
chance to be in on the arresting part of the game? That’s what I want.
Patrolling streets is no use.”

“Sure I do! The colonel from the fort said as much. ’T’s just what they
will use us of the Legion for, because we know the town. Here are our
drinks. Now when we’ve drunk them what in hell _shall_ we do? I know!”
he cried triumphantly. “We’ll drive around to the hotel and bring your
things over here, where they ought to have been all the time.”

Stacey smiled. “All right,” he assented. “I don’t care much for the
night clerk at that hotel.”

At five minutes to twelve the library all at once overflowed with men.
There was pride in Stacey’s look as he greeted them.

“How many, Mills?” he demanded, after a moment.

“Twenty out of twenty-two, sir. Burnham’s sick—as you know better’n any
one else, Captain. Monahan, he—he couldn’t come.”

“He couldn’t?” Stacey’s voice was regretful. “That’s too bad.” He paused
for a moment, reflecting. Then he drew himself up very straight and
gazed at the men, looking keenly from one to another.

“Now look here, men,” he said. “You’re fed up on army stuff and so am I.
You know as well as I do that I haven’t got a bit of authority over you.
I can’t _tell_ you to go and do anything you don’t want to do. But last
night some things were done in this town that I happened to see. And one
of them was that a brave man stood out in front of a mob of beasts and
said ‘no’ to them. And what happened to him because he said ‘no,’ as any
one of you would have said, was—oh, God damn it! you know what it was!”

Stacey’s face was white now, and his voice shook with anger.

“He was your mayor,” he continued after a moment, “but it isn’t that I
care about. What I care about is that he was a _man_. You fought the
Germans and no one knows better than I _how_ you fought them. Well,
there were _men_ among the Germans, decent men, whatever we think about
what they fought for. In this mob last night there weren’t any men—just
beasts. And I _ask_ you—just _ask_ you, mind!—if you’ll turn in with
Lieutenant Traile and me and go after them. That’s all,” he concluded,
and shut his teeth with a snap.

There was an instant’s pause. Then: “I guess you know, Captain,” said
one of the men awkwardly, “that we’ll all of us do whatever you say—and
do it _quick_!” he added sharply.

“Thanks, Sergeant. Is that the way you all feel about it? . . . Thanks
again.”

“Now then,” he went on, in a brisker, matter-of-fact tone. “Lieutenant
Traile tells me that we’ll be able to make arrests. Well, that’s what we
want. I wouldn’t have called you across the block for the sake of
patrolling streets. That’s a Boy Scout job. This is the way it’ll be, I
suppose. Officers will get lists given them and go out with a patrol of
men to get the animals listed. I don’t know how many men they’ll assign
to each officer, but two will be enough. Now listen to me. I only want
four of you to show up in uniform. Let’s see—er—Morgan and Isaacs for
me, Mills and Jackson for Lieutenant Traile. The rest of you, all
sixteen, keep out of uniform. Don’t show up at any Legion meeting.
Report to me through Sergeant Peters and Corporals Petitvalle, Blaine
and Swanson. You’re to find out where the men are whose names we’ll have
given us. They won’t be at their homes, of course, most of them. Then
the six of us in uniform will go get them. D’you see? Dirty work! Spies’
work! Informing!” He paused questioningly, but the laughter that greeted
his warning was reassuring. “All right, then,” he said easily. “You
won’t be very popular, of course, but who wants to be popular with
skunks? That’s all for now. Nothing doing till General Wood arrives. The
sergeant and the three corporals will come here at nine to-morrow
morning—in civilian clothes, mind!—and await instructions. Morgan,
Isaacs, Mills, and Jackson show up, in uniform, at the Legion meeting
to-morrow after General Wood’s arrival.”

When the men had gone Traile looked at Stacey oddly. “Gee whiz,
Captain!” he cried finally, “you’re stronger than ever on love for
military discipline, aren’t you? Here you’ve gone and organized a
civilian detective service right in the bosom of the army! Oh, cripey!”
And he burst out laughing.

“Well,” said Stacey coolly, “what we want is to get those men, isn’t
it?”

But Blake appeared at the door.

“Good!” Traile exclaimed. “Lunch is ready. We’ll go down. And this
afternoon there’s a Legion meeting. I’ll take you over. Not for the joy
of it, but just because I’ll have to present you to the officers—and to
the colonel from Fort Crook. He’ll be there.”

The next morning, while the two men were at breakfast, Traile was called
to the telephone. He returned after five minutes, his face radiant.

“’T’s all right,” he said. “Commander of Legion called me up. General
got in two hours ago. Already conferred with governor, city
commissioner, police department, everything else conferrable. Police
department transferred to the colonel, commanding officer at Fort Crook.
Already taken control. All arrests to be military arrests—oh, boy! that
means us! General to see Legion members at ten this morning.”

“And the mayor?”

“Damned if I didn’t forget to ask!” Traile looked at Stacey
remorsefully. “You really do feel badly about the mayor, don’t you?” he
said. “You’re a—a good sort, Captain, if you don’t mind my impertinence
in saying so,” he concluded impetuously.

“No,” said Stacey quietly, “I’m not a good sort. I’m only mad,—that’s
all; and I’m not forgetting why. You’re ten years younger than I,
Traile. You’re rather enjoying the lark.”

“All the same,” the other insisted soberly, “you _are_ sorry about the
mayor, as well as mad. I’ll go call up the hospital.”

“Better,” he said, when he came back. “Improving slowly.”

Stacey nodded.

When they set out for the Legion meeting they left behind them the four
N. C. O.’s, in civilian dress, sitting placidly in the library.

“You know,” observed Traile exultantly, as he set his car plunging down
the driveway, “it’s not at all a bad thing the general couldn’t get here
till to-day. Because all the conglomerate skunks of this town didn’t get
on to the fact that we meant business. They’ve had one whole joyful day
with nothing doing but a few troops marching around, and they’ve fairly
laid themselves open with bragging about what they did Sunday night. One
long bright day of practically handing out their names on a platter.
Scores and scores of ’em on the lists.”

There were perhaps three hundred Legion members in the large room they
entered. General Wood appeared almost at once, the colonel from Fort
Crook beside him.

Stacey gazed at the general with interest. A clear honest face, he
thought swiftly, with no appearance either of bitterness or the
autocratic spirit. A good soldier from his record—not a doubt of it;
but why in the world had such a man chosen to be a soldier, and how had
he come through it looking like that?

The general wasted no time. “There are long lists of men implicated in
this business,” he said to the three hundred. “Your job will be to go
out and get them. When you go to make an arrest use no more force than
is necessary and use all the force that is necessary. Remember you are
sent for a certain man. Come back with him. Bring him in alive if
possible. But bring him in. Officers will now report to Colonel M——.”
And the general left the room abruptly.

Presently Stacey and Traile received their lists—ten names apiece.

“We’d like just four men for escort—two each, sir, if it’s all the same
to you. May we pick the four?” Traile asked.

“Certainly,” said the colonel. “Get service revolvers for yourselves and
rifles for your men of the ordnance officer. Bring your prisoners here
to police headquarters as you get them.”

“Pshaw!” the lieutenant remarked in disgust, as they were speeding
swiftly homeward, with, in the tonneau behind them, the four men, armed
now and in uniform, whom Stacey had chosen as escort the day before.
“Pshaw! What’s twenty names?”

They left their guard in the hall of Traile’s house, went into the
library, and copied their lists for the other four men who were waiting
there.

“All right,” Stacey remarked. “Start at it. As soon as any one’s located
send one of your men around to report to us. And you’d better detail
some one to see that he doesn’t get away in the meantime.”

“Yes, sir,” said Peters. “I guess you’ll find that all right, Captain.
We’ve worked out a plan.”

“I thought you would have, Sergeant.”

The men saluted, for all that they were in civilian clothes, and went
out.

There was nothing to do but wait. Traile fidgeted, but Stacey was
impassive. Suddenly he smiled. It had occurred to him that, having
learned from the newspaper item the name of the man he had attempted to
strangle Sunday night, he could easily lay an information against him
and proceed to arrest him—supposing he was sufficiently recovered to
permit of arrest. Stacey smiled (he had a rather grisly sense of humor)
because he could picture the horror on—what was his name?—Kraft’s
brutish face when he saw his assailant himself come for him. But it was
only a diverting fancy. Stacey did not follow it up. In the matter of
retribution he thought Kraft had had his share.

“You’ll take my car, Captain—you can drive a Cadillac, can’t you?—and
I’ll use my father’s,” Traile suggested.

“All right.”

In less than an hour a man reported with an address.

“You go after him, Lieutenant,” said Stacey calmly. “You’re more in a
hurry than I am.”

Traile went joyfully.

Fifteen minutes later two more were announced to be located, and, as
Stacey was on the point of getting into Traile’s car with Morgan and
Isaacs (his escort), and the two men who had reported, still another
name was brought in.

Stacey went after them. Two he got without difficulty, disregarding
their cringing protestations of innocence with the same impassive
disgust he had shown—except for one moment—toward the mob on Sunday
night. The third, who was hiding in the back room of a saloon and was
encouraged by the presence of companions, showed fight, until Stacey
rapped him dispassionately on the head with the butt of his revolver.
Stacey took his prisoners to the police station and returned to the
house.

Traile had already been there and gone again. Two other men were
waiting, and Stacey set off once more.

“Beautiful system! Works like a charm. Good man, Peters! Too bad Burnham
can’t be in on it!” he thought to himself. He wondered once or twice why
Monahan couldn’t come. He felt a little sorry. He had always liked
Monahan.

At four o’clock he and Traile had brought the last men on their lists to
the police station.

“Pshaw!” said the lieutenant, “it’s too easy!—though two of the ones I
got livened things up for a while. Come on! Let’s ask for more.”

They reported to the colonel.

“We’ve got all our men, sir,” said Traile, who was spokesman because he
knew the officer personally.

“What!” the colonel exclaimed. “All twenty! Why, no one else has got a
third through his list yet! Complain they can’t find their men.”

“We were lucky, I guess, sir,” Traile returned. “May we have some more
names?”

“Sure! Coming in all the time.”

They received two further lists, dropped them in their pockets, and set
off once more.

But when in the library each read his own paper through, Stacey started
slightly. There were only nine names on the copied list that he handed
to Peters.

At ten that evening they reported once more to the colonel.

“I’ve brought in all but two on my list, sir,” said Traile, “and Captain
Carroll all but three on his. They’re beginning to get wise and skip out
of town.”

The colonel considered the two men curiously. “How on earth do you do
it?” he asked.

Traile grinned. He had always been irrepressibly unmilitary; it was why
Stacey had liked him. “Just system, sir,” he replied. “Can you give us
some more names?”

The colonel reflected. “Well, I’ll tell you,” he said finally. “I’ll
make you out a list—one list, since it’s clear you two work
together—of twenty men the others couldn’t get, but who aren’t supposed
to have left the city. Go after them and see what you can do, but not
till to-morrow morning. Mind! That’s an order! These are a bad
lot—crooks, nearly all of them, the chief of police says. I don’t want
any midnight casualties among Legion men.”

The two took their escort to their homes, then drove back to the house.
But as they got out of the car Stacey paused.

“Traile,” he said, “will you let me have your car for a little while?
There’s some one I want to see. I’ll be back inside of an hour.”

“Sure! You know you don’t have to ask.” But Traile could not conceal his
boyish curiosity.

“I’ll tell you about it soon—by to-morrow, I hope,” Stacey remarked,
climbing back into the car. “You copy out that list for our men, will
you? and tell them we’ll be ready at seven to-morrow morning.”

Traile nodded, and Stacey set off. He drove the car slowly along the
avenue until he sighted a policeman, then drew up beside him.

“Where’s Dodge Street, please?” he asked. “And where would eight-sixteen
be?”

The officer explained carefully, and Stacey drove on. It was a long way
to the street he sought, but he reached it at last and found the
number—a boarding-house in the section near the railway.

“Is James Monahan in?” he asked the woman who answered the ring.

“Hall bedroom on the third floor,” she replied, looking suspiciously at
his uniform. “I don’t know if he’s in.”

Stacey went up the stairs and knocked at the door. There was a kind of
growl from inside that might have been meant for: “Come in”; so Stacey
entered the room.


                              CHAPTER XII

It was a small bare room, at the other end of which, beside the bed, an
enormous red-haired Irishman stood like a herculean statue. He was bent
forward in a half-crouching attitude and held menacingly at shoulder
height, grasped in both hands, a chair, with the obvious intention of
hurling it at the intruder.

Stacey involuntarily started. Then a gleam of appreciation came into his
eye. The man’s attitude was magnificent. Rodin might have posed him.

“Well, upon my word, Monahan,” he said easily, “you give a fellow a
cordial reception!” And he dropped into a chair—the only other one in
the room.

The man lowered his chair slowly, a look of blank amazement, changing
gradually to gloom, coming over his face.

“Christ Almighty! Captain!” he muttered finally. “So it’s _you_ that’s
come to arrest me!”

“It is _not_!” cried Stacey angrily, “and you ought to know it isn’t!”

The man shook his red hair back from his forehead and stood there,
gazing at Stacey.

“Sit down, can’t you?” said Stacey sharply. “You take up too damned much
room that way.”

A faint smile curved the giant’s mouth and wrinkled the corners of his
eyes. He sat down carefully, the chair creaking beneath him.

Stacey reflected, staring at him thoughtfully. “Monahan,” he began at
last, “I found your name on a list of men I was to go out and get for
that Sunday night row. What’s the meaning of that?”

The Irishman’s face flamed. “I didn’t have a thing to do with it!” he
burst out.

“Oh, hell! I know you didn’t!” said Stacey impatiently. “You were,” he
continued slowly, “the most unmanageable man in my battalion (and the
one I cared most for,” he added to himself). “You were quarrelsome, you
had fits of sullenness, you made me trouble on an average about seven
days a week, and you broke every rule it was possible to break, but you
wouldn’t any more have been part of a mob to pick on a _man_ than you’d
have turned tail and run in an attack. Now what is this charge about?”

A slow smile had spread over Monahan’s vast face. “That’s a hell of a
fine character you’ve given me, Captain dear!” he observed.

“It might be worse. Go on. Clear this thing up.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the whole story, Captain,” he began. “I don’t hold
much with niggers, but I don’t hold neither with getting five thousand
men together—real bold-like—and going out and lynching one nigger. And
Sunday night when I seen what was doing I was pretty mad. But not half
as mad as I was when right in front of my nose a bunch of white-livered
sons of bitches got hold of the mayor, who was acting like a man, and
strung him up—by God! strung him up to a pole! I was there, Captain,
and I pitched in and I fought the dirtiest I knew how—’n’ you know
whether we was trained to fight dirty or not. And by ’n’ by I kicked one
man in the guts and another in the knee—me getting madder ’n’ madder
because all th’ time there was the mayor swinging and twitching up
there—but some one else got up the pole ’n’ cut him down before I could
get there, ’n’ then some damn cold-blooded skunk of a photographer took
a flash-light picture, ’n’ then all of a sudden there’s Sergeant
McCarthy of the _po_lice beside me, ’n’ he says: ‘By God! Monahan! I
didn’t think it of you!’ So there I am in the photograph at headquarters
’s clear as life, and there’s McCarthy to testify I was one of them that
lynched th’ mayor.” He paused, an expression of resentment and
resignation on his face.

Stacey considered him thoughtfully. “Why don’t you go around to police
headquarters, give yourself up, and tell the truth?”

Monahan shook his head. “There wouldn’t anybody believe me, Captain,” he
said sullenly. “‘Fat story, me lad, with _your_ record!’ they’d say.
They’d laugh at me.”

“What do you mean—‘your record’?”

“I’ve been twice in the jug, Captain, since I got back,” the Irishman
growled, “and I’ll tell you about that, too, if you’ll listen.

“When I got back from across—and I wish to God I’d never come back!—I
got me a job at the packing-house. Well, who should I find for my
foreman but a white-livered skunk called Barton? ’N’ I’ll tell you about
Barton, too. Barton, he got exempted from the draft as being the sole
support of one poor aged mother ’n’ two poor little sisters. Now the
truth about that skunk was, so help me God! that he never done one thing
for them—not a red cent had he given them for years, Captain! All the
little they had come to them from a brother’s son of the old lady.

“But that ain’t all—not half, Captain!”

Monahan paused and thrust his shaggy red head forward. His eyes gleamed
dangerously.

“I had a girl, Captain, when I went away,” he went on, in a deep
rumbling voice, “and a good girl she was. But this Barton, he comes
shining around and shining around, ’n’ she falls for him like a little
fool, ’n’ after a while he goes ’n’ marries her,—which he wouldn’t have
done, Barton wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been that she had two brothers, big
strong up-standing men who sort of urged him on.

“Well, when I see this skunk there for my foreman things just busted up
inside me, ’n’ the very first day at th’ noon hour I laid for him in a
quiet place in the yard and I says: ‘Now fight, you God-damned,
white-livered son of a bastard German skunk!’ ’N’ Barton hollered for
help and a lot of men come running, but not before I’d handled him a
little rough—though not half what I could have done with more time.
Well, would you believe it, Captain? for that little bit of righteous
trifling th’ judge give me six days!”

The aggrieved innocence in the Irishman’s face was too much. Stacey
struggled, then gave up and burst out laughing. “Go on! Go on, Jim!” he
cried at last.

Monahan, too, had laughed, finally, but at Stacey’s words his face grew
dark again. “When I come out,” he continued angrily, “I went back for my
job, ’n’ they wouldn’t give it to me, the rotten skunks! ’N’ they’d
blacklisted me, too. Not another job in any packing-house could I get.”
He paused, with a growl.

Stacey considered him, at once sympathetically and curiously. He noted
that in recounting the damning evidence of the flash-light picture and
McCarthy’s misinterpretation of his presence at the lynching, Monahan
had displayed only a melancholy resentment against fate; it was his
later discovery that an organization was against him which shook him
with anger. Now McCarthy’s remark had been grossly unjust, and the
attitude of Monahan’s employers was not altogether so; yet Stacey
understood the distinction—understood it emotionally. His heart went
out to Monahan. They were kin.

But the Irishman continued his tale. “’N’ then I said I’d do them dirt,
’n’ I done it, Captain. There was a strike among the boys before long,
’n’ ’twas me more than any other that brought it about. ’N’ they knew
’twas me, the dirty packers! but never a thing could they get on me. ’N’
th’ strike cost them money—the only thing that hurts a packer, Captain.
Then there were scabs ’n’ fighting, ’n’ I couldn’t keep out of it, ’n’
that time they caught me, ’n’ the judge—a decent sort of man and not
knowing the rights of the story neither—give me a month, ’n’ they was
sore because they couldn’t fix it so I’d get five years.

“’N’ that’s all, Captain. But you can see how I can’t go to the
_po_lice, quiet-like, ’n’ tell them th’ truth about Sunday night.”

Stacey saw. He meditated.

“Well, look here!” he said at last. “I didn’t say anything about you or
why I didn’t bring you in, but Traile” (when he spoke to Monahan Stacey
did not say “Lieutenant Traile”) “Traile, though he didn’t know your
name was on my list, happened to say something that would lead the
authorities to believe you’d left town, along with a good many others.
Why don’t you?”

“I dunno,” replied the Irishman sullenly. “I didn’t like to beat it as
if I’d really been one of them skunks that lynched th’ mayor.”

“Did you have money? Because I can—”

“Lord bless you, yes, Captain!” the man interrupted. “The boys come ’n’
offered me all I’d’ve needed.”

Stacey gazed at him. “D’you mean that _our_ boys did that?” he demanded.
“Peters and Swanson and Petitvalle and the rest of them?”

“Sure they did!”

“Then, damn it all! they’ve known about this charge against you ever
since I got them together, and not one of them’s come to me and told
me!”

Monahan grinned. “Sure not, Captain!” he replied. “They done what you
told them to, because you’re you, ’n’, as far as I can see, they’re
enjoying themselves doing it, it not being what you might call strictly
according to rule. But they didn’t any of them come ’n’ lay their curly
heads on your breast ’n’ sob out their own little troubles.”

Stacey fumed, then got over it, and fell into thought. Here were these
men who’d go to hell with him—at least, Burnham had said they
would—yet he couldn’t get at them, not really. What difficult secret
souls they had! He sighed. Yet somehow he was proud of their reserve.

“Besides,” Monahan remarked, as a final shot, “I give them orders they
was to say nothing to you about me.”

“Oh, you did!” said Stacey drily. “You’ve been giving too many orders.
It’s my turn. Now listen to me, you damned red-headed fire-brand!
To-morrow afternoon I’ll try to see General Wood and I’ll tell him about
you. He’s a square man and white, and I think he’ll fix the thing up.
But, just in case he shouldn’t, you’ll decamp, beat it, quit this lovely
city, right now. And you’ll take money from me to do that. (Confound
it!” he reflected, “I’ll have to borrow money from Traile to get home
myself!) And you’ll let me know where you are, but not till to-morrow
night, so that _I_ won’t know when I see the general.”

A broad grin had spread over Monahan’s face, giving it an expression of
gigantic good humor. “Faith! Captain,” he drawled, with a touch of
brogue in his intonation, “as an example of sacred military discipline
you’re in a class by yourself, you are! An Irishman you are at heart,
Captain. And it’s sorry I am to have to disobey you. But I’d feel fine,
wouldn’t I? to have General Wood saying sternly: ‘And where is this man,
Captain Carroll?’ and you replying sweetly: ‘I gave him money ’n’ told
him to quit the town, General!’ No, no, Captain! Right here will I sit
’n’ wait for you to come ’n’ say: ‘All is forgiven, Jim dear!’ or for
the _po_lice to come ’n’ get me.”

Stacey, half furious, half delighted, capitulated. “Oh, well,” he said,
“I hope you’ll go out and get something to eat now and then.” He rose to
go, then paused. “Look here! You told me about all this. Why couldn’t
you have told Traile?” he asked curiously. “He’s a good sort and he
knows every one here. He’d have cleared things up.”

But the expression of sullen hostility had returned to Monahan’s face.
“Traile’s decent enough, but a swell,” he growled.

“Rot! Traile’s father’s rich; so’s mine. No difference at all. I’m a
swell, too,” Stacey observed, almost gaily.

“You can call yourself names at your pleasure, Captain,” said Monahan,
“but let any one else say that about you and I’ll break his head.”

Stacey laughed and departed.

He and Traile found more zest in their work next day. Not being fools,
they accepted Peters’ quiet advice that all six of them make the arrests
together. Even so, they had their hands full. These, thought Stacey
grimly more than once, were the men they were after. Four they took,
with difficulty, in the attic of a disreputable boarding-house, four in
a brothel, and five on a river barge after a running fight during which
Traile got a knife thrust in his arm and Jackson a bullet in the
shoulder. The rest they picked up separately or in pairs. But by five in
the afternoon they had got them all—all twenty. Tired and grimy, Traile
with his arm in a sling, they reported to the colonel.

“Good work, gentlemen! Good work!” he said soberly. “You even got
Voorhies?”

“We did, sir,” replied Traile quietly, “but with two bullets in him,
which the captain here put there on my account. Two of our men are
hurt—Jackson shot in the shoulder—at the hospital—will be all right;
Morgan laid out with a brick—came around after a while—a bit groggy
now, that’s all.”

“And you, Lieutenant?”

“Nothing, sir. A scratch. Hardly notice it.”

“You’ve done well. I’ll let the general know. I think this ends it. You
can retire into the bosoms of your families and cease calling me
‘sir’—always a strain on National Army men, I observe. Congratulations,
Captain Carroll.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Stacey replied. “There was a favor I wanted to
ask, sir,” he added. “Do you think it would be possible for me to see
General Wood for a very few minutes?”

“I’ll find out,” said the colonel. “I feel sure he’ll be glad to see
you.” And he left the room.

“Tell you all about it when I come out, Traile,” Stacey remarked
abstractedly, thinking over what words he should use.

“This way, Captain,” said the colonel, returning presently. He led
Stacey down a hall to a door at which he knocked. He opened it, and
Stacey went through, alone, into the room beyond.

It was a large office-room, with in the centre a desk, at the further
side of which General Wood was seated.

Stacey saluted stiffly.

But the general rose and held out his hand across the desk. “Come in,
Captain Carroll,” he said, with his pleasant smile, and shook Stacey’s
hand. “Sit down. I see you wear the D. S. C. ribbon. My
congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The general considered him. “I’m glad you asked to see me, Captain,” he
continued, sitting back in his chair, “because Colonel M—— has just
told me of the extraordinary success you and Lieutenant Traile have had
in making arrests. I have an entirely unmilitary curiosity to know how
you did it.”

“Oh, well, sir,” said Stacey, “we didn’t really play fair. It happens
that, though I’m not from Omaha, twenty-two of my men live here. I
organized twenty of them, sir, and had sixteen of them go out in
civilian clothes and locate the men on our lists.”

The general stared, then began to smile. Finally he laughed—a pleasant
kindly laugh. “Most unmilitary,” he remarked, “but efficient.” Suddenly
he became thoughtful. “And your men were willing to do that for you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s unusual. You say twenty out of the twenty-two?”

“Yes, sir. One of the other two is in bed with pneumonia. It’s about the
twenty-second man that I should like to speak to you, sir.”

“Go on.”

“His name is Monahan, sir, a wild Irishman, the most difficult man I
ever had and the best. He was on my second list of men to arrest.”

“Too bad! You arrested him?”

“No, sir.”

The general’s face grew grave. “Why not?” he inquired sharply.

“Because he is totally innocent, sir,” Stacey returned steadily, “but
couldn’t prove it in court.”

“We’ll waive for a moment your action in not carrying out orders. How do
you know he’s innocent?”

“Because, sir, with all his unruliness, this is exactly the sort of
thing he _couldn’t_ do. And, besides, he told me the real story himself.
He wouldn’t lie to me.”

And Stacey very swiftly repeated Monahan’s story. As he did so, he
watched the general’s face closely. A little gleam, Stacey thought, came
into the candid blue eyes at the mention of Monahan’s black-listing.
Leonard Wood, too, knew what it meant to be a man against a combination.
When Stacey had finished the general made some hasty notes on a
scratch-block. Then he looked up again.

“I’m glad you brought this matter up to me, Captain,” he said soberly.
“I’ll see to it that the charge against Monahan is dismissed. I want
every man punished who was implicated in Sunday night’s shameful affair;
I don’t want any man dragged into it on account of something else he may
have done. No taking advantage of this to settle old scores. However,”
he concluded, with a smile, “you can’t expect me to approve officially
of your action, can you?”

“Certainly not, sir,” said Stacey cheerfully. He rose.

But the general detained him. “Captain,” he asked, his mouth twitching
slightly, “when you were in the service did you frequently employ
your—er—admirable spirit of personal initiative?”

“No, sir,” said Stacey calmly. “Only once.”

“And—excuse my curiosity!—was it because of that occasion that you
received your decoration?”

“Oh, no, sir, quite decidedly not!” answered Stacey reproachfully.

The general laughed and stood up. “Good-bye, Captain Carroll, and
thanks,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” returned Stacey. They shook hands.

“Come on, Traile,” he said, a moment later. “Let’s drive like the devil
over to Monahan’s place—on Dodge Street it is. I’ll tell you all about
it on the way.”

But, with nothing left for him to do, apathy descended on Stacey.
Despite Traile’s pleading he would not remain after the next night, when
he took a late train for Vernon. He did not want to see Traile any
longer. He did not want to see any one. He desired only to get away from
this city. But he did not for a moment fancy that the train would carry
him to any place better or even different. All life was like that. You
travelled and travelled and got nowhere. One of those amusement booths
where you sat perfectly still and received an illusion of motion from a
painted landscape rolled swiftly past you.


                              CHAPTER XIII

If Stacey had been at all curious about himself he would probably have
thought that his Omaha adventure had left him precisely as he was
before. He might only have been concerned at the memory of the sudden
ungovernable passion to which he had fallen a prey on the night of the
lynching. But he was not interested in himself, even faintly.
Impressions of others and, especially, impressions of things flowed in
upon him, since that was the way he was made, but chaotically, since he
did not seek them or try consciously to arrange them. He was apathetic
but not weary. He saw life as flashes of lightning in chaos. Or, no, the
figure was too grandiose. Sparks travelling with haphazard chain-like
velocity in the soot of a chimney.

There was a wash-out on the road, and Stacey’s train was delayed for
many hours, so that he did not reach Vernon until late in the afternoon.
He hired a taxi and drove home. It was the fashionable hour. Vernon had
certainly become metropolitan of late years. The streets were thronged,
and the handsome boulevard into which the taxi presently turned was a
river of gleaming motor cars, chauffeur in livery on the front seat,
perfectly gowned women in the tonneau. Smooth, very! The mellow October
coolness in the air and the lights that began to shine palely against
the sunset played up to it. People waved to Stacey, smiling at his
plebeian conveyance, and he lifted his hat abstractedly. But at heart he
was full of a sick distaste for all this elegance, this physical luxury,
that seemed to him not so much to hide as to reveal what lay
beneath—the vulgarity, the stupidity, the greed.

Arrived at home, he bathed and dressed, then went down to the library,
where he sipped a high-ball moodily and waited for his father.

Mr. Carroll’s handsome face lighted up at sight of his son. “Well, well,
this is fine!” he exclaimed. “When did you get back? And what have you
been doing in that disgraceful place all this time?”

“Oh, I saw the riot,” said Stacey, shaking hands, “and stayed on for the
sequel. May I get you a high-ball, sir?”

“No. Come into the dining-room. I’ll mix a cocktail. Parker will have
had the ice all ready. We can talk at the same time.”

Stacey watched him as he measured out the gin and vermouth.

“Disgraceful, the whole business!” Mr. Carroll went on, emphasizing his
words by a vigorous agitation of the silver shaker. “There’s never been
a time in the history of this country when respect for law and order was
at so low an ebb.” He poured his cocktail into a glass and took it over
to the table. “Come on, son,” he said, “sit down. Dinner will be served
in a few minutes, I dare say. Sit down and tell me the whole story. Your
health, my boy!”

“Thank you, sir,” said Stacey, obeying. “But there isn’t very much to
tell. I’ll spare you details of the lynching itself—they were in all
your papers, of course. After the riot the Legion men organized, and, as
I happened to have my uniform with me, I went in with them and helped
arrest a lot of the people implicated. Young Traile and I worked
together.”

Mr. Carroll sat up straight, his eyes shining. “You did that? Good for
you, Stacey! Tell me all about it.”

Stacey related his experiences, stressing details which seemed
unimportant to himself, such as his and the lieutenant’s adventures in
making the arrests, and omitting to speak of Monahan, because he thought
his father would not approve of his behavior in that matter, and Stacey,
though with a sort of melancholy absence of feeling, wanted to be
agreeable to his father. Parker had served the soup, but Mr. Carroll,
though he prized dinner highly, left it untouched until Stacey had
finished speaking.

“Good!” he cried then, “good! I’m proud of you. But, hang it!” he added
boyishly, “how adventures do dog you about, don’t they? So General Wood
was the man for the job? I knew he’d prove to be.”

“Yes,” said Stacey.

“A good man!” remarked Mr. Carroll, eating his soup now. “I hope he’ll
be our next president.”

“Hope so, too,” Stacey assented.

Mr. Carroll’s face was radiant. “Glad you feel the same way about it.
We’ve had enough of the waste and radicalism and shilly-shallying of
this administration,” he asserted. “We want a strong safe man for
president, representing a decent party. General Wood fills the bill.”

“Oh,” said Stacey thoughtlessly, “I don’t care anything about all that.
One party seems to me as silly as the other. I only want General Wood to
be elected president because I suppose he wants to _be_ president and
I’d like him to have whatever he wants.”

But at these words the elation had vanished from Mr. Carroll’s face. It
looked grave now and sad. Stacey bit his lip. Why the devil, he thought
angrily, couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut? He didn’t seem to have
decent control over his words.

“I’m sure he’d make a good president,” he said apologetically.

But they could neither of them keep off from subjects on which they
disagreed, these being nearly all conceivable subjects except their
unreasoning mutual affection, which would not have lent itself
especially well to conversation even had Mr. Carroll not been shy and
Stacey intensely reserved. It was Mr. Carroll’s turn next.

“All that business, that damnable riot,” he said, as though
involuntarily, a fanatical gleam in his eye, “I felt sure at the time
that there was Bolshevism behind it. Did you see any evidence of that?”

“No, sir,” returned Stacey drily. He tried to keep his tone
expressionless, knowing that his father literally couldn’t help making
the remark—the thing was an obsession; but he probably, in spite of
himself, revealed the disdain his father must have known the question
would arouse in him. The rest of the dinner passed off in a dreary
attempt to revive the faded cordiality.

Afterward they went into the living-room, and Stacey walked restlessly
about.

“A game of pinochle, son?” Mr. Carroll suggested presently.

“Thanks, no, sir. I’ve really got to go out and make a call,” Stacey
returned. He knew he was being cruel. There was a faint wistfulness
about his father that touched Stacey dully; but he simply could not
endure the repression he must exert upon himself if he were to stay
there and talk with his father. All his words would have to be studied,
never casual. He was incapable of it.

“All right,” said Mr. Carroll. “You’ve been away a week. Of course there
are people you want to see. I’ll read a little while, then go up to bed.
Good night.”

“Good night, sir,” said Stacey, and left the room.

But in the hall outside he hesitated for a moment, and when he had gone
to the garage and brought out his car he stopped it beside the house and
returned to the living-room. He saw, as he opened the door, that his
father was not reading but playing solitaire, and this, too, touched
Stacey a little. Mr. Carroll looked up in surprise.

“I’m going to run over to see Phil and Catherine Blair for a little
while,” Stacey said. “They don’t even know where I’ve been, and I ought
to go. It occurred to me, sir, that just possibly you’d like to drive
over there with me. Would you care to?”

Stacey had not the slightest idea that his father would accept. Mr.
Carroll disliked going out in the evening. But, to Stacey’s surprise, he
dropped his cards and rose at once.

“Why, yes, son, I’ll be glad to go along, if you really want me,” he
replied. “I like your friends, the Blairs,” he added, in an apologetic
tone, when he and Stacey were in the car. “Phil’s a thoughtful fellow,
with talent, too, I should judge, though I don’t pretend to know
anything about architecture. And Catherine’s a fine girl, an unusual
girl.”

Again Stacey was surprised.

Phil himself opened the door, a look of warm pleasure glowing in his
face. “Well, where the deuce have you been, Stacey?” he cried. “This is
awfully good of you, Mr. Carroll! Come in! Come in!” And he ushered them
into the house.

The sitting-room glowed, too. Light from a shaded reading-lamp fell on
Catherine’s hair and face, illuminating the fine close-grained skin and
accentuating the firm bony structure beneath it. Catherine was sitting
in a low easy chair, over the arms of which her two sons leaned closely
to gaze down at the large book that lay open on her knees. She rose
swiftly at sight of her guests, but with a shy grace. Her hand went to
her hair.

As for the two boys, they dashed at Stacey immediately.

For just an instant, while he held them off, he considered the scene
wistfully. It all seemed so far from any mood his tortured inharmonious
spirit was able to achieve.

But Catherine, after a faint smile at him, was shaking hands with his
father, and the boys were growing importunate.

“Come on, Uncle Stacey!” Carter shouted. “Do ‘Fly away, Jack!’ for him!
Come on! Over here!”

“Carter! Carter!” said his mother. “Not so loud! And let Uncle Stacey
alone.”

“No, but he wants to play, don’t you, Uncle Stacey?” Carter insisted,
moderating his voice, however.

“Sure!” said Stacey. “Only wouldn’t you—er—just as lief try some other
game?”

“No. ‘Fly away, Jack!’” the boy returned firmly. “I do it for _him_
sometimes, and he can’t ever find them. Only,” he added in a tremendous
whisper, “they come off kind of often.”

Stacey set patiently about the game, In a way it was a relief—like
knitting, he supposed. But, as he played it, he heard his father at the
other end of the room proudly telling Phil and Catherine of the Omaha
adventure, and an odd dream-like sensation came over Stacey of not
knowing which was real—this, the childish game with the boys, or that,
the story his father was repeating. Neither, perhaps.

Phil came over and stood near him. “A sad day for you that you
introduced that game!” he remarked.

“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t mind it,” Stacey returned. “‘Come back, Jack!
Come back, Jill!’”

(“Did I really introduce it?” he thought hazily. “Was it really I or
some ancestor of mine?”)

“The dreadful monotony of it!” Phil added, with a laugh.

“That’s its charm.”

“Enough! That will do now,” said Phil presently. “Up you go, boys! To
bed! Run! Beat it!”

“Beat it! Beat it!” Jack repeated delightedly.

“Mother won’t let _me_ say ‘beat it,’” Carter remarked.

“Won’t she? Well, I suppose she’ll let me say it.”

Carter rushed across the room. “Mother! Mother!” he cried, both on the
way and after arrival, “daddy says you’ll let him say ‘beat it!’ Will
you? Then why won’t you let me?”

“Sh!” said Catherine, looking a little dazed. “Carter, this is Uncle
Stacey’s father. What will he think of you if you shout that way?”

The boy shook Mr. Carroll’s extended hand politely. “But, mother,” he
repeated, “daddy said—”

“Yes, I know. You tell daddy that I say he’s a great goose and that
geese can say what they please, I suppose. Then run up to bed and see if
you can help Jack undress nicely. I’ll come up and kiss you both good
night when you’re ready.”

The boys went—reluctantly, with dragging steps, but without protest.

However, at the door Carter turned and ran back, his brother following
like a faithful dog.

“I guess I forgot to say thank you, Uncle Stacey, for Jack and Jill,” he
observed.

“That’s all right, Carter,” said Stacey. “’Night! Sleep tight!”

“Don’t let the bed-bugs bite!” Carter shouted joyfully.

“Carter!” called his mother, but he was really gone this time.

“Triumphant exit, wasn’t it?” Phil remarked. “Come out on the porch with
me, Stacey. It will rest you.”

They went out and walked up and down together. There was a pleasant
coolness in the air. The city glittered beneath them.

“Sorry you ran into all that mess in Omaha,” Phil said presently. “Must
have given you a rotten sense of discouragement.” He waited, as though
for a reply, but Stacey made none. “The trouble with crowds is, I
suppose,” he continued thoughtfully, “that you get only the least common
denominator. What all men have in common is their primitive passions.
It’s only what each has by himself that counts to his credit. Any man is
better than a crowd.” He paused again.

“No doubt,” said Stacey dispassionately.

Philip Blair ceased walking, leaned back against the railing of the
porch, and considered Stacey, with a smile. “By the way,” he remarked
irrelevantly, “yesterday I got a statement of receipts and disbursements
from the Fund for Viennese Children.”

Stacey frowned. “Oh, you did!” he said drily. “And how did you happen to
get it? I can guess.”

“Oh,” Phil returned simply, “Catherine and I send what we can.” He
laughed a pleasant laugh. “You hypocrite!” he exclaimed. “Oh, you damned
hypocrite!”

Stacey shook his head. “It’s no use gunning around in me for virtue,
Phil,” he said quietly. “What I gave them hasn’t at all the meaning of
what you’ve given them, whatever that may be. I’ve kept out two hundred
a month for myself.”

“Shucks!” Phil exclaimed disgustedly. “You’re becoming puerile, Stacey!
Do you think I care about the amount—if any—of self-sacrifice that you
showed? The only thing that interests me is that _you_ were interested
in the suffering of Viennese children.”

Stacey gazed away absently at the gleaming city. “I don’t see anything
strange about that,” he said finally. “There’s been enough suffering in
the world, especially among children. You think, Phil, that I have some
malevolent philosophy of life. You’re mistaken. I haven’t any
philosophy. It’s only that every day I run across suffering—so much of
it—that’s caused deliberately. Then I get a craving to destroy. That’s
all,” he concluded listlessly.

“Not so much deliberately as stupidly,” Phil murmured.

But Stacey was walking up and down again. Presently he paused before the
large window that opened into the sitting-room. He gazed in at Catherine
and his father.

Phil, who had followed Stacey and stood now at his shoulder, smiled.
“That always seems to me an unfair advantage to take of people,” he
said, “to watch them when they don’t know you’re there—like looking at
them in their sleep. No,—worse than that. For their personality is one
thing when it’s focussed on you, quite another focussed on some one
else. You’re not meant to see the other. It contains no adaptation to
you.”

“That’s why it’s a relief,” Stacey returned. “For a brief moment you get
the sense of being yourself abolished, and experience peace.”

“H’m!” said Phil reflectively. “Also,” he added, after a pause, “I dare
say this matter of personal adaptation to the individual accounts for
the emptiness of talk—and thought—in a group. The adaptation is
necessarily lacking.”

Stacey smiled faintly. “Always thorough, Phil, aren’t you?” he observed.
He had a strange shadowy sense of being back in his old pre-war
relationship to Phil. There was pleasure in this for Stacey, but
melancholy also, since he knew it was an illusion. He continued to gaze
in through the window at his father and Catherine.

Mr. Carroll was leaning forward in his chair, with a certain
courtliness, and smiling; Catherine’s face in the light from the
electric lamp appeared mobile and full of expression. They seemed to be
talking freely.

“I never saw Catherine so bold before,” Stacey remarked finally, turning
away. “I swear I’m jealous.”

“Oh,” Phil returned quietly, “she’s always shyer with you than with any
one else.”

“Is she? That’s silly. Now what do you suppose they’re talking about?”
asked Stacey idly.

Philip Blair smiled. “You, no doubt.”

“Horrid thought! Come on! Let’s go in.”

“We were watching you from outside the window,” he announced
maliciously, as they reëntered the room. Catherine flushed. “Phil
said—”

“Oh, shut up, Stacey!” Phil interrupted. “I won’t have my wife teased.
By the way, your friend, Mrs. Latimer, has been here a number of times.”

Stacey was interested. “You like her, Catherine?” he inquired.

“Very much,” she replied, the old shyness back again, stronger than
ever, in voice and face. Perhaps she was vexed with it and struggled
against it, for: “The last time she came she brought her daughter, Mrs.
Price, with her,” Catherine added, then bit her lip, lest she should
have said something awkward.

“Marian?” Stacey exclaimed. But he was not perturbed. He had forgotten
Marian completely in the last week. He was merely surprised; for he
somehow could not fancy Marian and Catherine together.

“Mrs. Latimer is a fine woman, with an affected idiot of a husband,” Mr.
Carroll observed. “Can’t say I care much for Marian.”

Stacey smiled, almost imperceptibly. What a straightforward loyal
character his father had, he thought. Everything clear, black-and-white.
And never more kindly than here now with Phil and Catherine. Stacey had
a feeling of looking at his father from a long way off—or—or—at the
reflection of him in a mirror. What an odd blurred evening—and
pleasant! He fell into a reverie while the others talked. Why should
there be this wistfulness about his father? Mr. Carroll had a strong
personality; he could manage men; decisions snapped, clean-cut, from his
mind. Perhaps he was wistful because he had no grown-up life outside of
business. His ideas on general subjects were immature.

But before long Mr. Carroll rose. “Come on, Stacey!” he remarked. “Phil
has to go to work early to-morrow, and Catherine must be tired, too. You
don’t mind a grandfather calling you by your first name?” he asked her,
with a pleasant smile.

“’Night, Phil!” said Stacey at the door, and shook his friend’s hand
casually.

“Nice people, very!” his father observed, after they had driven for some
minutes in silence. “But I don’t think Phil looks well, do you?”

“No?” returned Stacey, surprised. “I thought he seemed gayer to-night
than for a long while. He’s always been atrociously thin, you know.”

But the strange soft sense of haziness vanished in the night. Next
morning, after breakfast, Stacey stood looking absently out of his study
window, with no sense but of a poignant emptiness.

Parker came up after a time to say that Mrs. Latimer had called to see
him; but even at this Stacey felt nothing save a little surprise.

He went down at once and greeted Mrs. Latimer pleasantly. She looked, he
thought, rather worn, faintly older; but he said to himself that this
was probably the effect of the cruel morning light. Moreover, as soon as
she spoke and smiled, the impression vanished, as carelessly as it had
come.

“Of course you don’t want to see me or you’d have come to my house,” she
said, “but I really wanted to see you, so I couldn’t resist coming.
Silly, wasn’t it?”

“Not at all,” he replied. “An excellent idea. What the Italians call
_geniale_. Piquant, too, with just a touch of impropriety about it,
since if we had been of the same age we’d undoubtedly have married.”

He was merely saying words, letting them say themselves, but Mrs.
Latimer flushed like a girl. “Stacey!” she cried. “Shame on you!”

“Come on up to my study, if you don’t mind climbing the stairs,” he
suggested. “That will make it still worse.”

She laughed, and they went up. But when they had sat down they both
became silent.

“How’s Marian and the new ménage?” Stacey asked, after a moment.

Mrs. Latimer gave him a quick curious glance, but there was nothing
except polite interest in his face and tone. Nor, indeed, was there more
than that in his thoughts. He asked after Marian because she had been
recalled to his mind the night before and because Mrs. Latimer was her
mother.

“To tell the truth, I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t think Marian is
particularly happy, but then I don’t think she ever was. Marian is
enigmatic because she has two such different sides to her nature that
neither can be the truth about her. And what that truth is, I, for one,
have long since given up trying to discover. Marian seems to me to
drift, rather carelessly and recklessly, as though she were saying:
‘What does it matter? It’s not really I who am drifting.’”

Stacey showed some interest in this. “That’s rather profound,” he
observed appreciatively. “Hope you don’t do that sort of thing with me.”

Mrs. Latimer smiled. “I have to,” she remarked, “since you won’t.” Again
there was a silence. “Stacey,” she said abruptly, “I’m so very sorry you
happened into that terrible affair in Omaha. It seems to me sometimes
that some ugly fate is dogging you, to single out everything evil and
say: ‘Here! Don’t overlook this! Here’s something really horrid!’ It
isn’t fair! It simply isn’t fair!” she concluded, almost passionately.

Stacey raised his eyebrows. “It’s awfully good of you to be so
considerate of me,” he replied. “I appreciate it.” (And, indeed, he
tried to.) “Philip Blair said the same thing last evening—by the way,
I’m very glad you’ve taken to going around there—but really there’s
nothing to be perturbed about. I’m not changed by Omaha. This was no
worse than a thousand things I saw, almost daily, in France. Worse? It
was nothing!” Suddenly his face twitched. “If you’d seen my friend,
Gryce, die!” He drew his hand across his forehead. “Come!” he said. “One
doesn’t talk of things like that.”

Mrs. Latimer’s face had looked perplexed and doubtful at Stacey’s
initial coolness; it became grave again and affectionately apprehensive
now.

“It isn’t,” she said gently, “that anything you have seen is worse than
what you saw in France. It is only the persistent hammering on the same
theme.”

“Oh,” he replied, in a hard voice, “I suppose you think I’m being
steadily turned into some kind of red revolutionary. Not at all! Quite
the opposite, in fact. When I see what there is in men beneath the crust
I’m all for preserving the crust—any old crust—the one we’ve got,
even!”

She gazed at him sadly. “I wish you’d go away for a while,” she
murmured.

“Go away?” he returned. “I can’t go away from myself, can I? I’m just
like the rest—with a crust.”

Suddenly one of his hot unreasoning rages swept over him, like a
physical thing climbing from his feet to his head.

“It’s no good to do away with myself,” he said in an odd resonant voice,
but not loud. “That’s too little. I’d blow up everything with
myself—every one—my father with his bigoted prehistoric ideas, your
husband with his petulant selfishness, Marian, stony at one moment,
sentimentalizing prettily over a rose-petal the next,—all men, all
women! And rebuild things? Never! Let them go smash, end, vanish, and
leave clean empty space!”

She trembled before his fierceness, but shook her head courageously.
“No,” she said, with brave obstinacy, “you wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” he demanded wildly. “Do you think I’ve got any pity in me?
Never a drop!” The hot wave of anger passed now, leaving in Stacey only
a sick feeling of enhanced emptiness. There were drops of sweat on his
forehead.

Again Mrs. Latimer shook her head. “No, I know you haven’t—not at
present. But you wouldn’t do it because you’re too courageous. You
wouldn’t give up in that way. In spite of you, your strong soul will
insist that, bad as everything is, you’ll see what can be done with it.”

“Why?” he asked dully. “It’s all a rotten mess. There’s no scheme—no
one—behind it.”

“I didn’t say there was,” she answered steadily. “I only say that any
one as strong as you must make a scheme himself.”

They were both silent for a time.

“Forgive my violence,” said Stacey apologetically at last. “I get these
silly fits when I lose my self-control once in a while. Idleness, they
come from, I suppose. Lack of anything to do to work off energy.”

Feeling genuinely embarrassed, he had not been looking at Mrs. Latimer
while he spoke. Looking at her now, he was amazed to note the sorrow in
her eyes.

“Go away, Stacey!” she murmured. “Go away for a while. I’m—afraid for
you.”

“Go away?” he repeated, but gently this time. “Where to? Can you find me
access to another planet? Nevertheless,” he added, “I will go if you
want me to. Also I note that the pageant season is on now. It will
always be something to avoid that. What is it this time?”

Mrs. Latimer laughed hysterically. “‘V-Vernon, Past and—Present.’
The—the whole story of Vernon.”

“Now fancy!” said Stacey.


                              CHAPTER XIV

It occurred to Stacey, however, that he had spent more than he could
afford lately and had nothing with which to go on his travels. And this
seemed an excellent excuse for remaining at home. But he presently
recollected that on one War Christmas his father had made him a gift of
Liberty bonds. He sold one, with a sense of resignation. He did not feel
irony in the ease with which he could solve all financial difficulties,
for the idea of personal virtue, asceticism, was absent from his mind.
He was sending all that money to Vienna because he wanted to send it,
not because he felt he ought to; he kept out two hundred dollars a month
because he wanted them; and he sold a thousand-dollar bond now simply
because if he was to go on a journey he needed money.

It is much more difficult to understand why he was going on a journey at
all. He was not affectionate enough to be going simply because Mrs.
Latimer had asked him to. And one can hardly take seriously the reason
he gave his sister, Julie.

He drove around to her house the afternoon before his departure, and on
his way caught sight of Irene Loeffler walking briskly toward him and
signalling violently. He waved his hat, but dashed by her in a burst of
speed.

“You know, Julie,” he said, a few minutes later, sprawling on the
davenport in his sister’s living-room, “it’s all due to you that I’m
going away.”

“To me!”

“Absolutely! You lure me to your house, and then you turn an
unscrupulous woman loose on me, and she makes my life unbearable, and
I—”

“Who?” cried Julie, her eyes dancing.

“_Who?_” Stacey returned. “Who but Irene?”

Julie giggled. “Wh-what in the world has Irene done to you?” she
demanded.

He sat up straight and gazed at his sister. “Jul-ia,” he said, “you know
me to be modest, you know how little I esteem my personal charm, caring
more for simple things such as goodness and—”

“Oh, yes,” Julie interrupted, “I know all that! I want to hear about
Irene.”

“Therefore,” he continued, “when, from never having seen the lady at
all, I began to see her almost daily, and, when I didn’t see her, to get
invitations to functions given by her or functions at which she was to
be present, it was long before I suspected purpose in all this. But,
Julie, though modest I am not a fool. Things have now reached such a
point that I cannot take a walk in the park or motor anywhere without
meeting Irene. And I tell you there is evil design in all this, and I’m
going away.” Julie was giggling increasingly. “Only five minutes ago I
evaded her—but not for long. My senses are growing as abnormally acute
as those of Roderick Usher in Poe’s story.” He paused and listened
apprehensively. “And, in his words, ‘I tell you that she now stands
without the door!’”

At this moment the door bell did, indeed, ring. Stacey sprang up.

“You see? Good-bye, Julie! I’m going out the back way,” he concluded,
and fled.

As for Julie, she threw herself down on the davenport and laughed
helplessly, in which position Irene presently found her.

No one seeing Stacey with his sister could have reconciled him with the
Stacey who set himself against society and flew into passions at his
impotence to destroy. Yet there was no pose in his attitude toward her.
Pose demands a marked consciousness of self, and this he was assuredly
without. He behaved in that way because he felt that way when he was
with Julie, which was not so very often; and he was obscurely grateful
to her for making him feel so. He liked his sister better than in the
old days. She had an ingenuous manner that concealed a rich sense of
humor, and he was inclined to think that this was characteristic of her
attitude toward all things, that, though her surface simplicity was
unassumed, beneath it lay, not indeed a deliberate philosophy, but a
mature apprehension of life. But he did not waste much thought on
analysis of Julie; he accepted her as a pleasant fact.

Stacey, then, set off for New York the next afternoon. Julie was at the
train to bid him good-bye, and so was Jimmy Prout, who tossed a book
into his brother-in-law’s lap, and sat down opposite him. Stacey
considered Jimmy’s agreeable face. Jimmy did no one any harm; on the
contrary, he did people good by being such a companionable person. Why,
thought Stacey, couldn’t _he_ be like Jimmy? If turbulence of mind
solved anything, got one anywhere, there would be something to say for
it; since it didn’t, since it led only to impotent fuming, what was the
use of it? But, even at the moment of putting the question to himself,
Stacey was disconsolately aware that he might as well ask what was the
use of the tides, since they only moved back and forth.

“You know, Stacey,” Julie was saying, “I’m over thirty, but every time I
see any one off on the train I feel thirteen. I feel a positively aching
desire to go too.”

“Come on along,” he returned. “Nobody I’d like better to have with me.”

“That’s nice of you, Stacey,” she said gratefully. “I would. I’d come
just this way, without a thing, if it weren’t for Junior—he’s having
whooping-cough. I’ve always wanted to do something impetuous like that.”

“Have you now?” asked Stacey, mildly surprised.

But Julie, who was sitting next the window of her brother’s section,
suddenly gasped and burst into laughter. “Oh, Jimmy, Stacey, please,
please, help me stop!” she cried, in a smothered voice, pressing her
handkerchief against her mouth. “Oh, she _mustn’t_ see me in this
state!”

“Who mustn’t?” demanded her husband.

“I-Irene Loeffler. She—she’s come to see Stacey off,” Julie stammered
weakly. “She’ll be in the car in a moment. Oh, dear!”

Jimmy laughed, too, and Julie made a tremendous effort at self-control,
as Irene strode briskly down the car and paused beside them. She held a
book in her hand.

“Hello!” she said abruptly. “Who’s going away?”

“I am,” and “he is,” returned Stacey and Jimmy, who had risen politely.

“That so? Where you going? Sit down! Sit down!”

“New York first,” Stacey answered cautiously.

Irene dropped into the seat beside Jimmy and crossed her legs. “I was
looking for Effie Prince,” she remarked casually. “Supposed to be
leaving on this train. Most likely couldn’t get her trunks packed in
time. Never can. Here! _You_ take the book I brought for her.”

“Thanks,” said Stacey. “Then you’re not going away? Sorry! I hoped you
were when I saw you.”

The girl flushed faintly at this, but her embarrassment was covered by
Julie, who gave a desperate choking cough.

“Here!” said her husband gravely. “Take another pastille, Julie,” and he
drew a box from his pocket. “It’s that kid of ours,” he explained.
“Given her whooping-cough—not a doubt of it. You’ll both have it now,
probably.”

But the conductor was calling “All Aboard,” and the three departed
hastily, Irene giving Stacey a mannish grip of the hand.

Stacey waved at them through the window, then stretched out in his seat
and picked up Irene’s book. He laughed suddenly. It was “Les Chansons de
Bilitis.”

It was, anyway, an amusing departure, and Stacey felt in quite a good
humor.

But it was not a prelude to an amusing trip. Stacey wandered from city
to city drearily. Except for being larger, they were no worse than
Vernon; if they had been, they might have seemed less unbearable. They
were merely empty—one after the other; empty places inhabited by empty
people. New York sickened him. It wallowed in wealth, dazzled the eyes
with it; rugs, imported motor cars, china, lights, theatres, food, more
food,—there was an absorbed attempt to minister to every demand of the
most exacting body, with, so far as Stacey could see, not a thought
behind it all. The “Follies” were typical—gorgeous color, selected
girls, riot of noise—not a word spoken that could reach beyond the
intelligence of a sub-normal child. Stacey yawned through the show, to
the justifiable annoyance of his companion, an old college friend, who
had paid God knew what for the tickets. A hundred magazines stared at
Stacey from the subway book-stalls, with a hundred pictures of sweet
American girls on their covers, and who could tell how many hundred
stories of thwarted Bolshevik plots among the advertisements inside?

Stacey fled to Philadelphia, thence to Baltimore, then up to Boston. He
went to dinners and dances and dinner-dances in one place and another.
Débutantes a little nakeder and bolder than he remembered them in past
years. Quite in keeping with everything else. The whole country singing
one vast jazz song of praise to the body, sole preoccupation how to
gratify every instinct it possessed. It was callousness carried further
than was credible, since across the ocean were thousands who, too, were
thinking only about their bodies—perforce, being unable to get
sufficient food and clothes to keep them alive.

He gazed at it all with bitter aloofness. What could he do about it?
What could any one do about a world like this? There was a desolate
emptiness in his heart that inhibited even rage. He longed for
annihilation, the absolute eternal extinction of self. He had certainly
altered in these last months. Even he, who tried not to think of
himself, could not help perceiving this. His reactions were more jerky,
disconnected with any former reactions, incoherent. He was not a strong
scornful soul, detached and looking at everything in one manner; he was
a series of sterile unrelated emotions, with the only continuous theme
that ran through them all, disgust.

He gave it up at last and returned to Vernon—why, he could not have
explained. He wrote no one that he was coming.

It was a morning in early December when he got back. Snow was thick on
the city. The taxi that Stacey hired splashed through slush in the
centre of town and slewed madly, despite its chains, on the boulevard
leading to the Carroll house.

Stacey flung himself on the couch in his study and presently fell
asleep. He did not wake until Parker knocked at the door to call him to
luncheon. Two hours of unconsciousness. Well, that was so much gained,
anyway.

He spent as many hours of the afternoon as he could in bathing and
dressing, then at last left the house and tramped away through the snow.
He had no objective in mind, but after a while, finding himself near
Philip Blair’s house, went up the steps to it and rang the bell.

Catherine opened the door. At first he thought that she looked wan and
tired; but she smiled with pleasure at sight of him, and the impression
vanished.

“I’m awfully glad you’re back, Stacey,” she said. “Phil was saying last
night that it seemed years you’d been away. Come in. Marian—Mrs.
Price—is here.”

He felt the faintest touch of surprise,—no more, for he was almost done
with correlating facts. His mind no longer worked that way. He was
rapidly growing unable to see people in relation to one another, and so
to find one relation natural, another curious. Unity was beginning to
desert his impressions. Each of them seemed to come separately.

Thus he was scarcely at all surprised when, at sight of Marian, whom he
had nearly forgotten, his old passion for her leaped up like sudden
flame. He shook her hand, with a word or two of casual greeting, but his
eyes met hers electrically. He made no effort to combat the sensation.
If anything, he was grateful for it. And the antagonism, as strong as
the attraction, that formerly she had aroused in him, was absent, since
he was living in the isolated moment.

Marian was lovely, he thought, sick with an unrecognized desire for
loveliness. She wore a toque of white fur that fitted close to her small
head, and there were white furs over her shoulders. She was a little
thinner than before her marriage, and her delicate features were as
clear and fine as those of a silver goddess on some Syracusan coin.

They all three sat down and talked, somehow.

“Well, where have you been this time, Stacey?” Marian asked gaily.
“Fighting more dragons? Doing dozens of herculean tasks—Augean stables,
hydras, taking Atlas’ place for a time?” She gave him a malicious smile.

Clearly Marian was as hostile as ever. No matter! On the contrary, he
was instinctively glad of her hostility. It revealed warmth.

Oddly enough, it was Catherine who flushed at it. Stacey noted the flush
with surprise. Oh, well, everything was odd! There was no use in trying
to clear it up. It was also incomprehensible that, feeling as he was
feeling toward Marian, he should not impatiently desire to have
Catherine go away and leave them together. Yet he desired nothing of the
sort.

“No,” he replied peaceably to Marian, “I’ve merely been boring myself to
extinction in a stupid world. Any time that Atlas wants to let the sky
fall on it he may, so far as I’m concerned. But,” he added, “it’s
gratifying to have you make all your metaphors Greek, Marian.”

She bit her lip at this, and her eyes shone dangerously for an instant.
But presently she smiled again.

Stacey turned to Catherine. “How are all of you?” he inquired.

“Not very brilliant, I’m afraid,” she said, a trifle wearily. “We’ve all
got colds—all except Carter, who’s still at school now. I’ve got a
cold, Phil’s got a bad cold, and Jackie’s got a horrid cold.”

“Poor old chap! Where is he?”

“Upstairs. You can hear him cough regularly every thirty-two seconds. I
timed him last night.” She made a brave attempt to pass it off lightly.
But Stacey perceived that she was worn out, and felt sorry for her.

“Can’t I go up and sit with him and let you rest?” he asked. He was
quite sincere in the demand, too; which was as strange as everything
else, since his passion for Marian was bubbling in his veins like a
Circean draft.

“No—thank you,” said Catherine, with a rare beautiful smile. “He’s
asleep now. I’ll go up when he wakes. I’m afraid,” she went on, with
involuntary formality, and turning to Marian, “that I don’t seem very
cordial. Really I’m glad you came—both of you.”

“Truly?” asked Marian prettily. “Then I’ll stay a few minutes longer. I
was afraid I might be tiring you.”

Stacey considered her. He felt that she was hard beneath her beauty. She
was not pitiful. She was not interested in sickness. It annoyed her. Yet
this judgment made not the slightest difference in what he was feeling
toward her. The only thing that affected him was his perception that she
was somehow tense, and that she was staying for him. This stirred him.

A strange trio—even Stacey could feel that; yet they managed to talk
with apparent ease—of Vernon, New York, the weather,—anything. What a
thing training was!

But a small pathetic whine came from upstairs. Catherine rose hastily.
“It’s Jackie,” she explained. “You’ll excuse me for a few minutes, won’t
you?”

“Hadn’t we better go?” Marian asked.

“No, please! I’ll give him his medicine and get him to sleep again and
be back down presently.”

“Not a thing I can do? You’re sure?” Stacey begged.

“No, truly, thank you,” Catherine replied, and hurried out.

Neither Stacey nor Marian moved, but their eyes met instantly. They
gazed at each other in silence. Stacey’s heart beat heavily; he could
feel the throb of it chokingly in his throat. Marian’s eyes were
inscrutable, but her lips were shut closely in an expression of sullen
anger.

At last he leaned forward. “Marian!” he said.

She did not reply, but her fine nostrils dilated slightly. There was
another moment of silence.

“Are you happy?” he demanded brusquely.

“No!” The monosyllable seemed to spring forth without her volition. “You
know I’m not, Stacey Carroll,” she added presently, with concentrated
bitterness. “Why do you want to insult me?”

“I—don’t!” he replied, a sudden touch of pity softening his passion.

They were, in some strange, partial, imperfect manner, made for each
other; for they caught each other’s emotions unerringly. The hostility
went out of Marian’s face.

“I couldn’t have believed,” she said, after a moment, “that any one
could be so unbearably stupid as Ames is, hour after hour, day after
day.” Hatred flared up again in her eyes—but not hatred of Stacey this
time, he knew. “And—brutal!” she added, between her teeth.

Stacey could follow her thoughts as clearly as though they had been
small distorted goblins leaping up and vanishing in the air. The cult of
her body,—Marian had always had it, refined upon it fastidiously. Not
at all vain, she had been aloofly physically proud. What she had felt
for her own body was precisely what her father felt for his Chinese
vases. And now she had had to turn this one cherished possession over to
a new and despised master. Stacey caught it all, not through such
analysis, but in a swift intuitive glimpse. He writhed. “It’s all your
fault, yours!” her eyes seemed to say to him. He sprang up.

“Marian!” he cried, and strode across to her chair.

But she had risen, too, and her arms were about his neck almost as soon
as his own encircled her. She lifted her lips to his with a long
tremulous sigh. A flood of passion submerged them. When he released her
she tottered, shaking, and clung to the back of the chair. He had never
seen her so moved—he could think this even while his own heart bounded.
Her face was glowing, transfigured and beautiful—oh, beautiful!

“Ames—will not—be—home—to-night!” she stammered.

He nodded, dizzily, holding her hands so tight that he must have hurt
them cruelly.

He was reckless. Nothing, not the faintest bond, held him back. He
wanted Marian and would have her. As for Ames’s absence from home, it
was negligible. He did not care a rap that Ames was away, either on his
own account or because of Marian’s reputation; or for any other reason.
He would follow this instinct, this desire. But the truth about Stacey
is deeper. He would now have followed equally any desire—a desire to
commit murder, for example.

He gazed at the girl, then slowly drew her to him again, but more gently
this time, till his cheek pressed her hot cheek and his nostrils inhaled
the fragrance of her curly hair.

“Oh, Stacey, if—if Catherine—were to come in!” she murmured.

And at that moment Catherine did come in. She started. Her hand went to
her heart. Then she stood there in the doorway, silent, motionless, not
accusing, only like a somber intruder on a tragedy. It is astounding,
but the truth, that even at such a moment Stacey could receive from
Catherine an impression of something fate-like, goddess-like, more than
human, a sense of bigness. Again the unrelated character of his
impressions.

But Marian, who had torn herself away from Stacey, gasped, then gave a
little hysterical laugh, and fled from the house without a word,
gathering her trailing white fur swiftly about her throat.

Stacey was unmoved, except in the way the subsiding sea is moved when a
storm is past. He stood looking squarely at Catherine, a twisted
ironical smile on his lips, his eyes cool and challenging.

“Well?” he said finally.

Catherine sank down in the chair where Marian had sat, and leaned
forward, folding her hands above her knees. Her dark eyes did not leave
his. He saw that for the first time in their relationship all shyness
had slipped from her. There was something magnificent about her, he
thought, now that he really saw her unveiled.

“Oh, Stacey, don’t! don’t!” she said at last.

“Why not?” he asked, with polite detachment. “Sanctity of the marriage
relation?” She shook her head. “What then? Moral discipline of
self-denial? Regard for Ames Price—Vernon’s third-best golf player? Or
concern for Marian? You needn’t worry about Marian. She’ll never feel
remorse, and no more shall I. Come, Catherine, you’re not
communicative!”

“You—you know I can’t talk readily,” she said. “But, oh, Stacey, don’t!
please don’t! I’m not speaking to you with reasons—only from my heart.”

“No,” he returned grimly, “you’re speaking with all the massed tradition
heaped up under the impression that through it some purpose can be
followed. All a mistake, I tell you!”

“No! No!” she cried, her grave face alight with expression. “I’m not!”
Suddenly her eyes grew pitiful. “Oh, Stacey,” she said, “you poor hurt
child! Do you want to hurt yourself more?”

At this his calm was shaken. A dull resentment stirred in him,—but not
because he was vain, or even proud.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that because I—some one else that I used
to be—felt in such and such a way about Marian, you would not have me
trample on those old illusions, for fear of pain. Catherine, I do not
give _that_ for my illusions!”

“Oh, nor I, either, Stacey! ‘Don’t’ is all I can say. In your heart you
know I’m right.”

“I do not!” he burst out. He was angry now.

But she nodded her head. “You do,” she repeated. “Ah, dear Stacey,
think! You’re hard and bitter—or you think you are—really you’re only
hurt”—(he winced)—“but the one impulse you have is to look at things
squarely, and to be one who can look at them so. Will you, then,
do—do—crooked things, have a secret back-stairs liaison, hide
behind—corners, meet Marian in the dark, with whispers? Oh, you
mustn’t!”

The thrust went deep. He walked up and down the room restlessly, his
heart full of anger and pain. Finally he turned on her.

“I’ll do what I please!” he cried. “Who are you to preach to me like
this? What are you in my life? Nothing!”

But at this she started, then buried her head in her hands and wept. And
when he saw that he had hurt her, as he had intended, he was shocked.

However, she lifted her head, unashamed, almost at once. “Forgive me!”
she said simply. “Who am I? Who are we? We—Phil and I—love you. That’s
the only power we have over you.”

He gazed at her for a moment, helplessly and remorsefully. “I’ll do as
you say,” he said dully. But, with his surrender, anger rushed upon him
again furiously. “Only,” he added, trembling with rage, “I’ll tell you
that you and Phil are impossible! You’re too good! Abominably good! It’s
sickening! Leave me alone now, both of you!”

He snatched up his hat and coat and hurried out of the house.


                               CHAPTER XV

Stacey plunged blindly down the hill, in an insane fury of rage and
thwarted passion. His mind was a hot swirling confusion which he made no
attempt to clarify. But in the welter two things remained firm—his will
to go to Marian’s house to-night, his will not to go. These were two
equal warring forces. Their conflict churned up anger—anger with
Catherine, anger with himself for having inexplicably yielded to
Catherine.

Under foot were wet snow and ice. Stacey slipped again and again. But he
tore on, as though there were some definite place he must get to,
though, indeed, had he been capable of reflection, he would have
perceived the reverse to be true.

He reached the boulevard and turned into it, ploughing along at a
tremendous pace in the direction of his home. But presently some small
capacity for thought did return to him, and he became aware that he most
certainly did not want to go home. He began to walk less rapidly, and at
last stopped altogether, bewildered, and looked about him, not knowing
what to do.

It was only five o’clock, but the early winter dusk was already
darkening the air, and lights were beginning to shine out in the windows
of houses. Stacey stood beneath one of the brilliant clusters of
electric globes with which the city government had adorned the
boulevard, and stared in front of him. But he was not really reflecting;
his mind was simply at a deadlock between the two opposing forces that
usurped it. Some new factor, however slight, must intervene before he
could act.

The factor revealed itself externally as a high-powered racing car,
which drew up, throbbing, at the curb, with a grinding of suddenly
applied brakes and a spatter of slush.

“Hello, Carroll!” called the young man who was driving it. “Pretty nasty
under foot. Can I give you a lift?” He reached over and flung open the
door of the car.

Stacey looked up, with a start. His mind cleared swiftly. The pause
before he was able to reply was hardly perceptible. “Oh, hello,
Whittaker!” he said, in quite a natural voice. “Thanks.” He rested one
foot on the step of the car and frowned. “The only thing is that I don’t
know where I want to go. I was just trying to make up my mind.”

The young man at the wheel laughed. He was a big fellow, appearing still
bigger because of the enormous fur coat he wore, and had a ruddy face,
with pleasant eyes and a hard mouth. He looked like a commercial
traveller come into a fortune. “Well,” he said, “that does make it a bit
difficult, don’t it? Anyhow, hop in! You certainly don’t want to stick
around where you are.”

Stacey obeyed, slamming the door after him, and sat down beside
Whittaker, who started the car off slowly along the boulevard.

The young man was of the type known in current slang as “hard boiled.”
This quality, however, was not the result of his service in France—he
had been a lieutenant of infantry in a different division from Stacey’s.
The war had not had the slightest effect on Whittaker. He had always
been “hard boiled,” even before the term existed.

“I don’t want to go home,” Stacey explained. “Fed up with home. Where
you going? Can’t you take me along?”

The other laughed again. “Sure! I _can_, but you wouldn’t go. Too much
of a high-minded puritan. Why, you wouldn’t even end up that dinner we
had in Paris in any decent way! I’m going out to Bell’s at Clarefield
for the night.”

“All right,” said Stacey, “so will I, if you’ll take me.”

“Well, well, the sky has fallen! My last illusion’s gone! War, thy name
is corruption!” Whittaker exclaimed. “Sure! Glad to have you!” he added
genially. “Now let’s figure it out. I’ve got a little girl I’m going to
take along. We can squeeze you in all right—all the cosier, what? But
you’d better go and dig up some one yourself and get _your_ car.”

Stacey shook his head. “No, I’ll ride with you—if I won’t be butting
in. Maybe I’ll find some one out there.”

“Maybe,” the other returned dubiously. “But everybody will be pretty
much paired off.”

“Drive around to my house and we’ll have a drink while I get a few
things together.”

“All right.” The car leaped forward.

In Stacey’s mind the will to have Marian, the will not to have her, and
the anger persisted, but underneath. Above, as the active part, was the
matter of this trivial escapade. His dissent from Whittaker’s suggestion
that he get his own car and bring another young lady was not due to
distaste—nothing so fastidious as that could get a hearing now—but to
Stacey’s positive fear of being left alone. If he were left to himself,
nothing, as night fell and his longing deepened, could prevent his going
to Marian. He must _be_ prevented.

“Parker,” he said to the man who took Whittaker’s snowy fur coat in the
hall, “I’m going away again for a day or two. You’ll tell Mr. Carroll
when he gets in. First, please get us some whiskey and a siphon—Scotch,
Whittaker?”

“Sounds good.”

“And then kindly pack that very small bag of mine with things for the
night.”

But when Parker had brought the drinks to the library he came up close
to Stacey. “Excuse me, sir,” he said in a low tone. “There’s a young
lady who’s called to see you.”

Stacey opened his eyes wide, but he rose immediately. “Just a minute,
Whittaker,” he remarked. “Be back at once. Pour yourself a drink.”

“Who is it?” he asked Parker, when they were in the hall.

The man looked perturbed. “She wouldn’t give me her name, sir, and
that’s why I thought I’d better speak to you quietly.”

“You did perfectly right. Where is she?”

“In the little drawing-room, sir.”

“Most likely a book agent,” said Stacey, and walked down the hall.

But it was not a book agent. It was Irene Loeffler. She stood waiting,
an expression of mingled fear and determination on her face, across
which the color came and went oddly.

“Hello!” said Stacey brusquely. “What are you doing here?” He did not
offer to shake hands; nor did she.

The girl looked at him. She swallowed nervously. He could see the
movement of her throat.

“I’ll—tell you,” she replied desperately. “I came to see—you, because
you won’t come to see me. I—I don’t believe in silly old conventions.
You—you’d come to me if you—were fond-of-me” (she blurted out the
three words in one terrified syllable), “so I—come to you.”

Any one half-way normal would have laughed outright. Irene was so
absurdly out of harmony with her speech. She was as shrinking and
virginal as her words were shameless.

But Stacey was beyond humor. He was living in a state of nervous
exasperation bordering on madness. “Oh, I see!” he said icily. “A
declaration!”

Her face flamed. “You can be insulting if you want to!” she cried, with
a sudden angry sincerity. Then she went on with her speech. “And when I
came and—asked for you, your man—told me you were just—going away
again—in a few minutes. And I thought—that is, I decided—I mean, take
me with you!”

He stared at her in amazement and for an instant did feel a small
flicker of amusement. The young woman’s polite offer chimed in so well
with Whittaker’s suggestion that they needed another girl.

“That’s very kind of you,” he said coolly, “but I don’t think you’d like
the place. I’m going out to Bell’s Tavern at Clarefield. It’s a bit
rough there and not well thought of in Vernon society. Greatly as I
should enjoy your companionship, I fear you’d find yourself rather
disapproved of in the best Bolshevik circles on your return.”

She winced under his words and flushed crimson, but she faced him, not
unheroically. “You’re hateful!” she cried. “But I—I’ll go—if you’ll
take me!”

All the exasperation that he was feeling within him burst loose suddenly
upon poor Irene, who had nothing to do with causing it.

“You little fool!” Stacey said savagely, “even the idiots in your club
have got more sense than you! They don’t know anything about facts, and
you don’t, either. But they know enough to let them alone. You go home
and play with your theories and don’t mix them up with facts any more.
If I had so much as a shadow of a fancy for you I’d take you with me.
But I haven’t—luckily for you! I don’t care two beans about you! Now
run along home.”

But, with the air of his mind cleared by this explosion, and when he saw
how the girl had collapsed under his brutality, he felt suddenly sorry
for her, and sick and tired.

“Look here, Irene!” he said, taking her arm. “I didn’t mean all that.
Only, honestly, you don’t care anything for me. You’ve just built up an
imaginary me and lavish an imaginary love on him. Forgive me for being
so rough.”

What he said this time was true beyond a doubt, though Irene could
hardly be expected to believe it. For when he took her arm she did not
draw close to him in delight; she shrank instinctively from his touch.
She was sobbing, but he was probably quite right in thinking that it was
from anger and shame. She controlled herself presently and wiped her
eyes.

“Well, then, I’ll be going,” she remarked, in a strangled voice.

He went to the door with her. “Good night, Irene,” he said cordially,
shaking her hand.

“I—I’m sorry to have—put you out,” she said absurdly.

“Oh, that’s all right!” he replied, with a touch of amusement. “Good
night.”

Stacey returned to Whittaker. “Sorry to keep you so long,” he observed.

“No harm in that,” the other returned genially, “so long as you leave me
in such good company.” He waved his hand toward the carafe.

“Yes, good stuff, isn’t it?” said Stacey, and took a stiff drink.

They set off presently, Stacey giving a sigh of relief at being out of
the house and in some one else’s hands—no longer obliged to think for
himself.

It was quite dark now. The car ploughed through the freezing slush and
mud of a suburban district until at last it drew up before a small
outlying drug-store.

Whittaker blew the horn, and a girl scurried out into the green and
purple light, and down to the curb.

“Gee!” she exclaimed, “there’s two of you!”

“Uh-huh,” Whittaker assented. “My friend, Stacey Carroll, Minnie.
Another hero of the late world unpleasantness. Minnie Prentice, Carroll.
Hop in, Minnie, old thing!”

Stacey had stepped down to let the girl in. She shook his hand and
turned her small piquant face to his for a moment, then sprang up
lightly, dropping a kiss on Whittaker’s cheek, running her arm through
his, and snuggling into place, all in a second.

“Minnie,” Whittaker remarked, as the car leaped forward, “was lately a
prominent, if silent, member of that unfortunate production, ‘The Pearl
Girl,’ which expensive show completely failed to arouse Chicago from its
sleep, and passed away, with me finally almost the only mourner.
Disgusted with the rouge and corruption of the stage, Minnie decided to
reform; and where, as I explained to her, can you reform better than in
Vernon? in which pleasant city she now holds a position at Leveredge’s
department store (notion counter), and has me for a chaperon. Hey,
Minnie?”

“You forget to tell Mr. What’s-his-name the rest, Bill,” said Minnie
with dignity.

“Mr. Carroll, sweetness, Carroll! The Vernon Carrolls! So I do,”
Whittaker rattled on, meanwhile driving the car consummately over a
slippery expanse of ice. “Having a sweet pure voice, Minnie is on the
very verge of being admitted to the First Presbyterian Church choir.
Hence the obscure situation of our meeting-place. For, strange as it may
seem, the First Presbyterian Church would not approve of my respectful
appreciation of Minnie. Evil minds church people have!”

The young woman giggled. “My, but you’re silly, Bill! I’ll say you are!”
she observed. “What’ll Mr.—er—Carroll—got it that time, didn’t
I?—think of me?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that!” Whittaker replied. “He won’t think of
you at all. He’s got a secret sorrow.”

The girl turned her face toward Stacey. “That so, Mr. Carroll? You got a
secret sorrow?” she inquired. “What’s she like?”

Stacey laughed. He was not diverted by such patter, but he was soothed
by it; it was precisely what he needed to tide him over these hours.
“Blonde,” he returned. “As blonde as you are. At least, as blonde as I
think you are from your voice. From what I’ve seen of you so far your
coloring appeared to be mixed green and purple.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, sweetness!” Whittaker urged. “Coax the little mind along!
Teach it to walk! Don’t be afraid, little pet! Toddle over to daddy!”

“Oh,” exclaimed the girl, “I get you! The lights there at that
drug-store.”

“That’s it! That’s it! Why, the little darling took three whole steps by
its own self!” Whittaker said admiringly. “Colossal mind Minnie has!” he
added to Stacey. “Too big to work! Too big to move! Just lies still and
pants!”

“Oh, you shut your face, Bill! I guess my mind’s as good as yours any
time. You care a lot about it, anyway, like hell you do! I’ll tell you
what you care about.” And she whispered, giggling, into his ear.

With such trivial talk they passed the time.

But presently the car swung into a wide road, where the snow, well
packed and sanded, had not been torn into icy slush by city drays; and
here Whittaker increased the speed. The hum of the engine became a
smooth rhythmic thunder, the cleft air roared past, and any further talk
was impossible.

Stacey was thrown back on his thoughts. They became the reality, the
actual present only a shadow. He was but vaguely conscious of his
surroundings—the cold flowing air, the car’s headlights on the snow,
Whittaker, the girl’s warm body next him. The memory of Marian was more
vivid than all these things. Soon now she would be expecting him at her
house, and he would not be there. He writhed. And what would she think
of him? She must hate him. Until to-day he had not cared what she felt
toward him. But now it was different. He and she had been honest with
each other to-day. Fancies gone, illusions gone, everything false and
pretty stripped off, their two small remaining selves had met for the
first time in harmony, each no longer asking anything that the other
could not give, but demanding the possible fiercely. He had no right to
break off in this way. So Stacey thought dizzily, anger with Catherine
and himself returning at intervals, as a variation on the theme.

He came back wearily to the present, as the lights of Clarefield flashed
up and the car swept over the curved driveway leading to the gleaming
road-house. He stepped, shivering with cold, from the car, and helped
the girl out. They waited on the hotel verandah while Whittaker drove
the car back to the garage.

“H-how about-t it now, Mr. C-Carroll?” she demanded gaily, her teeth
chattering. “Am I still p-purple and green?”

He forced as much interest as he could, and looked her over. “No,” he
answered, “you’re—well, no matter! Only I shouldn’t worry about a mind,
if I were you. You don’t need one.”

She really was pretty, he saw with indifference. Bad mouth, though, he
noted, with an equal lack of interest. Loose and stupid.

The girl returned his scrutiny. “You’re not so worse, either,” she said,
considering him with sophisticated sensual eyes.

Whittaker returned. “God! but it’s cold! Let’s run for drinks. Thank the
Lord, the bar here is still wide open!”

They went in. A large room on the right was already half full of people
dining and dancing. Whittaker paused for a moment to reserve a table,
then the three hurried off to the bar. It occurred to Stacey that he had
better slip away from Minnie and Whittaker after a little. He had no
right to spoil their evening. Nice sort of companion they must be
finding him! But Whittaker, with the geniality of his sort, seemed to
find no fault in his guest, while, as for Minnie, she would clearly be
benevolently uncritical of any man under forty, not bad looking, who
would drink. Moreover, something soon happened to make Stacey change his
mind.

Glancing across the room to another alcoved space opposite, he caught
sight, over a woman’s shoulder, of a face he thought he recognized,
started, half rose to make sure, then sank down again in his chair and
burst into unforced laughter.

“What’s the joke, Carroll?” Whittaker inquired.

“Nothing—except that I—see Ames Price is here,” Stacey returned
weakly.

“No, is he really?” exclaimed Whittaker. “Well, I say, it is a bit soon,
isn’t it?” And he, too, rose to look, and laughed, though the real joke
was lost on him. “Stewed, too! Stewed to the gills!” he added.

Stacey got up. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. “I’ll go over and worry
him.”

Stacey crossed the room slowly. His mouth still twitched with amusement,
but the expression thus given his face was malignant rather than
mirthful. No, he was certainly not at his best when he smiled. He paused
near the alcoved recess and stood gazing maliciously at Ames Price,
whose back was toward him, and at the tall handsome young woman sitting
across the table from Ames. She was slender and dark, with large eyes
and a rather fine, weary mouth. She looked bored by her escort, and
returned Stacey’s stare with cool interest. Then he touched Ames on the
shoulder.

The man looked around slowly, but when he saw Stacey his mouth fell
open, a slow flush spread over his smooth face and bald forehead, an
apprehensive look came into his eyes, and he rose quickly, swaying a
little.

“Say! What-ta you doing here, Shtacey?” he demanded thickly.

“Me?” Stacey returned. “Why shouldn’t I be here? I’m a free man,
unbound, no ties at all, you know.”

Price clung to his arm and pulled him away to the edge of another booth,
out of hearing of the young woman.

“’Sh’unfortunate!” he said hoarsely, struggling with his intoxication.
“I mean to shay—_say_—you of all people!” He drew out a handkerchief
and wiped his forehead. “Look here, Shta—no, Carroll—you don’t mind if
I call you Carroll? ’S’ easier to say than Shta—your other name. No
lack of inti—intima—cy intended. Look here, Carroll! Now I’m drunk, of
course! You can see that! Anybody can see that! Whole world can see
that! Hell! that isn’t what I was trying to say.” He paused again, made
an even greater effort at self-mastery, and really did achieve some
moderate success. The expression of concern in his glazed eyes deepened.
“Damn it all! You wonder what I’m doing here! Now don’t you?”

“Why, no,” said Stacey, enjoying himself evilly. “I saw you here and
just dropped over to say hello.”

Ames reached for a carafe that stood among glasses on a table near-by,
poured a tumblerful of water with a shaking hand, and drank. Then he
shook his head solemnly. “No, you wonder. Of course you wonder.”

Stacey watched him critically. “Doing pretty well,” he thought. But
beneath Stacey’s surface calm was hatred. So this—this sweating,
panting, bald-headed animal—owned Marian, did he?

“Damn it all, Stacey!” Ames whispered raucously, leaning close to his
tormentor, “I can’t help it! Marian’s so God-damned cold! ’S’no place to
talk about her—I’ve got sense enough left to know that. But got to
explain myself to you—you of all people! Cold, that’s what she
is,—ice! Freezes a man. Honest to God she does! Looks-a fellow
’s’though he was dirt—yes, tha’s it, dirt! Locks her door. ’S’why I
come here. Let her treat me like a man—I’d be best of husbands—none
better.”

“Sorry to hear this,” Stacey returned smoothly. “Wished you both all
sorts of happiness. But you don’t owe me any explanations. Besides, this
is a place for light-hearted gaiety. Shame to spoil it with dull
thoughts of home. I’m out here with Bill Whittaker and his young lady.
Thought perhaps, when I saw you, we might all arrange to dine together
in one large genial party. How about it?”

Ames stared at him, his face clearing slowly. “Why, sure!” he said at
last, heaving a sigh. “Thought at first you’d—oh, never mind now! what?
Come on over and meet Ethel.”

“I’d like to. Not cold, eh?”

“No, not cold. Not warm _or_ cold,” said Ames judicially, “but friendly.
Good sort, Ethel!” He drew Stacey back to the alcove. “Ethel, ’s Stacey
Carroll. Wants us to dine with him an’ some other people. First-rate,
what?”

Stacey bowed, and the girl looked at him appraisingly. She was really
very handsome, he saw now, with an enigmatic quality in her face, caused
perhaps by the fact that her black eyes were not quite horizontal, but
slanted down ever so faintly toward the bridge of her nose.

“Yes,” she said finally, in a pleasant voice, “that’ll be nice.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Stacey remarked. “I’ll go back and arrange with
Whittaker about it. See you both in a few minutes.” And he crossed the
room, smiling again.

“Beautiful plan I’ve evolved, Whittaker,” he said, sitting down and
sipping the cocktail that was waiting for him. “Ames is drunk, as you
observed. Got over it a bit in talking with me, but will grow drunker
presently. Very attractive girl with him—name of Ethel. I feel innocent
sorrow for her. D’you mind if we all dine together? I propose to remove
Ethel gently from Ames. Told you I’d find some one out here.”

Whittaker laughed. “Sure!” he said heartily. “That’s something like!
We’ll help all we can, hey, Minnie?”

“Gee! Mr. Carroll, and I thought you was slow!” the girl exclaimed
delightedly.

“My dear Minnie,” said Stacey, “of course you’ll find me slow. Here I
am, Bill’s guest. I owe it to him to suppress all the evil desires you
arouse in me. Besides, we’re Presbyterians in our family, have a pew in
the church. I’d never feel the same again towards the choir if . . .” He
finished his cocktail and gazed at her reproachfully over the glass,
while she laughed.

They all three crossed the room to Ames, who presented them heavily to
Ethel. He was no drunker than before, however,—perhaps even a little
less drunk, and he entered the dining-room with dignified concentrated
steadiness.

The table the head-waiter had reserved for Whittaker would only seat
four comfortably. “I’m the outsider. I’ll sit here at the corner,”
Stacey said firmly, and motioned the waiter to draw him up a chair close
to Ethel’s. “You order, Whittaker, will you?”

The room was pandemonium, on account of the jazz band that was at one
end and the cabaret performance that was everywhere. All conversations
were necessarily shouted.

It occurred to Stacey that the age he lived in was devoted to noise, as
a barbaric preventive of thought. No doubt it was right. What good had
thought ever done the world? Here were the five of them, come out
frankly in quest of food, drink, lights, noise, and sexual
gratification. Nothing but animals, all five! Well, what of it? Clearly
that was what the earth’s millions were all, in this glaring after-war
illumination, revealed as seeking. The only difference among them was
that some were more complicated and refined in their animalism than
others. There wasn’t much complexity out here. So much the better! Strip
off the last silken shreds of decoration! Leave the truth stark naked!
The animal was all there was, and there was only so much, and no more,
to the animal.

Thus Stacey mused, under cover of the hubbub, not perceiving that the
fact of his musing denied its conclusion; not remarking that his own
word was “quest”; not seeing that people were trying to be, and thus
were not wholly, animals; certainly not seeing that this quest was as
futile as any other.

How, indeed, could his thoughts fail to be superficial? They swam
languidly on the surface waters of his mind. Beneath was a painful
turmoil into which he struggled not to look.

He roused himself sharply, with a start, and looked around. Whittaker,
on his right, was leaning over to Minnie just beyond, his face close to
hers, his hand beneath the table. She was answering his glance and his
words, her blue eyes dilated below the delicately darkened eyebrows, her
loose mouth babbling or, between speeches, drooping sensually. Ames
Price was concerned with nothing but the effort to control his
intoxication. Stacey turned to the girl beside him.

Her pose was easy and graceful, and the curve of her cheek beneath the
mass of her black hair was rather fine. Stacey felt the enigmatic
quality about her even now when he could not see her slanting eyes. His
knee touched hers, not intentionally but because they were sitting very
close together, and she turned her face slowly toward his. Their eyes
met. Hers were extraordinarily large and dark, and gazed into his, half
curiously, half cynically, for a long moment. Strange eyes,
unfathomable! Suddenly dull fire smoldered in them, and Stacey felt
dizzy. He shivered,—but so did she; he felt her knee tremble against
his. She smiled and lowered her eyes.

“I’ve heard of you, Mr. Carroll,” she observed calmly. “Every one in
Vernon has, of course. I’d rather like to have been a man and fought as
you’ve fought.”

Clearly she had better self-control than he. He paused before replying.

“Would you, now?” he said then. “That’s odd! You look too properly
disdainful to care about fighting, and, as to being a man, you seem to
me very thoroughly a woman.”

She looked at him again, squarely, appearing to study him.

“By the way,” he added abruptly, “what’s your name? Your drunken friend
presented you merely as Ethel.”

“Wyatt. Ethel Wyatt. It wouldn’t mean anything to you. But I prefer Ames
drunk, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

She turned to Price. “Cheer up, Ames, old top!” she cried, in a jovial,
quite different voice. “Cocktails! Here’s to you!” And she pushed his
glass toward him.

Ames gave her a dazed smile, patted her hand heavily, and drank. “’S’a
mistake!” he said. “Had one a minute ago. Oughtn’t to have any more. But
mus’ drink with Essel—Ethel.” He beamed across at Stacey. “Told you so,
Carroll. See her for yourself now. Friendly. Not warm _or_ cold, but
friendly.”

Again she turned to Stacey. “You believe him?”

“No.” He stared at her fiercely. “Will you chuck Ames and run off
somewhere with me?”

“Yes, later,” she replied coolly, “when he’s quite drunk. I don’t want a
scene. I hate scenes.” And she turned back to Ames.

Throughout the whole dinner she paid no more attention to Stacey,
talking instead, with smiles and a coarsened voice, to her escort. But,
beneath the table, her ankle was curved about Stacey’s, and now and
again he felt it tremble, and trembled, too. But no touch of emotion was
in her voice.

He had begun this merely as a savage joke on Ames. He was physically
stirred now and going on with it eagerly, in search of oblivion.

After a while, Ethel being in sprightly conversation with Ames,
Whittaker leaned close to Stacey. “I say! what’s the matter?” he
demanded. “Wake up and get busy, Carroll!”

“Oh,” said Stacey calmly, “that’s all right! It’s all arranged. We’re
only waiting for Ames to get completely blind. Miss Wyatt doesn’t want a
scene.”

Whittaker stared, then laughed. “My heartiest apologies!” he exclaimed.
“You’re a cool pair!”

“Where am I going to go from here?”

“Well,” said Whittaker thoughtfully, “you might go on to West Boyd.
Fifteen miles straight down the road. There’s a good inn there, the
Thorndike. Oh, but hang it, you haven’t got a car!”

“Can’t I rent one here?”

Whittaker shook his head. “Take mine, old chap!” he said generously. “I
don’t need it. I’ll telephone my man to bring out the other to-morrow
morning.”

Stacey hesitated.

“Sure! Sure! Go ahead! I’m all for helping young lovers. Need money?”

“No, I’ve got my check-book. I suppose they’ll cash a check here.”

Whittaker nodded. “I’ll endorse it. They know me.” He laughed again.
“What a lark!”

“Oh!” said Stacey suddenly, “one thing! Keep Minnie quiet! Don’t want to
let Ethel know I had this planned before I met her.”

Before long Ames rose, staggering, his face livid. “’Scuse me,” he said
thickly, “jus’ minute.”

“He’s going to be sick, I guess,” said Minnie delightedly, watching him
lurch across the crowded room toward the door. “But, gee! Mr. Carroll,
you—”

Whittaker cut her off.

Stacey scribbled a check, and Ethel drank her coffee.

“He won’t be back, I think,” she observed calmly. “Not for a long time.
They’ll find him on some floor after a while. So . . .” She turned to
Stacey.

“So we’ll leave you,” he concluded for her. “Thanks awfully for the car,
Whittaker. And remember what the dinner check comes to. I’ll split it
with you later.”

“You _will_ not! My surprise and joy at your behavior are reward enough.
Come on! We’ll see you off.”

And presently, when Ethel had put on her wraps, and the car had been
brought around, and the two suitcases put in, Whittaker and Minnie stood
on the verandah to see the lovers depart.

“If I knew where Ames was I’d get his shoe and throw after you,” called
Whittaker, as Stacey started the car.

But there was no sign of Ames.


                              CHAPTER XVI

The chill silent night was a relief to Stacey, and perhaps to the girl,
after the heated promiscuity of the road-house. An aloof wintry moon
shone coldly on the white fields and made the frozen ponds glitter.

Stacey and Ethel might have been husband and wife from their nonchalant
indifference to conversation. They hardly spoke on the long ride; yet
there was no constraint between them. Once he asked her if she was cold,
and she said that she was not; and once she observed that there was a
bad grade a little way ahead, and he noted idly to himself the absence
of self-consciousness with which she admitted to knowing the road.

“I suppose,” he remarked, in a matter-of-fact tone, as they drew near
West Boyd, “that I’d better register us as man and wife under some fancy
name?”

The girl turned her head toward him slowly. “For my sake or your own?”
she inquired coolly.

“For neither. To save the hotel’s face and avoid annoyance for us.”

She nodded, as though satisfied.

She entered the inn unconcernedly, except that she wrinkled her forehead
and half closed her strange eyes in the sudden brightness, and she stood
with equal unconcern by Stacey’s side while he registered and asked for
a room. Yet even he, who was hardly at all curious about her, recognized
that her calm was not the mere callousness of the prostitute. It was
easy, not hard, and so it seemed to arise not from outer
experience—however much experience she might have had—but from an
inner indifference to facts. So, at any rate, Stacey thought; then
thought no more about it.

When a bell-boy had accompanied them to their room and set down their
bags and departed, closing the door upon them, she slipped out of her
heavy coat and removed her hat gracefully. But then, at last, she turned
slowly to Stacey, who had been standing, watching her. Still in silence,
they gazed into each other’s eyes profoundly, as they had, two hours
earlier, at dinner. The girl’s mouth trembled. Suddenly they kissed.

“You—you’re—brutal!” she stammered, much later, panting, her face
convulsed in a savage ecstasy of delight.

“Well—and you?”

                 *        *        *        *        *

They remained at the inn for five days. But though physically their
relation was unrestrained, entire, frenzied, no faintest intimacy of any
other kind grew up between them, unless it may be counted as intimacy
that they were perfectly at ease with each other in their hours of
bodily calm, and could walk together across the frozen fields, silent or
nearly so, unembarrassed, each thinking his own thoughts. Ethel might
almost swoon in Stacey’s embrace; a moment after, her dark eyes, that
had been moist and dilated, would become as unfathomable as ever. And,
as for him, he might, and did, serve passion recklessly until pleasure
turned to pain; nothing would come of it all, nothing be left over, no
emotion, not even a grateful memory of delight, not even disgust,—only
emptiness. Never in soft moments of assuagement did tenderness start up
in him or show in her.

They talked, of course. And they did not say sharp things or get on one
another’s nerves. They were not enemies. They talked only of general
subjects, dispassionately, objectively. Or, rather, all subjects, even
ideas, became external when Stacey and Ethel spoke of them. Yet the girl
talked well and intelligently. It was simply that she revealed no
emotional interest in anything they discussed. She seemed as detached
and indifferent as he. But this, though it made their association
comfortable, was not a bond between them.

Only once did their two personalities become conscious of each other and
touch and draw a spark. When this happened it was immediately apparent
that, though Ethel and Stacey were not enemies, they were antagonists,
facing one another warily.

It was on the last morning of their stay. The girl was lying motionless
on the bed, in the pose of Manet’s “Olympe” and with much the same
exotic appearance. Stacey was sprawling in a chintz-covered rocker. He
was suffering from a kind of bleak despair; for he was reflecting that
everything he had done was impotent to destroy his desire for Marian.
This was unfair, he thought sullenly, since his desire for Marian, too,
was purely physical. Why, then, should not this liaison suffice? So,
when Ethel spoke to him he answered her curtly.

“Isn’t it time,” she observed, without moving, “that you asked me about
my past life, how I reached this regrettable condition, _and_ so forth?”

He looked up slowly and considered her. “No,” he said, “I’m not
interested.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Dear me! Not at all? How disrespectful of
conventions! Why? Because you despise me?”

“You know I don’t despise you,” he replied indifferently. “Moreover, you
don’t care whether I do or not.”

She smiled a little at this. “I don’t think that in all these five days
I’ve expressed any appreciation of you,” she went on coolly. “You’re
really very satisfactory. Now that’s what marriage ought to be like. Two
healthy animals taking all the sharp pleasure they can from one another
and letting each other’s immortal souls alone. Silly that they should be
immortal, isn’t it? Perhaps they’re not. I think they must be, though;
they’re so completely solitary. Nobody can ever have made them, they’re
so solitary. They must always have been,—like stars in the empty sky;
and so they must always go on.”

He felt interest now at last. She _was_ strange.

“I was with the Colin Jeffries’ until recently,” she went on, in the
same cool tone and not even troubling to explain her revelation. Indeed,
it was not like a personal revelation. She seemed to Stacey to be merely
meditating aloud—and about a third person. “With the Colin
Jeffries’—as governess to their children.”

Stacey smiled.

“An impossible house,” she continued imperturbably. “Mrs. Jeffries is
the kind of woman who wants to dig into every one’s mind and pull out
the weeds and plant it with proper vegetables—cabbages and such—in
rows. And Mr. Jeffries is tiresomely lecherous. He was always trying to
get into my bedroom. Once he hid in my bath.”

Stacey laughed. “I didn’t know that, of course,” he said, “but I might
have guessed it. Any such public institution as Colin Jeffries must have
to take it out privately somehow. I can see why you went away. Still I
think you might have found something a little better than Ames Price.”

“Oh,” she explained simply, “I didn’t take him on at once. I had an idea
that there might be something more interesting in a disorderly life than
an orderly one. Silly, wasn’t it? One’s as dull as the other. Ames is
really as good a solution as any. He is generous with money and
unperturbing.”

Stacey frowned. “That reminds me,” he said. “We’ll have to go back
to-day. I’m about at the end of my money and I have almost none in the
bank.”

She expressed no surprise at this, even by a look, though she must have
known that he was supposed to be rich. But a shadow of regret did cross
her face. She gazed at him, and he at her.

“Come here!” she said finally.

He obeyed. His eyes caressed her slim form somberly. “Your body is as
strange as your face!” he muttered.

She shivered, set her teeth, and stared at him in a fury of desire.

                 *        *        *        *        *

They left the inn early on the afternoon of that day and drove back over
the road that led to Clarefield and Vernon. They were as separate as
ever mentally, but they talked rather more freely, and Stacey, though he
felt neither love nor friendship for the girl, felt esteem for her
because she existed proudly by herself. He would not have her bruised.
He would defend her in a matter-of-fact way from trouble, as one might
defend a stranger from physical attack.

So: “What are you going to do,” he demanded suddenly, “when you get back
to Vernon?”

“Go to my apartment,” she returned. “The one Ames took for me. Ames will
come back.” She smiled faintly. “Are you concerned lest you’ve ruined my
prospects?”

“Yes, of course,” he said unemotionally.

“How noble of you! Don’t worry. You haven’t.”

All at once he laughed. “I was thinking what a marvellous judge of
character Ames is,” he observed. “‘Not warm or cold, Ethel, but
friendly!’”

The girl turned her head and looked at him strangely, but this time
without smiling.

At Clarefield they drove up to Bell’s Tavern where their adventure had
begun, intending to warm themselves before going on. They sat down in
the booth where Ethel had sat with Ames Price on the night of
Whittaker’s dinner. Stacey reflected moodily, while they waited for the
drinks he ordered, that, though nearly a week had passed since that
evening, nothing whatever had happened. He had succeeded in staying away
from Marian, but he wanted her as much now as he had wanted her then.
Five full days of this affair with Ethel had not added a fraction to
what he felt and was at the beginning of it, or taken a fraction away.
If time were to be set back, the interlude wiped out, and he were to
find himself sitting again with Whittaker and Minnie, looking across at
Ames drunk, nothing would be changed.

But he was awakened from this reverie by the desk-clerk, who came up and
touched his arm.

“Are you Mr. Stacey Carroll, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so,” said the clerk. “I remember your cashing a check here
last Saturday night. This telegram came for you two days ago. We didn’t
know what to do about it, and so we just held it, thinking maybe you’d
be back.”

“Thanks,” said Stacey, taking it. “Can’t imagine who’d address me here
except Whittaker,” he observed to Ethel, as he tore open the yellow
envelope, “and he’d have sent any message to West Boyd.”

But, as he glanced at the telegram, he started.

“_Philip dangerously ill with pneumonia. Come at once. Catherine_,” it
read.

Stacey pushed back his chair and got up quickly. “We’ll have to go—at
once!” he said. “A friend of mine is ill—pneumonia.”

She rose. “Your face is pale,” she observed, as he reached for her coat,
“You really do care about something, don’t you?”

He nodded, holding out the coat.

“You ought to be glad,” she concluded, slipping it on. “I’m ready.”

“Drink your high-ball first—as quickly as you can,” he said, not
unkindly.

“No,” she returned, “I don’t care about it. Come! Let’s go.”

He flung money on the table and hurried the girl out. “And the message
is two days old!” he muttered, wondering dully who could have told
Catherine he was at Clarefield.

He drove the car to Vernon at a tremendous speed, Ethel sitting silent
by his side. He spoke but once, to ask her the address of her apartment.

But when they drew up in front of it and he had helped her out, he stood
with her for just a moment on the sidewalk. For all that he was feeling
anxiety for his friend so strongly as almost to wipe everything else
from his mind, he nevertheless—and even, somehow, because of this—felt
now at last a touch of human interest in Ethel.

“If you ever need anything at all—or want to see me for any reason,
call me up at my house,” he said inadequately.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “Good-bye.”

He sprang back into the car and drove swiftly to Phil’s house.

There was another car standing at the curb. “The doctor’s!” he thought,
with sudden hope.

Stacey did not ring, but opened the door softly and walked into the
living-room.

Catherine was sitting there, like some expressionless Byzantine Madonna,
with Carter in her arms. He was sleeping, his flushed face and tousled
yellow hair against her breast, his legs dangling limply from her lap.
There was no one else in the room. Catherine looked up as Stacey
entered, but she did not speak.

He stared at her. “Phil?” he demanded in a low voice.

The shadowy expression on her face deepened until it was unmistakable
pain and fatigue, but still she did not speak.

“Dead?” Stacey cried hoarsely.

“Yes,” she replied gently, “he died last night—very peacefully.”

Stacey sat down suddenly and turned his head away. Tears did not come to
his eyes, but he gasped, a choking feeling in his throat that made it
hard for him to breathe.

“Poor Stacey!” said Catherine softly, after a little.

“Poor me?!” he exclaimed, “oh! . . . I only got your telegram an hour
ago.”

“Of course. I knew you couldn’t have got it.”

Stacey became aware of the sound of feet moving on the floor above.
“Who’s—up there?” he inquired.

Catherine’s lip trembled. “People doing—the things that have to be
done.”

He winced. “And you’re—left alone here!” he murmured.

“I’d rather be. Mrs. Latimer has just gone. She took Jackie.”

“Do you want me to go?” he stammered.

“No—please!”

They sat there in silence for a long time. At last the solemn
professional people came down from upstairs and went out, bowing gravely
to Catherine. Then Mrs. Latimer returned. She looked at Stacey, first in
surprise, then compassionately.

“You’d better go now, Stacey,” Catherine said. “I shall be all right.
Mrs. Latimer and I must put Carter to bed. Would you like to go up
and—look at Phil?”

He nodded. “Thanks!” he said, choking.

He stumbled up the stairs, went into Phil’s room, and stood there for
some time, looking down at the peaceful emaciated face. Stacey was
suffering acute pain and—worse than that—a deeper sense of desolation
than he had yet felt. He had not dreamed that he cared so much for Phil.
To have shown him so in some way! To have given something decent and
human in return for Phil’s warm gentleness! The best that Stacey could
do for comfort was to remember that the last time he had seen Phil he
had shaken his hand at parting. Only that!

Stacey went downstairs finally and out of the house. He drove home, then
sat down wearily to write a note to Whittaker thanking him for the car.
He gave the note to Parker and told him to have the chauffeur take it,
as soon as possible, with the car, to Whittaker’s house. He did not feel
irony or bitterness or scorn of himself in doing these things. They were
merely things that had to be done. He was through with proud hostility
of spirit; he was beaten. But he did not say this to himself, either.

His father came home before very long. He was gentle with Stacey, asked
him no questions, tried even to veil the look of apprehensiveness in his
own eyes. And Stacey recognized his kindness, the sweetness of nature
that lay beneath Mr. Carroll’s set firmness,—recognized all his
father’s virtues, more clearly and justly than ever before. But it was
as though he were recognizing the virtues of a convincing figure in a
two-dimensioned movie play. The world of men had become a world of
shadows to Stacey.

Catherine alone he felt as a real person—no doubt because she was
suffering the same sorrow as he. He spent all the time with her that she
would permit, and while the funeral service was being held in the
sitting-room of the little house he sat with her and Carter upstairs in
Phil’s old room. They were both silent, save when they spoke
comfortingly to the frightened weeping boy. They could hear the grave
accents of the clergyman’s voice downstairs.

“What are you going to do, Catherine?” he asked her one morning two or
three days later. “Shall you go back to New York—to your sister’s?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay here for now, I think,” she replied.
“The house rent is paid for a long time ahead, and I don’t want to take
the boys out of school.”

“Do you need money? You must tell me if you do.”

“No—thanks,” she answered simply. “I have plenty for now, and”—her
eyes drooped wearily—“Phil carried—quite heavy insurance. Your father,
too, asked me that,” she added. “He’s been awfully good.”

“He would be,” said Stacey drearily.

Catherine considered him sadly. “Stacey,” she said, “you look dreadfully
ill.”

“I feel a bit fagged,” he admitted. “I’ve been thinking that towards
spring I might go down to father’s place in North Carolina.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “yes! But why not go now?”

“Well,” he said hesitatingly, then paused.

“I know. You’d like to help me. But there’s nothing you can do, Stacey.
That’s sad, but it’s so. It only—”

“Yes. Gives you an extra worry.” He gazed at her. “Odd,” he thought,
“how strong you are! Stronger than Phil, stronger than I!” But he only
said yes, that he would go.

His father greeted the suggestion almost joyfully. “The best thing
possible!” he exclaimed. “There’s the house, standing empty—hardly been
used six months in ten years. Saddle horse eating his head off in the
stable—old Elijah perishing for want of conversation. I was down there
for a couple of months two years ago, but it bored me. I haven’t cared
for the place since your mother died.”

Stacey nodded. “I understand how you feel about it,” he said. And,
indeed, he did for a moment receive a sudden poignant memory of their
winter life down there when his mother had been alive and they had all
been young and gay. The memory faded almost at once. “Then I might as
well be off some day this week, sir,” he remarked.

“You’d better wait till after Christmas,” said his father. “Er—Julie’s
rather counting on Christmas together.”

“Of course,” Stacey assented remorsefully.

“Mind you have Elijah look after Duke’s feet,” Mr. Carroll added, in
obvious haste to avoid the appearance of sentiment. “His hoofs were
always brittle.”

So presently, Christmas over, Stacey departed. It was capitulation, but
he did not care about that. The only thing that interested him—and this
but idly—was that he should so crave to get away from men and women
when men and women had become such intangible phantoms.

For the rest, there was only the heavy sense of Phil’s death and of
Catherine bearing up under it bravely.




                               _PART II_


                              CHAPTER XVII

It was afternoon on the last day of December when Stacey arrived at the
little station of Pickens, North Carolina. His face had a sunken ravaged
look, and grime from the repulsively dirty train made its underlying
pallor ghastly. But Stacey was not really in any such abject condition
as he appeared to be. He was worn out, beaten back at every point, but
something in him still hung on; his eyes were tired but alive. In the
train, which was crowded, as only a branch-line train of the Southern
Railway can be crowded, with commercial travellers and with slovenly
mothers publicly nursing crying children much too old to be nursed
either publicly or privately, he had listened with even a little
amusement to talk of how much better the service would be as soon as the
government turned the road back to the company; and his will to get away
by himself, out of touch with men and women, was strong and intense,
sustaining him. He was not repelled by the sordid ugliness of the
station and the glimpse of Main Street, but felt rather an unemotional
sense of home-coming, which any native of Pickens would have attributed
to the fact that Stacey’s mother’s people, though now all dead or widely
scattered, had been the Pickens Barclays, but which more likely arose in
Stacey because the end of his quest was in sight.

Anyway here came old Elijah, grinning broadly, hat in hand, his fringe
of white hair blowing about his nearly bald black head. He shook
Stacey’s hand vigorously.

“I shuah almos’ thought you wasn’t on that theah train, Mistuh Stacey,”
he declared. “Theah didn’ seem nothin’ but babies.” And he carried
Stacey’s bag across the platform to a buggy.

“Hello!” said Stacey, “you’re driving Duke! What will Mr. Carroll say to
that, Elijah?”

“Well, Mistuh Stacey, suh, I jes’ had to get you home somehow. These
heah Fohds at the garage, jes’ as like as not they get stuck on the
Meldrun road. I wouldn’ have drove Duke ’cept foh that. It’s been
rainin’ a powehful lot.”

“Haven’t they mended that road yet?” Stacey inquired, getting into the
buggy.

“No, suh, not yet. You stop that, Duke, suh!” he called to the horse,
who, impatient of the shafts, was curveting sideways down the street.

Two or three people came up to the buggy and shook Stacey’s hand, and he
replied to their greetings as heartily as he could; but he was eager to
be rid of them, and felt relief when presently the town was left behind
and the buggy was ploughing through the waste of red mud known as the
Meldrun road. He lit a cigarette and leaned back in the seat, drawing in
deep breaths of the damp chilly air, and letting Elijah’s words run on
unchecked and unheeded.

The landscape was a sweet and pleasant one even now in winter when the
oaks and the poplars were bare of leaves. The rolling brick-colored
fields, planted with corn, were interspersed with patches of woods,
where hills rose, blue with spruce and dark green with white pine.
Beyond were the low friendly mountains. Log cabins were scattered about
here and there, with pigs, dogs and ragged children playing
indiscriminately before them. All the people Stacey met or passed on the
road raised their hats gravely, and Stacey raised his in return. He was
enough of this country, and also sufficiently intelligent, to have no
sentimental northern fancies about its romantic aristocracy. He had no
more illusions about the people of Pickens than about the people of
Vernon. If the latter were vulgar, the former were bigoted. There greed
took on gigantic forms; here it revealed itself in petty ways. Here, as
there, he thought, it was the one permanent human instinct. He did not
know what labor conditions were now at the knitting mills; he knew what
they had been six years ago, the last time he had been down, and he was
skeptical of any change. Yet the sight of people here bothered him less
than in Vernon, it seemed. That, he thought idly, was because here the
inhabitants were more a part of their country, stood out less blatantly
against the landscape, blended with it—or almost. Not because they and
it were picturesque, but because they had belonged to their country for
many generations, whereas in Vernon nobody had been molded by continuous
residence into harmony with anything. And Stacey reflected that only in
rural New England and the South did you get this impression of harmony
between landscape and people, as though they had mutually made one
another. Really they were at bottom very alike, rural New England and
the South, though each would have been shocked at the idea. Each with a
continuous past from which it had sprung, to which it belonged. A tight,
narrow, little past, but authentic.

Stacey was roused from meditation by a sense that Elijah had been saying
the same words a great many times, and that the words were a question.

“How’s that, Elijah?” he asked.

“I was jes’ sayin’, Mistuh Stacey, as how I reckoned you’d be wantin’
some colohed girl to cook foh you an’ make youah bed?”

“No,” said Stacey calmly, “I don’t want any one. You’ll do that,
Elijah.”

The old man grew melancholy. “Shuah, Mistuh Stacey, if you say so,” he
replied sadly. “I’ll wohk myself to the bone foh you, but I jes’ don’
know if I positively got the time to do everythin’ jes’ right. I got a
powehful lot to do, Mistuh Stacey.”

“What is it, Elijah?”

“Well, I got to look afteh Duke, suh, an’ then theah’s all that big
place to see to.”

“A couple of men working on it, aren’t there?”

“Yes, suh, but that’s jes’ it. They don’ wohk ’less’n I stan’s oveh them
all the time.”

“They probably don’t work if you do. I don’t want a maid, Elijah. You
can hire a woman to come in and clean for a couple of hours in the
morning, but I don’t want to see her.”

“Yes, suh,” said the negro, in a tone of aggrieved resignation. But he
got over it almost at once, with quick forgetfulness, and was presently
babbling on as before.

When at last they approached the Carroll property Stacey looked about
him more attentively, with a wistful sense of what was past, such as one
might feel in reading over old letters, full of youthful affection, to
some one all but forgotten now.

The house, three miles distant from the town, was low and rambling, with
deep verandahs and numerous sleeping-porches. It sat on a knoll among
ten acres of sloping lawn and perhaps ninety of oak and pine woods; and
from its front verandah one looked away, west, for miles up a narrowing
valley between tree-clad mountains. “Valley Ridge,” Stacey remembered,
half humorously, half painfully, Julie had tried to call the place in
her boarding-school days, and had come down one Christmas vacation with
heavy blue stationery embossed in silver with that legend; at which
their father had remarked that if she ever used any of that “Princess
Alice abomination” he’d get some pink paper for himself, have “The Pig
Sty” engraved for a heading, and write letters on it to the principal of
Julie’s school.

It was odd, Stacey thought, that the recollection of this trivial
incident should remain in his mind as something touching, more touching
than the memory of really emotional events—his mother’s death, for
instance. How things clung—the absurdest things! One could never get
rid of them. They were like tattered cobwebs in corners.

But they had reached the end of the driveway by now, and Stacey sprang
out.

After supper he sat, huddled in an overcoat, on the wide front verandah
of the house. The low mountains, only a mile to the north, were hazy
blue in the twilight. Later the moon rose, and soft brightness spread
over everything. Straight ahead the narrow valley took on shimmering
pearly tints, range after luminous range of mountains intersecting its
sides, like filmy theatre-drops in a stage setting.

In the midst of this pale silence a sense of reposefulness came over
Stacey. It did not spring from any achieved harmony. He had harmonized
nothing. He had, as he was perfectly aware, merely bolted. And nothing
that he had felt was gone. His pain at Phil’s death, his compassion for
Catherine, his hatred of men, his resentment at this rag of a
world,—all this and everything was still alive within him, but
submerged beneath his isolation. When he thought of men he still thought
of them as greedy beasts of prey; but it was possible for him now, he
believed, not to see them and be one of them.

At last, when it had grown very late, he went up to the bed Elijah had
made for him on a sleeping-porch, from which, too, he had the same view
of the shining valley; and so fell asleep.

And now began for Stacey as solitary a life as that of any medieval
hermit. Every morning he went out on Duke for a fifteen- or twenty-mile
ride over mountain roads and paths, returning splashed with mud and
frequently drenched through, for the season was exceptionally rainy. And
after the late cold luncheon which he trained Elijah to leave spread out
for him, he would set off again, on foot, for the woods.

The letters that came for him he tossed unopened into the library desk,
except those from his father and Catherine. Theirs he read, but hastily,
and replied to them with an effort. He did not so much mind reading or
even answering Mr. Carroll’s; he did so almost mechanically. But
Catherine’s were different. Matter-of-fact and never touching on general
ideas, they were yet, in some cool way, intimate, and certainly without
the shyness that had always hampered Catherine in talking to Stacey. It
was as though in these letters she assumed that he was real, as he felt
that she was. And this was painful to him, dragging him back into the
world from which he had fled. Writing to her was hard, and he was aware
that his letters must be dull. But Catherine did not write often—only
once every two or three weeks.

Stacey also read a letter from Julie. But Julie was a poor
correspondent, writing, when positively forced to, in an odd stilted
manner quite uncharacteristic of her pleasant self. Only this one effort
came from her; but Stacey would not have minded fifty letters as unreal.
The postscript, however, did sound like Julie, and brought Stacey back
for a moment to Vernon. “How did Irene know where you were when Phil was
dying?” it demanded. Oh, so it was Irene who had told Julie, and Julie
Catherine, that he was at Clarefield! He stared ahead of him, recalling
the tragedy; then laid Julie’s letter among the others in the desk
drawer.

A few people called on Stacey, and he was polite enough to them; but he
never returned their visits, and soon no one troubled him further. It
was a difficult matter to drive out from town through all that mud.
When, rarely, he did talk with people he received an impression that
they were literally very far off. Their voices seemed to reach him from
a distance, or deadened as though through a barrier of fog. It was like
conversation in a dream.

Sometimes on his rides he would get so far away or be caught in so
terrific a storm that he would stay over night in some mountaineer’s
cabin. On these occasions he was welcomed with a grave courtesy unmarred
by apologies for what his hosts had to offer. The cabin invariably had
but one room and a lean-to. Supper over, the women would go to bed,
while the master of the house and Stacey smoked their pipes outside.
Then the two of them would enter, undress in the dark, and lie down
together. It did not irk Stacey to be with these people. They seemed
apathetic and emotionless, and their eyes had an abstracted look.

On the other hand, if human feeling had faded in him, his long neglected
fancy was waking to new life. His mind grew, like an enchanted wood,
into a tangle of imaginings, that gave him sometimes a feeling of
release, a lifting sense of delight. Similes flitted through it rapidly.
A cloud shadow on a blue mountain was like a veil flung across the face
of a goddess, heightening her loveliness. The sudden sound of a brook in
the forest was like shy laughter. What was laughter? Something
delicately unhuman, perhaps, an expression of the youthful buoyant
relation between earth’s creatures and the earth. Biologists said that
animals could not laugh. Idiotic! It was only animals and children that
could laugh. A dog laughed. Even Duke could laugh. It was true that cats
could not, but this was because they were not primitive animals, but
civilized. Men did not laugh. They smirked or—or—_ricanaient_. Stacey
could not think of the English word and indolently did not try to.

He noted with calm contempt this revival of fancifulness in himself,
saying that he had reverted to the sentimentalism of his early life. For
all along he was contemptuous of himself for his surrender. Further than
this he would not look. He avoided himself as persistently as he avoided
others.

Yet in his reading he did not turn to poetry and romance. He read
Tolstoy, Samuel Butler and Thomas Hardy. He cared, in fact, for no books
that did not treat solely and squarely of men’s relations to one
another. He would have nothing to do with men; he would read of nothing
else.

Months passed, with Stacey scarcely aware of their smooth succession. He
was like a man asleep, vaguely dreaming. But it _was_ only a sleep, a
semi-conscious state into which one sinks, however pleasantly, when
tired. Even in those moments when his fancy played delightedly over some
sudden glimpse of beauty he was at bottom dissatisfied—like a man
struggling achingly in a dream to enfold and make real the unsubstantial
vision of his mistress.

By this time April had come. The Judas trees had burned themselves out,
the fresh pale green of oaks and maples shimmered against the dark green
of the pines, the forests were white with dog-wood blossom, and on the
lower mountain slopes masses of flame azalea made the ground beneath the
trees appear on fire. Much of Stacey’s present calm came through his
freedom from men; but much, too, from the silent satisfaction of his
starved sense of beauty. He read less now and went on longer rides.

But his calm was insecure. Something impetuous fluttered within him, too
strong for this life of fancy. Mentally he was still isolated;
physically he was restless, stirred tumultuously by the spring, called
to union with the warm thrilling life all about him.


                             CHAPTER XVIII

About a quarter of a mile from Stacey’s house lay the village of
Meldrun, straggling along one side of a small river, which, having
flowed prettily through the Carroll property, its steep banks massed
with rhododendrons, issued thence into practical life, like a business
man after a condescending hour with the arts. It fell, that is, into
rapids, the water power from which was utilized by a small hosiery
factory. Around this plant had grown up the village, consisting of a
company store and of some fifty incredibly abject huts, leaning at
strange angles, propped up anyhow, when in acute danger of collapse, by
logs; the effect of the whole like that of a Vorticist picture.

The beginning of many of Stacey’s rides led him perforce through this
ignoble place. The brick factory itself stood close beside the road he
must follow, on a narrow strip of ground between it and the river, and
through the broken glass of its windows slovenly girls leered out at him
or shouted uncomplimentary remarks, and he could see the pale,
hard-featured faces of ten- and twelve-year old children. If Stacey was
walking Duke, he would wave his hat as he passed, but mostly he went
through the town at a gallop. He rode well, and with his impassive,
rather stern face, he must have looked like some callous medieval
_condottiere_. No one in Meldrun would have heard of _condottieri_, but
the effect would be the same.

Really, however, Stacey was far from impassive. This misery of which he
caught a glimpse troubled him profoundly,—the more since, so far as he
could see, there was nothing he could do about it. Yet, oddly, he rode
through Meldrun oftener than he needed to.

The house of the factory owner, a Mr. Langdon, stood on the crest of a
low hill some distance back to the left just before the village began;
on one side its grounds adjoined the Carroll property. It was an
imposing pillared mansion built as a plantation house before the Civil
War, but Stacey gazed across at it grimly each time that he rode out
through Meldrun. However, he did not see what he could do about this,
either. He tried to dismiss both house and village from his thoughts.

Mr. Langdon himself, a pleasant-faced elderly man with a young wife and
three small daughters, he knew by sight and nodded to curtly when they
happened to meet. But, for all his deliberate isolation, he had been
unable not to pick up a few scraps of gossip here and there, and also
there was Elijah, an unquenchable fountain of information. So Stacey
learned that the Langdons were a South Carolina family; that they had
formerly owned the house and a thousand acres round about—the whole
valley, indeed, including the property that was now Mr. Carroll’s; that
they had lost everything during the Civil War and emigrated to Georgia;
and that it was only five years ago that the present Mr. Langdon had
returned, to buy back the family home and with it the hosiery factory
that had been erected by some one else. Stacey also learned, listening
distractedly to Elijah, that there was no love for the factory owner
among his employees, and that that one young fellow—“yes, suh, he’s
_bad_, Mistuh Stacey!”—had said “how he was goin’ to _get_ Mistuh
Langdon one day.”

“Well—and then?” thought Stacey, with a shrug of his shoulders, finding
the intention laudable enough, but seeing no solution of anything in it.

But one night toward the end of April Stacey, lying awake on his
sleeping-porch, became aware of an odd glow in the moonless night. “A
fire, of course,” he thought, as he got quickly out of bed to make sure
that it was not in his own house. Houses hereabouts always burned down
sooner or later, what with the general carelessness and the lack of any
fire department. But from his porch, which faced west, Stacey could not
see the fire. It must be somewhere to the east, since it reddened the
near side of the shrubbery on the lawn and shone fantastically against
the glossy leaves of a tulip tree.

He hurried down the hall to the other end of the house. But tall trees
and the distant barrier of white pines that marked the Carroll boundary
cut off his view, and he could make out only that the fire was somewhere
in Meldrun. The confused murmur of many voices reached him.

He threw on some clothes, slipped an electric flash-light into his
pocket, then ran downstairs. Elijah was just starting up then. The old
man was breathless with haste and excitement. “It—it am Mistuh
Langdon’s house ’at’s buhnin’, Mistuh Stacey!” he stuttered. “My Lawd,
but she shuah is buhnin’, suh!”

For a moment Stacey was rather pleased at the news; then he shrugged his
shoulders at feeling so childish an emotion. “All right,” he said, “I’ll
go over and see if I can help.”

Running easily, he did the quarter of a mile in three minutes, and,
vaulting a fence, came out upon the sloping lawn of the Langdon home. It
was covered with people shouting and moving about busily—mostly workers
from the factory, and strewn with such household goods as had been
rescued. The east wing of the house was burning fiercely; flames lapped
the roof of the central part, and black smoke curled out of its upper
windows. The west wing was not yet burning, though its blistered paint
was peeling off in great flakes, and little spirals of smoke rose from
its roof where sparks had caught.

Glancing around him in the flickering light, Stacey perceived a young
woman sitting motionless on an overturned mahogany sideboard, a child in
her lap and two others clinging to her skirts. He went up to her
quickly.

“Mrs. Langdon?” he said stiffly. “I’m Stacey Carroll. Please tell me
what to do.” He spoke stiffly not because he was unfriendly, but because
Mrs. Langdon, like all the rest of the people around him, seemed far
away, unrelated, a mere distant mathematical fact about which no emotion
was possible.

“Thank you, Mr. Carroll,” she said pleasantly. “I’m afraid there’s
nothing. The men are getting out what they can.”

“Well, I can help with that,” he replied.

The youngest child, a girl of six, was crying bitterly in her mother’s
arms. “Mitzi, I want my Mitzi!” she sobbed monotonously.

“Who’s Mitzi?” Stacey asked quickly. “Some pet—still in the house?”

Mrs. Langdon smiled. “Mitzi is only Helen’s doll,” she explained. “We
forgot it in the hurry, and now it’s too late. Her room was full of
smoke even when we left it.”

Stacey, too, smiled—ever so faintly touched. “I’ll go and see if I can
help Mr. Langdon,” he remarked. “Where is he?”

“Oh, thank you!” said the young woman. “He’s there at the west end of
the house. Please don’t let him climb in again. He’s strained his
ankle.”

A ladder had been placed against the low porch at the end of the west
wing. Stacey scrambled up to the roof of the porch, where he found Mr.
Langdon and others among a heterogeneous collection of household goods
that had been carried out through an open second-story window. The tin
roof was uncomfortably hot, and there was a good deal of smoke. Mr.
Langdon was directing the lowering to the ground of a sofa and pausing
between times to toss down less fragile belongings as they were brought
out to him through the window. He appeared quite calm and greeted Stacey
courteously.

“Mrs. Langdon told me you had strained your ankle,” Stacey remarked.
“Hadn’t you better go back down and let me tend to this for you?”

“That is very kind of you, sir,” Mr. Langdon replied, “but I am all
right. I regret that I cannot go inside with the others.”

“Well, I can do that, anyway,” said Stacey curtly, and, disregarding the
other’s protests, went quickly over to the window and through it.

The room beyond was very hot but not yet burning, and there was not even
much smoke. Three or four men were gathering up the few objects still
remaining in it, and a frightened negro servant was standing very close
to the window and directing their efforts. No one paid the least
attention to his instructions, but a youth, coming in with a mattress
from a room beyond, called: “Come on in theah, Joe!” at which the negro
shook his head vigorously and the others laughed. Stacey went through
another door.

This room was smoky and also nearly emptied of its furnishings. But
three doors opened out of it and beyond one of these Stacey found
himself at once in a hot choking mist. Here he was alone. He drew out
his flash-light, and, his eyes smarting, explored the room. It was a
sitting-room, he saw,—Mrs. Langdon’s probably,—and he could be of some
use after all; for here hung a small Meissonier and there on a table was
a vase—“Sèvres,” he remarked hoarsely. “Better than—mattresses.” He
gathered up the vase, jerked the picture from the wall, and stumbled,
coughing, from the room.

Just outside the door he ran into the young man of the mattress. “Here!”
said Stacey wheezing, “take this—carefully—to Mr. Langdon, will you?”

“Shuah!” said the young man, who was chewing tobacco steadily. “You be’n
in theah?” he inquired, waving his hand at the door.

Stacey nodded.

“Well, wait a minute en’ I’ll go back in with you when I’ve toted these
out.”

“I’ll—have to—wait a minute,” Stacey replied, and the young man
departed.

Presently he returned, and together the two went back into the
sitting-room for more loot, emerging dripping with sweat and half
choked. Yet Stacey was beginning to enjoy himself.

They tried the other two rooms, the doors of which Stacey had already
noticed. From the first they got—with difficulty—a fine rug, slightly
scorched, and a mahogany stand. The second seemed impossible—a mass of
black smoke.

“What’s in there, I wonder?” said Stacey hoarsely.

“I dunno,” the young fellow replied. “We mout ask that nigger, Joe.”

Only two or three men were left now even in the room next the porch, and
Joe was definitely on the point of getting out of the window. However,
he paused for an instant to answer the question.

“That theah room, that’s Miss Helen’s bedroom. Don’ you go theah, suh,”
he said, and vanished.

Stacey reflected, with a half smile, then hurried back, his laconic
acquaintance still at his side. Voices shouted at them from the porch.

The house was a furnace now. There was a heavy roaring in the air and
every little while the sound of something crashing down. Nevertheless,
Stacey plunged into the bedroom, and so, too, did his companion. It was
unbearable, but, at least, one could see; a vivid flickering light shot
through the smoke. After a moment Stacey made out the crib, dived for a
blackened, almost unrecognizable object that lay on the smoldering
sheets, and leaped back just as a beam fell, with a shower of sparks,
from the ceiling. Together he and his companion fled back to the room
next the porch and leaned, coughing and choking, against the window. The
room was empty.

“Wh-what did you get?” Stacey asked hoarsely at last.

“A hoss,” replied the other, with a grin, holding up a toy.

“I got a doll,” said Stacey weakly.

And all at once, there in this burning room, it was as though something
snapped within him. The strange barrier was down. The world came rushing
up to meet him. He burst into a helpless fit of laughter.

“Do I—do I look as wild as you do?” he gasped, gazing at the other’s
grimy face and singed hair.

“You shuah look pretty bad,” said the young man.

Stacey pulled himself together. “I should say we’d better get out of
here,” he remarked.

“I reckon we had.”

They scrambled out over the smoking porch and down the ladder, surprised
at the anxious group awaiting them.

Mr. Langdon seized Stacey’s hand. “Thank God, you’re down safely, Mr.
Carroll!” he said. “We were worried, sir. You shouldn’t have stayed so
long. You’re not burnt? Your clothes. . . . But the things you saved
were very precious to me. That Meissonier . . .”

Stacey laughed. “Glad to be of some use,” he replied easily. “Where is
Mrs. Langdon?”

“Back here out of the heat—just a few steps,” said the other, and led
the way, limping.

The crowd had grown larger during Stacey’s absence. There were half a
dozen small motor cars, too, on the lawn, and the lights of others
standing in the road, a hundred yards distant, were visible.

Mrs. Langdon uttered an exclamation at Stacey’s appearance. But he gave
her no chance to thank him.

“Helen,” he called, “is this Mitzi?” and held out the burnt blackened
doll.

The child seized it, with a scream of joy. “Mitzi! Mitzi!” she cried.

Mrs. Langdon stared helplessly. “Do you mean to say that you risked your
life to save—that doll, Mr. Carroll?” she demanded, half laughing, half
crying.

“Oh, no, there wasn’t any danger—except of choking,” Stacey replied.

However, it occurred to him suddenly that to run risks blithely for a
doll was just what he had done, and that this was somehow—he didn’t
know—connected with the odd change of heart he was feeling.

“Oh,” he exclaimed suddenly, “and my friend saved a horse! Where’s he
gone?”

“I got the hoss, Mistuh Stacey,” said Elijah, coming forward with the
toy. “Mistuh Jim Bradley, he give it to me to bring. He’s done gone,
Mistuh Bradley is.”

“That was sweet of him!” Mrs. Langdon exclaimed.

“What the dickens did he go for?” Stacey remarked regretfully. Jim
Bradley? He’d heard the name somewhere.

“You must come over to my place for the night,” he observed. “No, no, it
would be silly to go into town when I’ve all those empty rooms,” he
added quickly, as Mr. Langdon attempted to protest. “And you’ll want to
get back here early in the morning to see to things.”

He was insistent, and they, no doubt, were very tired. At any rate, they
yielded.

“A cousin of mine has brought his Ford around,” said Mr. Langdon. “He’ll
take us over presently. But—”

“Good! Then Elijah and I will cut across and get things ready,” Stacey
concluded.

Back at the house, Stacey plunged into a bath, then hurriedly put on
other clothes. But all at once he paused in his dressing and uttered an
exclamation. Jim Bradley? Of course! It was the name of the young man
who, Elijah said, had threatened to “get” Mr. Langdon. Stacey smiled,
then frowned.

Before long the Langdons arrived, with a car-load of rescued clothes.
Stacey welcomed them cordially.

“Elijah has your rooms ready,” he said, “and there’s a bathroom next one
of them.”

“Thank you,” murmured Mrs. Langdon. “I’ll put the children to bed and
leave you my husband meanwhile.”

He helped them upstairs with their things, looked down with a smile at
Helen, as her father laid her, fast asleep, on the bed, Mitzi still
clutched in her arms, then returned with Mr. Langdon to the big
living-room.

They sat down, and Stacey gazed at his guest with interest. A simple
likable man, with a kindly face, and extremely well-bred.

“I trust,” said Stacey pleasantly, as he offered him a cigarette, “that
you carried adequate insurance.”

Mr. Langdon smiled faintly. “About enough to cover the first mortgage,”
he returned quietly.

Stacey paused in the act of lighting a match, and stared.

“The whole investment was a mistake, sir,” his guest continued mildly.
“For sentimental reasons I am sorry to lose the house, but it was a
burden. The factory has never paid, and the rate of interest banks
hereabouts demand on loans is ruinous—ten to twelve per cent. I shall
sell out for what I can get and go back to Macon. Forgive my troubling
you with such mention of personal affairs.”

“On the contrary, I am interested—and sorry,” Stacey replied sincerely.
He fell silent for a moment. So the villain of the piece must be sought
elsewhere? Among the bankers? Stacey shook his head. Not there, either.
He pulled himself back to his duties as host.

After a time Mrs. Langdon came down. She had put on another dress, and
there was a touch of coquetry in her manner toward Stacey. Both she and
her husband were behaving like good sports, he thought. Elijah brought
in coffee and sandwiches, and the three talked pleasantly together for
half an hour.

Nevertheless, Stacey was relieved when his guests went up to bed.
Somehow he seemed to have broken free; he was no longer a pacing animal
in a cage; and he wanted to think things out. He leaned against the
mantelpiece and gazed off across the room with grave abstracted eyes.

His absurd rescue of that wretched doll—why had so trivial an act
seemed to shake him out of a long lethargy? The answer leaped up at him
almost at once. Not the kindness but the sheer futility of his act—just
this was what had struck him as a heartening revelation. He had risked
his life for a doll! Jim Bradley had sworn to “get” an enemy, then had
gone through flames to save his enemy’s household goods!

For, thinking swiftly, Stacey perceived now that he had not told the
truth when he had asserted passionately to Mrs. Latimer that he found
the world chaos—with no scheme, nothing. What reason for anger in that?
No, as a youth, he had assumed the world to be built upon an agreeable
scheme, and then afterward, all unknown to himself, he had fancied it an
evil scheme. It was neither. It was what he had insincerely called
it—chaos, a grovelling incoherent assemblage of facts. The thought of
greed—he had been obsessed by it just because he had seen it as
something permanent, consistent—and successful. Pshaw! An ugly thing,
greed, but pitiful and futile, like everything else. Where did it get
any one? The greedy man was a man struggling for happiness. Well, did he
achieve happiness? Hate died out of Stacey. You could not hate what was
a failure.

So much he made out in a series of flashes. Much more, that lay behind,
was obscurer. He dropped into an arm-chair and sat there, motionless,
for a long time, reflecting intensely. Sometimes he would spring to his
feet and pace up and down the room for a while, and light a fresh
cigarette or pause to finger abstractedly some vase or book, then return
to his chair.

It was not, of course, he understood, this one evening’s performance
that had shocked him into sanity—or what he hoped was sanity. This long
isolation from men, from a world interested only in economics, had
calmed him; for in it his youthful gift of fancy, choked back for so
long, had been let loose again. You could not choke things back without
suffering for it. . . . He had been like a man living in
compartments—first in one, then in another. That was wrong. He ought to
live wholly, with all of himself. . . . What he had been in his
youth—that, too, he still was. Nothing in one ever died.

It was as far as Stacey could get—and this only slowly, with
difficulty. But he could, he thought, go back to the real world now and
start over again.


                              CHAPTER XIX

Stacey had left Vernon in December; it was on an afternoon in May that
he returned to it. Tulips bloomed gaily in well tended beds along the
boulevard at which he gazed from his taxi. A fresh spring smell was in
the air. The city was at its best.

Stacey looked at it inquiringly, almost as though it were new to him.
And in a sense it was new; for he did not feel toward it in any way that
he had felt before. He saw the business buildings standing angularly
against the blue sky, the handsome residences of varied architecture,
the wide streets that were rivers of motor cars, and he noted, as often,
that esthetically the city was faulty and aspiring, and that socially it
was energetic and confident. He received again an impression of people
striving relentlessly to attain certain things and clinging to them
desperately when attained. But he did not feel for these characteristics
either admiration or disapproval, affection or distaste. What he did
feel was curiosity, because it seemed to him that he knew very little
about Vernon really, and an odd touch of pity. For the first time it
struck him as rather pathetic to care so hard about motor cars and
bathrooms and servants. Here were wealthy men riding triumphantly in
imported Rolls-Royces, and poor men riding in Fords, or walking, and
hating the rich men. What a to-do! Oh, well, it couldn’t be helped!
Stacey supposed. Economics were the order of the day.

Presently he reached his father’s house. “Hello, Parker,” he said to the
surprised servant who opened the door. “I’m back, you see,—and without
so much as sending a wire. How are you? Mr. Carroll well? Take this bag
up to my room for me, will you, please? I certainly do need a bath. Oh,
yes, I’ve had lunch, thanks.”

An hour later he strolled down to the dining-room for a whiskey and
soda, then, glass in hand, into the library. And there, sitting with a
book in a high-backed chair, was Catherine.

“Why, Catherine!” Stacey exclaimed, going toward her quickly and holding
out his hand.

She had risen swiftly, as surprised as he. She was wearing a black
dress, but with a wide pointed collar of white lace at her bare throat.
She looked firm and grave and slender.

“Well, isn’t this jolly?” he said, shaking her hand cordially. “What are
you doing here?”

“Didn’t you get my last letter?” she asked, with some embarrassment. “I
think your father wrote you, too.”

“I did get your letter and one from father,” he replied, “just before I
left Pickens, but, to tell you the truth, I’ve brought them back
unopened in my bag. I thought it would be so much nicer to talk with you
both. It sounds rude and unappreciative, but I didn’t mean it that way.”
She was still gazing at him, and he saw that she was distressed about
something and as shy as ever. “Sit down, do!” he said.

She obeyed. “You see,” she began slowly, “I didn’t think you’d be back
yet. And a little while ago, when the rent period on our house was up,
your father said—he’s been so awfully kind to us always—and he said—”

“Catherine,” Stacey interrupted, “it’s oppressive to see any one with as
much to say as you always have, so unable to say it.” (She bit her lip.)
“My father said: ‘I insist on your coming to live here. It’s a big place
and I need a housekeeper.’”

But, though he laughed, Stacey did not feel mirthful. He had a sudden
perception of how lonely his father had been, how lonely Catherine had
been.

“Yes,” she returned, “that was what he said. And I was weak enough to
accept, though I knew it was only kindness on his part. But I _was_
going away when you came back, Stacey.”

“Oh,” he remarked, “you were!”

Again she bit her lip. “I mean,” she added quickly, “that we might have
been in your way and—”

“Catherine,” said Stacey, getting up and standing beside her, “I think
your being here is delightful. I should feel very badly if you went
away. There’s my hand on it.”

She looked at him in a puzzled manner and thanked him, rather
unsteadily, because he had been so cordial. A little of her shyness had
vanished when he sat down again.

“You came back,” she said.

He nodded. “I’d ridden everywhere there was to ride; so all at once I
decided I’d come back to the world.” And he became silent. “Where are
the boys?” he demanded suddenly.

“At school,” she replied, “but it’s four now. They’ll be here any
minute.”

And only a little later they did come in. Jack was unrestrained from the
first, but Carter, probably coached by his mother, was impressively
correct until he caught sight of Stacey and threw reserve to the winds.

The library echoed with noise and there was a touch of color in
Catherine’s cheeks when at five o’clock Mr. Carroll opened the door of
the room and stood at the threshold, looking in.

“Well, son!” he exclaimed.

Stacey sprang up. “Surprise party, dad!” he remarked, shaking his
father’s hand. “Quite a good one, don’t you think?”

“I should say so!” Mr. Carroll replied, while Catherine quieted the boys
and made them sit beside her with a book. “How was everything down
there? Did you ride over that Garett Creek path you and I found once?”

“Yes,” said Stacey, “there and everywhere else.”

After the initial burst of cordiality they fell silent, finding little
to say to each other. How estranged they were! Stacey thought. The
murmur of the children’s voices and the subdued sound of Catherine’s
words explaining a story were comforting—to Stacey certainly, to his
father almost as certainly—filling in the emptiness.

Mr. Carroll called Jack to him—Jack seemed to be his favorite—and
joked with the child much more naturally than he could joke with Stacey.
As for Stacey, he talked with Catherine and Carter.

After a while Catherine announced to the boys that it was half-past five
and they must go wash and get ready for dinner.

“Look here, Catherine!” remarked Mr. Carroll. “Do let them eat with us
to-night.”

“Yes! Oh, yes, mother!” they cried in unison.

She shook her head. “No,” she said to them, “do as mother says,” and
they went out slowly.

“No, please!” she replied to Mr. Carroll. “It’s awfully—good of you,
but I’m sure it’s better this way.”

Mr. Carroll frowned. “Idea of Catherine’s,” he said, appealing to his
son. “Boys must eat at six—an hour ahead of us. I’d like to have them
at table with me. Can’t you do anything about it?”

Catherine was shy but firm. “I’d rather they wouldn’t, please,” she
said.

Stacey laughed. “Lord! no, I can’t do anything about it!” he returned.
“You have my full moral support, but what’s the use? Catherine’s the
Rock of Gibraltar.”

His father laughed with him and spread out his hands in surrender.
Perhaps he rather liked being successfully opposed. At any rate, there
was less constraint between him and Stacey after this. If in no other
way, Stacey thought, they could at least be united in a league of men
against women. When Catherine went down to sit at table while her sons
ate, the two men talked quite freely, though chiefly of her.

“You don’t mind my asking her and the boys to come over here?” Mr.
Carroll asked apologetically.

Stacey was touched. “Good heavens, no!” he exclaimed. “It’s jolly for us
and better for them. It was awfully good of you, sir.”

“No, no!” said his father gruffly. “Purely selfish. Brightens the house
up. Long time since there were children here. You and Julie _would_ grow
up, confound you!” he added wrathfully.

Stacey laughed a little at this. “Couldn’t help it, dad,” he replied. “I
regret it as much as you do.”

“Fine girl, Catherine!” Mr. Carroll went on, after a moment. “I like her
honesty and lack of nonsense. Some women would have refused to come
because damned impertinent people might talk. They will, I suppose,
having the kind of minds they’ve got.”

Stacey opened his eyes wide. “I never thought of that,” he said. “But I
should say,” he added, “that if they do, why, let them.”

Mr. Carroll nodded emphatically. “Let them,” he assented.

So Stacey and his father were also incongruously united in a
revolutionary league against society.

“But do you know what Catherine does, confound her!” Mr. Carroll added.
“Insists on paying me the same amount as it cost her to live in that
other house! Says she won’t stay otherwise!” He laughed, half
admiringly, half in exasperation.

Stacey enjoyed himself, in a mixed way, at dinner. Indeed, he was never
really bored. He had loved life once and hated it later. Indifference
was impossible to him, however much his attitude toward things altered.
He looked across the table at Catherine, studying her firm grave face
over which her grief had lowered an intangible something like a veil, an
expression of reserve, sweetness and knowledge. At bottom Stacey was
rather afraid of Catherine. And, while conversation ran on well enough,
he studied his father’s face, too. What an odd trio they made! he
thought. And he noted that his father’s expression was stern to
harshness when Mr. Carroll talked of general subjects such as the
present Democratic administration or Article X of the League of Nations,
but softened when he spoke to Stacey or Catherine of individual things
or people.

Just at present he was talking about the state of the whole country,
and, as the subject was especially large, he looked especially fierce,
his white eyebrows meeting in a frown above his fine nose.

“The country’s had enough of Wilson and his policies,” he was saying.
“You can go way back to his action in knuckling down to the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Engineers if you want to get at the start of the whole
trouble. A toady! A trimmer! A schoolmaster! Yes, sir! The world has
taken Wilson’s measure pretty well by now.” Mr. Carroll drank a swallow
of claret, then set his glass down with a bump. “Then the Armistice!” he
burst out again. “Look at that! All Wilson with his idiotic Fourteen
Points and his ‘Peace without Victory!’ There we had the Germans on the
run. Two weeks’ time—a month—and our boys and the Allies would have
marched into Berlin, and then we’d have known who won the war.”

Mr. Carroll did not stop here by any means. He continued, sweeping along
like a surf-rider on the flood of his indictments.

But Stacey lost track. He remembered, as something out of a dim
different past, that he had countered this same argument in regard to
the Armistice at dinner that first night of his return, and that he had
then apparently convinced his father. However, this awakened no
antagonism in Stacey. He merely felt amused. Somehow, in some way not
yet clear to himself, he had most certainly changed. He was recalled to
the present by the vigor with which his father pronounced the word
“Bolshevism.”

“That’s the whole trouble—Bolshevism! The country’s rotten with it, and
will be until we get a sane business administration and put labor and
radicalism in their place.”

Mr. Carroll was carving a chicken at the time—he scorned effeminate
households where the carving was done in the butler’s pantry—and he
thrust the fork deep down across the breast-bone of the chicken as
though he were impaling Lenin, Gompers, Haywood, and Daniels all at
once.

But a moment later, and quite instinctively, he laid the liver and the
heart beside a drumstick on Stacey’s plate; and at this Stacey was
touched, for he knew that, like himself, his father had retained a
boyish love of the giblets. Often he had seen his father on looking
through the ice-box of a Sunday night turn around and hold out with a
triumphant smile a plate of chicken where reposed, brown, crisp and
indigestible, a cold gizzard and perhaps a heart.

So: “I think you are very likely right, sir,” said Stacey.

As a matter of fact, it cost him little to say this; for he found
himself quite without interest in Bolshevism, the labor problem, or the
Democratic maladministration.

As for Mr. Carroll, he gave his son a pleased, rather surprised smile,
and presently dropped all problems. But Catherine looked across at
Stacey with a strange startled expression.

After dinner they went into the library and Catherine poured coffee.

“I wish, Catherine,” Stacey exclaimed, with a touch of exasperation,
“that you wouldn’t glance at me in such a confoundedly apprehensive way,
as though you were afraid I might object to your pouring coffee here! I
like it. How many times must I tell you?”

“Very well, Stacey, I’ll try to be bold,” she replied, a faint smile
relieving the gravity of her face.

Mr. Carroll laughed approvingly. “You’re going to be a great help to me,
son,” he said.

But Parker came in to tell Mr. Carroll that Long Distance was calling
him on the ’phone; so Stacey and Catherine were left by themselves for a
few minutes.

“Any one not knowing my father well might think, to hear him talk of
Bolshevism and labor, that he was harsh,” Stacey observed. “He’s not.
He’s not even bigoted, really.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s not!” Catherine exclaimed. “He’s the kindest man I’ve
ever known.”

“Yes. You see, partly it’s because he himself has worked all his life
like three ordinary men and, conceding the system, has made his fortune
honestly. It isn’t merely that he wants to hold what he’s acquired. It’s
rather that unconsciously he feels any attack on the system as an attack
on his own integrity.” Stacey paused, with a frown. “It’s something even
more than that,” he continued slowly. “If a man has all his life played
the game vigorously and loyally according to the rules, he doesn’t at
sixty-one want to be told that the rules were all wrong. That would be
knocking everything from under him. Father has to believe that what is
is right, or where would he be? Right and wrong mean a great deal to
him—he’s old-fashioned in that. And then, I must say, it _is_ a
slovenly world at present for a man with clean-cut ideas to look out on.
A bedraggled tattered place, with cocky young chaps sitting in literary
offices and blithely announcing every week that something else is wrong
with things in general. Not that there isn’t enough that’s wrong, and
the more truth that’s told about it, the better; but a lot of the
complaining is either whining or just rotten cleverness. Fancy being
clever about a cyclone—or the Judgment Day!” He paused and lit a
cigarette. “Father’s an out-and-out idealist,” Stacey concluded. “He’s
got to believe passionately in something, and he’s too old to believe in
something new. Besides, nothing new is clearly presented to one.”

“Yes,” Catherine said, “that is very clear and fair, Stacey.” But the
look that her dark eyes gave him was full of perplexity.

“Oh,” he observed lightly, “I know! You think I’m a reformed character.
Not a bit of it! ‘Nothing of me that doth fade, but doth suffer a
sea-change into something rich and strange.’” He laughed ironically.

And Catherine was much too shy, as he knew she would be, to pursue the
subject.

When later he went upstairs he stood for a long time before the open
window of his study. “It can’t be done,” he said to himself at last.
“You can’t look at the world as a whole and stay sane. Because there
isn’t any such world. That’s a nightmare of ogre words. Bolshevism,
labor problem, greed, reaction,—they’re merely words. All that there
truly is is a lot of puny little men like myself, dreaming
dreams—mostly bad ones.”


                               CHAPTER XX

At nine the next morning Stacey drove down town with his father. Perhaps
no real intimacy was possible between them, since they had hardly a
thought or a belief in common, but they were, simply through a
heightened mutual friendliness, closer together than they had been for
six years. Stacey went up to his father’s pleasant office and watched
Mr. Carroll sit down in his swivel-chair, light a cigar, and open his
letters with a paper-knife.

Stacey smiled. “I’ve sometimes wondered, sir,” he said, “why at sixty or
thereabouts you—”

“Here! Here! Stop it!” Mr. Carroll interrupted ruefully.

“Well, anyway I’ve wondered why you didn’t retire and just amuse
yourself, since you’ve certainly earned a rest. But—”

“Retire? Nonsense! Work,—that’s all a man’s good for. Got to stay in
harness. Soon as he gets out of it he goes to pieces.”

“H’m,” said Stacey banteringly, “that’s the theory, of course. But just
look around you. Here you come down to a bright jolly office entirely
cut off from the home, and open nice crisp new letters, and call
in—presently, when I stop bothering you—a fresh clean stenographer,
and you watch the blue smoke of a good cigar curl up across the
sunlight—no, sir, you can’t fool me with any talk about duty and the
rest. Poetry! Sheer poetry! Men’s ingenuous little romance!”

Mr. Carroll leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“American business men,—why they’re our real leisure class!” Stacey
concluded.

But at this his father protested. “I worked ten hours a day and
sometimes twelve—hard—from the time I was eighteen till past forty,”
he observed soberly.

“I know you did, sir,” Stacey assented respectfully. “I’m not talking
about that epoch but about our own. The young business men I know—and I
don’t mean the clerks, people working on a salary, but the men who will
be rich one day from business—how about them? They get down to their
offices anywhere from nine-thirty to ten, and they waste a good
half-hour before they begin to work, and they play a lot even when they
think they’re working; then they take an hour and a half off at the club
for lunch; at four or thereabouts, weather permitting, they motor out to
the country-club and play nine holes of golf; then they go back to a
nice, different, clean house, with all the housekeeping tended to by
their pretty wives. Oh, it’s a hard life!”

“You’re right,” the older man growled. “It’s a damned lazy life, and I
don’t know what the country’s coming to if it keeps on.”

“Now really,” Stacey suggested, “_can_ you blame a laboring man if he
kicks?”

But at this Mr. Carroll’s mouth shut in a tight line. “I’m against
loafing anywhere in any class,” he said sternly. “The laborer’s got his
job and he loafs on it; the young business man has his and _he_ loafs. I
disapprove of both.”

“Yes,” Stacey returned mildly, “but the results are so disproportionate.
The young business idler has a far more luxurious time than the most
conscientious laborer could have.”

But on a point like this Mr. Carroll would never yield an inch. “Labor
is getting a bigger reward for less work than it ever got before,” he
said. Then he changed the subject. “You know, son,” he remarked, with a
sudden smile, “to see you sitting there brings back so many things. I
can’t get over the feeling that you’re a boy, as you used to be, and
have come up and made yourself agreeable in preparation to touching me
for money. You don’t need money, do you?” he asked wistfully.

“Goodness, no!” said Stacey, who had just ten dollars to last the rest
of the month. He would have liked to oblige his father, but he really
couldn’t, in this. He got up to go, and Mr. Carroll touched the button
that would summon his stenographer.

“I’ll run along now and leave you in peace,” Stacey observed. “I’m going
down to see if Parkins will give me a job.”

At this Mr. Carroll lifted his head quickly and gave him a sharp look.
“Just a minute, Ruth,” he said to the young woman who had opened the
door. “I’ll ring for you again presently.” She went out.

Mr. Carroll gazed at his son with interest. “Going back to work, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Look here!” said the older man sharply. “How would you like a job with
me? Lots of big things you could work into.”

Stacey hesitated. He would have done a great deal to please his father.
But after a moment he shook his head.

“No, sir,” he replied reluctantly. “I’d like it; honestly I would. It
would be a fascinating new game. But architecture is the one thing I
know about. You gave me years of study in it. I’d better stick to it.”

His father nodded. “Right!” he said. “I can see that.”

A few minutes later Stacey opened the door of Mr. Parkins’s private
office. “Hello!” he remarked. “Can I come in?”

“Well, Stacey!” cried the architect cordially. “How are you?”

“First-rate. Got a job for me?”

Mr. Parkins stared at him with a humorous smile. “_Now_ what have you
gone and done—reformed?”

Stacey laughed. “Not so far as I know,” he said lightly.

“Then you must have acquired grace.”

Stacey waved the suggestion aside deprecatingly. “No,” he said, “but
I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve worried my head too long about the
problems of the universe. Everybody’s doing it. A mistake. Work’s all
there is for a man—not as a drug, but just because it’s the only thing
he knows about and can take hold of.” And Stacey had not equivocated. As
far as it went this did seem truth to him—just a fragment of the truth.
“How about that job?” he added.

“Sure! Glad to have you. We need you badly. Hadn’t found any one to
replace poor Phil Blair. My offer’s still open.”

“No,” said Stacey, suddenly grave at the mention of Phil, “take me on
for a couple of months at the old salary. Then if I’m any good you can
repeat your offer if you want to. I may have forgotten everything I
knew. Tell me,” he added, suddenly feeling all this as of very little
importance, “how did Phil do? Tell me about Phil.”

“The most lovable chap I’ve ever known,” said Mr. Parkins soberly, “and
he worked very hard—too hard. I could have cried when I heard he was
dead. But he wasn’t the best man for the place. You would have been
better. Odd, that power in any one so frail! I felt as though I were
hiring Bramante to design bath-tubs.”

Stacey nodded.

The architect smiled suddenly. “I didn’t mean what I said to sound
uncomplimentary to you,” he added.

“Oh,” said Stacey impatiently, “I never thought of that. I’ll be down
ready to work at nine to-morrow morning. Good-bye.” And he left the
office abruptly.

When he was again on the street he hesitated for a moment, then set off
on foot for his sister’s house, two miles distant. But the mention of
Phil’s name had thrown him into so deep a preoccupation that he walked
mechanically, hardly aware of his surroundings, and did not even notice
the greetings people waved at him from passing motor cars. He had
neglected Phil for chimaeras, he mused sadly. When you thought about
life as a whole it was horrible—and dead—a cold motionless monster
that froze your veins. Real life, good or bad, wretched or happy, but
warm, was in personal relationships—and nowhere else. He had let veil
after gray veil of bleak abstractions descend between himself and Phil,
obscuring this warmest and freshest of realities. And now Phil was dead.
So Stacey meditated, but without bitterness; for there was a kind of
fatalism upon him. Whatever was, was. Well, there was still Catherine.
Perhaps he could make it up to her a little.

But when at last he mounted the steps of his sister’s house his
melancholy fled; for he was genuinely eager to see Julie and was glad
when the maid told him she was at home—out in the garden behind the
house, he learned, and made haste to join her.

“Well, Stace!” she cried joyfully at sight of him, and threw her arms
around him in a warm hug, taking care to keep her gloved hands, which
were muddy with weeding, from touching his coat, and laughing because of
doing so. “I _am_ glad to see you! I only heard this morning. If I’d
known last night we’d have been around to the house. Why didn’t you call
me up? How fit you’re looking!” And she drew away to gaze at him, while
he dropped down upon a bench and looked back, smiling, at her.

She was plump and sweet-natured, Stacey thought, and in the bright May
sunlight her complexion showed, undamaged, that clear healthy freshness
which can be retained only by decent living. He was glad to be with her.

“Jimmy and Junior both well?” he asked.

“Splendid! Jimmy’s getting rather fat, and I—well, you see! So we’re
both dieting. We sit with a book propped up in front of us and count the
calories in everything.” She laughed and sat down beside her brother.

“Too much happiness,” said Stacey. “Not enough conflict. You and Jimmy
ought to fight more.”

He was wondering about his sister. Could it really be that she
encountered no problems at all? There was a sweetness and a sureness
about her that made him doubt such an obvious hypothesis.

“I’ll stay to lunch, Jule, if you’ll ask me,” he began, “because—”

“Of course I will! How nice!” she interrupted.

“—Because it will be my only chance for a while. I’m going back to work
with Parkins to-morrow.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” she exclaimed.

“Are you? Why?”

She looked at him rather shyly, frowning a little. “Because,” she said
after just an instant, “you have so fine a training it seems a shame to
waste it and let houses be built more clumsily by people who haven’t had
it.”

Stacey felt grateful for her reply. She might have said: “Because I
think you’ll be happier,” or: “Because I think every man ought to do
something.” She had their father’s direct way of going straight to the
heart of a question, and she was so simple about it that she got no
credit for intelligence. What she said always sounded usual.

She went on with her weeding now, and they talked cordially of
superficial things.

Junior, back from kindergarten, made himself the centre of conversation
during lunch, but afterward Julie sent him away with his nurse, and sat
down with Stacey in the living-room.

It was curious, he thought, what a sense of intimacy he felt, since,
except for that one remark of hers, they had talked only of externals.

“Julie,” he demanded abruptly, “does everything really run along for you
as smoothly as it seems to? Are you truly perfectly happy?”

She gave him a startled look, her eyes suddenly troubled. “No,” she said
painfully, after a long moment, “I’m not so—bovine as all that. Oh,”
she added quickly, “I get along! I haven’t any soul tragedies and I’m
not in love with some other man than Jimmy, but there are things”—she
pressed her fingers together nervously—“_different_ things—that I’d
like to do—or feel. Reckless things!”

Looking into her flushed face, Stacey perceived a strange unknown Julie,
and he, too, was troubled and remorseful. “I didn’t know,” he said.

“You never tried to find out, did you, Stacey dear?” she replied gently.

“No,” he assented.

“But why should you?” she asked, defending him against her own attack.
“Every one’s the same way. They all think: ‘Oh, Julie,—just the typical
housewife!’”

“The more fools they!” Stacey muttered.

“No, it’s natural. I behave that way. I have to behave some way.”

“It’s a lot to your credit. The world would be smoother if every one
did. Don’t be cross with me for stirring you up, Jule. It wasn’t
nasty—or meant to be. I was only interested.”

She gave him a warm smile. “Of course I’m not cross. I think it was nice
of you,” she said, quite her everyday self again.

But perhaps it was because of what he had said that she ventured, a
little later, to bring up another subject.

“Stacey,” she began, rather hesitantly, “I think what father has done in
asking Catherine to stay at the house is splendid, and I’m truly glad
about it. I love Catherine. But I thought perhaps you ought to know that
some people _are_ gossiping about it.”

“Are they?” he remarked. “We thought—father and I—that they probably
would.”

Julie looked relieved. “Then that’s all right,” she observed. “It was
only on Catherine’s account that I was disturbed.”

“Catherine would mind even less than we.”

Julie nodded. “And of course,” she went on, “they don’t dare say
anything really nasty—only small catty things.” She paused for a
moment, looking at her brother. “Do you know who it was that started
such talk?” she added suddenly. “Marian Price.”

Stacey’s brows contracted. “Marian?” he repeated slowly. “What kind of
things did Marian say?”

His sister’s face was hard. “Oh, that it was all a scheme of Catherine’s
to catch you! And that you were so susceptible she’d undoubtedly
succeed.”

Stacey experienced a sudden sick disgust, but the feeling vanished
presently. “Poor Marian!” he said.

“Poor Marian!” Julie cried. “Why, I’d like to know? Hasn’t she got what
she wanted?”

“No. Because she doesn’t know what she wants,” Stacey returned slowly.
“She wants so many different conflicting things, and she doesn’t know
what any of them are. Marian’s wretched.”

But Julie’s eyes were cold. “Anyhow, you’ve been away this winter, so
you don’t know all that I do about Marian. I’m afraid she’s a bad lot.”

Stacey winced. “No,” he replied, though kindly enough, “you’re not
afraid of that, Julie. You’d rather have it so.”

His sister rose quickly and came over to sit beside him on the
davenport. “Yes,” she admitted contritely, “that was nasty of me. But I
can’t like Marian. I never could.” She gazed at her brother timidly.
“Stace,” she said, her face flushing, “are you—are you still in love
with Marian?” She appeared rather frightened at her own daring.

“No,” he replied simply, looking straight into his sister’s eyes. “No.
Not any more. Not the least bit.”

Julie drew a deep breath. “Then you may be as sorry for her as you
like,” she said happily.

The rest of their talk was matter-of-fact and trivial enough. But when
Stacey got up to go Julie accompanied him to the door. She seemed all at
once a little uneasy.

“Stacey,” she remarked, not looking at him and playing with a button of
his coat, “please don’t think from—anything I said—that I’m
not—decently happy. I am; of course I am. It sounds ungrateful. No one
could be sweeter than Jimmy; and then there’s Junior. I—”

Her brother laughed. “Don’t be a silly, Jule!” he interrupted. “I
understood perfectly well what you meant. That, in spite of everything,
you did have some thwarted desires. So has Jimmy, no doubt. So has every
one. It’s just as well, I dare say. There’s been less thwarting than
normally going on these last few years—the lid’s been lifted a
little—and look at the hellish mess! Good-bye. Thanks a lot. I had a
lovely time.”

As he walked away he meditated about Marian. How she hated him! Oh, not
because he had broken their engagement. In the end she had seen
eye-to-eye with him about that, acquiescing cynically in his second
estimate of her (which, he knew now, had been as false as his first).
She was angry because he had not come to her house that winter night. He
pictured vividly how she must have looked, what she must have felt,
while she sat there waiting and waiting, till at last, white and still
with fury, she went up to bed. She had offered him all that she thought
she had to give, and he had accepted, then changed his mind. Consciously
superior in morals, she must have thought him. He hadn’t been, heaven
knew! No wonder she hated him! He had no passion left for Marian—at
least, there was none in the thought of her; there was no telling what
her physical presence might stir up in him—but he felt a bruised
tenderness for her and sorrow that she should be so wretched. He _had_
loved her. Her alone!

After a while he came to the park. And there, sitting on the same bench
from which she had called to him that afternoon when Stacey had broken
his engagement to Marian, he found Mrs. Latimer. But now he saw her
first and stood quite near to her for a full half-minute before she
caught sight of him. Now, as then, she was poking holes in the gravel
with the point of a parasol, but she did not seem the same, he thought;
her pose was tired, and the droop of her shoulders. When she became
aware of some one’s close presence and looked up he was shocked; she
appeared so old and worn. Then her face flashed into glad recognition,
and the impression lost its acuteness.

“Why, Stacey,” she exclaimed, “did you drop from the sky?” She moved
over to make room for him on the bench, and he sat down.

“It’s just about a year ago—not quite,” he returned, “that I found you
here in the same place. Only then you had to call me. This time it’s I
who surprise you. I’m awfully glad to see you, Mrs. Latimer. I was
coming to your house presently.”

“And you got back?”

“Yesterday.”

She gazed at him with affectionate curiosity. And now her familiar smile
and bearing, all her known quality, was as a lack of focus in a lens,
blurring the objective; yet, even so, he still felt that she was somehow
changed—older, less resilient.

“You look very strong and composed and sure of yourself,” she said at
last.

“Do I? Well, that’s good!” he returned lightly.

She let it go at that, tactfully, and they talked of outside things,—of
his life in Pickens, of Vernon, of how lovely the month was. About
herself Mrs. Latimer said nothing at all, and this worried Stacey until
it occurred to him that she had never talked of herself, save only,
suddenly, on that one afternoon a year ago here in the park.

“You must come home with me now,” she observed after a while, “and I
will give you tea.” And she got up, rather wearily.

Her drawing-room was just as he remembered it. The light gleamed in just
the same way from the ivory wood-work and along the polished surfaces of
the same exquisite vases. But the room seemed to Stacey like a deadened
melody played on muted strings. It was a romantic room and it needed
Marian—the old elfish Marian, slipping in and out lightly,—to vivify
it. He looked around him dreamily.

Mrs. Latimer had sunk down on a divan and removed her hat slowly. Now
she was leaning back and looking at Stacey, not so much curiously as
wistfully.

“It’s very good to have you here, Stacey,” she said at last simply.

“Thank you,” he replied, warmed by her affection and feeling soothed by
the delicate hushed beauty of the room, which had no connection with the
outside world. The maid brought in the tea things.

But the water had been boiling in the silver urn for some little time
before Mrs. Latimer finally made the tea. It seemed to demand a
conscious effort for her to lift her hand to the urn.

“You’re tired,” said Stacey suddenly. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

She started, so that some of the water spilled over upon the tray; for
just a moment she gave him an odd pained look; then she turned about
quickly and laid her head against the back of the divan. Her shoulders
shook with sobs, and there was fatigue without relaxation in every line
of her taut body.

Stacey was shocked. He had always thought of Mrs. Latimer as strong,
cool, and too wise to be shaken by any tempest. He had no idea of what
to do or say. Instinctively he desired to stand near her and comfort
her, but he feared that this would only make things worse. So he sat
silent and gazed at her pityingly.

After a while she looked up. “Forgive me!” she began; then at sight of
his expression her mouth trembled and she cried again. But presently she
regained control of herself and wiped her eyes. Then Stacey saw that she
was an old woman with a weary tragic face.

“I beg your pardon, Stacey,” she murmured unsteadily.

“What is it?” he asked gently.

“Nothing! I just—can’t go on with it.”

“Tell me.”

She was silent for a moment. “It was only because you were kind, Stacey,
and seemed to feel interest in me.”

She did not mean this as a reproof, he knew, but he was aware that it
was a damning one. Her interest in him had always been immense and
generous; what interest had he ever shown in her? He had taken her for
granted.

“Tell me,” he repeated.

“But—there are so many things one doesn’t say—one isn’t allowed. If I
told the truth I should seem shameful, violating decency.” Her eyes were
chilly now and questioning.

He shook his head.

“Well, then,” she said suddenly, in a hard voice, “it’s my husband—or
partly. Perhaps he finds me as faulty as I find him, but, oh, he’s
finely greedy, finely futile, finely avaricious, finely sterile in every
human sentiment! I could bear all those things—perhaps—but for his
fineness in all of them. I can’t live with him any longer. I loathe him.
What have I done with my life, Stacey? I look down on nothing but ruins.
My only child does not love me, nor I her. What good to bear a child?
What is such a life for? I’ve been tolerant too long. What’s it all
about—life?”

“Don’t!” he said quickly. “You can’t do it that way! I—I know.”

His tone calmed her and she looked at him in a pathetic questioning
manner, as though she, who had always been like a watchful mother to
him, were now his child. He sincerely did not like to talk about
himself; he would always have an almost fierce aloofness. But he would
give Mrs. Latimer what he could—if there was anything to give.

“See!” he said. “Life is—life is a Medusa. Try to face it and it
freezes you to stone. You must look at the—the mirrored reflection in
yourself, in the shield of your own personality. Then you can see it,
without horror, for the pitiful, snake-crowned, impotently ugly thing it
is.” He paused, with an odd smile. “You even,” he added slowly, “can see
a ravaged beauty in it.”

Mrs. Latimer stared at him in silence, but the tensity in her face had
vanished, perhaps because she was surprised.

“And the sword—Perseus’ sword?” she asked finally.

“No,” he said, “that’s as far as the analogy goes. There is no sword.”

She gazed at him with a gentle eager look, and he saw that he really had
helped her—not probably through anything he had said, but by awakening
her capacity for sympathetic interest in others, her deep altruism. It
was of him she was thinking now—proudly, as though he were herself.
And, much as he disliked to, he would have gone on and told her
everything he knew about himself if she had asked it. But she seemed to
divine the effort he had made, and asked him nothing further.

“Oh!” she cried after a moment, with a tremulous laugh. “Your tea,
Stacey!”

“I like it cold, thanks,” he said, also laughing.

And after this they managed to talk almost easily of common things.

But, having risen to draw a curtain at a window, Mrs. Latimer suddenly
turned about. “Stacey, you must go now!” she exclaimed. “I have just
seen my husband coming up the street. I couldn’t bear to have you here
in the room with both of us after what I said. I exaggerated. It isn’t
as bad as all that. I shall be all right.”

He held out his hand to say good-bye, but she leaned forward and kissed
his cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

As he left the house Stacey met Mr. Latimer. He looked like a steel
engraving of a gentleman.

“Ah, you’re just going?” he remarked, with his cool polished smile.

“Sorry!” said Stacey. “I must.”


                              CHAPTER XXI

Stacey threw himself into work with a cold vigor that had in it nothing
of fad or impulse. He did not find, as he had feared he might, that he
had forgotten much. Everything came back to him at once; it had all been
there, tucked away, neglected, within him. Neither did he chafe at the
long regular hours he kept, nor feel them burdensome. In the old days he
had perhaps been a little lazy; it had been hard for him on arriving at
the office not to waste time—over a newspaper or a book-catalogue or
anything that presented itself—before actually beginning his work; he
had crept into work as a swimmer into cold water. Now there was no
indolence about him; the instant he sat down at his desk he turned his
mind on the problems before him; and, swiftly, intelligently, with
intense concentration, he was soon accomplishing twice as much as any
other man in the office. Indeed, less from a desire to be always busy
than from a kind of impatient thoroughness, dislike of slovenliness, he
often spent hours on drawings that he might have turned over to
draftsmen. But, though he was extremely interested in his work, there
was no such zest in it for him as he had once felt. Formerly he had
romanticized it, had seen it all as something glowing and fine. Now it
was only rarely that he experienced a little lifting sense of
loveliness. This was when loveliness was really there to perceive.

Mr. Parkins, who was something of a dreamer and himself inclined to
waste time, was amazed. He had difficulty in supplying Stacey with
enough to do.

“Look here!” he said, before Stacey had been back a month. “What the
devil’s come over you? You’re insatiable! You turn the work out as
though it were arithmetic.” And he smiled in his uncertain reflective
way.

“So it is, nine-tenths of it,—as unemotional as arithmetic. Nothing but
concentration needed most of the time. Restful. A mistake to use your
soul when you don’t have to.”

The architect sat down on the edge of Stacey’s desk. “But,” he suggested
tentatively, “you don’t feel your old delight in it? Or do you?”

“When there’s any occasion,” said Stacey. “There, for instance.” And he
pulled from a mass of papers a drawing of a detail—a wrought-iron
balcony for a window. His eyes showed pleasure.

“Yes. By Jove, yes! That is good Stacey! Fine and—sure at the same
time. You’re better than you used to be. For Henderson’s house? Pity
it’s so sort of wasted. I mean, that it won’t be appreciated.”

“Oh, I don’t feel that,” Stacey replied. “I feel that it’s worth while
enough to do anything good, even a molding for a room,—I don’t know
why.”

Mr. Parkins looked surprised. “Well, that’s the right way to feel, of
course. There’s one thing certain,” he added, getting up. “You go into
the firm the first of the month. And there’s no favoritism about that,
either.”

“All right,” said Stacey. “Thanks. It’s awfully good of you.” And he
went to work again.

What Mr. Parkins had said was true. Stacey was a better architect than
formerly. He was still affectionately interested in detail, because that
interest had always been a part of him, and he knew enough now to
understand calmly that nothing in one ever vanished; but he saw things
in a larger, more solid way than once.

Hammond, a younger man who was put under Stacey’s guidance, questioned
him about Stacey’s preliminary sketch for a competition. It was of a
great stone bridge that was to cross both branches of the river in the
heart of the railway and warehouse section.

“Don’t you think it’s maybe a little—oh, well, grim, Carroll?” asked
Hammond, puzzled.

“Good Lord! man,” said Stacey, “think where it is—mud, noise,
confusion!”

“Well, that’s just it. Oughtn’t one to brighten the place up a little?”

Stacey shook his head. “I’m no damned beauty-doctor. Just the facts—the
right ones—in the best way.”

Stacey played tennis hard for an hour every afternoon when he had
finished work; for his strong body craved exercise. But his mind did not
crave companionship. He mingled with only a few people, and most of
these doubtless resented his manner as seeming hard and cold. In this
they were wrong. Stacey was merely aloof. He was not superior, judging
these people adversely; he was simply not letting them in—or himself
into them. He had a feeling that this world of personal relationships
was too rich. It was more like a sea. One might be swept away futilely
on it. Toward those whom he did admit as companions—and they were
sometimes the unlikeliest people—he was prodigal of interest, in his
own different way as altruistic as Mrs. Latimer.

For his hasty luncheon Stacey frequented a small cheap restaurant
near-by. So, also, did Jack Edwards, who had been commander of the local
American Legion post at the time Stacey had set it in a turmoil, but was
so no longer, having been succeeded by some one less incongruously
radical. The two fell into the habit of sitting down at table together
for their fifteen-minute meal, and Stacey found himself at once
attracted by the other man. Something in his firm lined face—perhaps
the odd expression of the brown eyes—hinted at a tortured courageous
personality. Stacey was friendly from the first. Edwards, on the other
hand, was in the beginning obviously suspicious. But he thawed
gradually, and the two became friends, united by some deep, almost
unrecognized resemblance between them. Yet for a long time their talk
was hardly more than casual comment on events.

“What do you do after lunch?” asked Stacey one June day, as they pushed
back their chairs and rose. “You must surely take more time off than
this before going back to work.”

“Oh,” the other replied, “I generally stroll around for twenty
minutes—down to the river sometimes.”

“Come up to my office and smoke a cigarette, won’t you? There’ll be no
one there for half an hour yet.”

“Don’t care if I do.” And the two men paid their checks and went out
together, Stacey walking slowly, since Edwards limped badly on account
of his wounded leg.

In Stacey’s room they sat down, with the littered desk between them, and
smoked silently for some minutes. Stacey had his feet up against the
side of an open drawer, but suddenly he swung them down and turned to
face his friend.

“Edwards,” he demanded abruptly, “what do you think of the war, anyway?”

The muscles of the other man’s rather stern face contracted slightly.
“Think of it?” he returned. “I don’t think of it. I don’t want to. Once
in a while I dream.”

Stacey considered him with grim comprehension. From almost any one else
the remark would have sounded melodramatic. Edwards made it quite
sincerely, with no thought of effect. When the raw black-and-white stuff
of melodrama became truth—that was horrible. Stacey shivered. But after
a little he returned to it. “Yes, but I mean: _do_ you feel now that it
was _all_ bad, all rotten selfish commercialism from the very beginning?
Oh, you’ve every right to! I don’t blame you and your people if you do.
But _do_ you?”

“We’ve been tricked,” Edwards replied bitterly, “duped! And I’ll take
that point of view—the one you ask me if I have—publicly as long as I
live. It’s the only way for me and mine to fight you and yours. Just as
the way for your side to fight is to assert that the war was noble.
But—it’s not so simple. No, I don’t think that.”

“No more do I!” cried Stacey. “I hate the war! It brought out everything
rotten that lay hidden in men. But—some hundreds of thousands of young
men did go into it nobly, and to just that extent it was a decent war.
They’re mostly dead now—worse luck to the world!—and a good many of
those that aren’t are turned beastly by what they lived through. But
. . .” He paused. A kind of dark light smoldered in his eyes.

“There was courage,” said Edwards in a deep voice. “My God! there was
courage! Not your romantic high-adventure sort, but the sort that could
live through mud and intensive shelling and still push men on,
afterward, to advance. But, oh, Christ! the wasted lives in the
Argonne!—thrown away through sheer incompetence! _Your_ people did
that!”

“And even so,” said Stacey somberly, “you didn’t see the Somme.”
Suddenly the dull glow in his eyes rose to a flame. He struck the desk
with his clenched fist. “The thing that gets me, Edwards,” he burst out,
“is these beastly cheap editors of weeklies sitting up and writing
pertly about the war as if it had been all a game of grab, nothing
decent! Damn them! Petty complacent asses! What do they know about it?
What do they know about physical courage—or any other kind? Have _they_
suffered? Have _they_ fought for ideals and been given dung? The
Intellectuals, they call themselves! An honest protester like Debs, all
right, I’ll respect him. But these vulgar underbred egotists—faugh! The
only ones I hate as much are the others who sit up and write about how
everything was first-rate—bully war—noble—good clearly coming out of
it!” He ceased, panting with rage.

“Don’t hate so, Carroll,” said Edwards slowly. “Where’s the good?”

Stacey drew his hand across his forehead. “You’re right,” he returned.
“It’s idiotic! I thought I’d learned better. And,” he added, laughing
shortly, “fancy wasting emotion on that tribe!”

He felt dizzy and faintly nauseated, as though poisoned, and he was
rather ashamed. It was a flash out of an earlier side of him.

For Stacey was like a fabric that was being woven together steadily out
of varied strands. But here and there the woof was faulty; the pattern
was broken; threads stuck out loosely.

But moments of hate such as this were rare. Generally he was cool
enough—cooler and perhaps more tolerant than Edwards, who always in
general talk showed himself bitterly conscious of the “class struggle.”
Edwards came up to the office for a few minutes after luncheon nearly
every day now, and as long as the two men talked personally or of
concrete subjects he forgot his obsession—or, rather, seemed almost
irately unable to apply it in any way to Stacey; but at the least
broadening of the conversation it emerged, a sullen thing.

“Come out to dinner with us some evening, will you? To-night, if you
like,” Stacey suggested once.

“No,” said Edwards shortly.

Stacey laughed. “Why not? Bound to have no dealings with the devil or
any of his allies? Better come. You’d like my father. You’d fight with
him, but you’d like him.”

“I don’t want to,” said Edwards. “I don’t want to like any of your crew.
It’s their likableness that I resent. Of course they’re likable. Why
shouldn’t they be? They’ve leisure and all the appurtenances essential
to becoming so. We’ve got to fight them—you, as class against class.”

“I see. Sentiment must be kept out. No fraternizing in the trenches.”

Edwards flushed. “You’re too rotten clever, Carroll,” he replied
resentfully. “It’s easy for you to make me appear in the wrong.”

“No,” said Stacey, “I simply fancy you’re wrong to think in classes.
They’re abstractions. If everybody would drop them men could meet as
men.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Edwards, clearly out of patience, “it’s all very well
for you to sit there and talk! You can afford to be sweetly reasonable.
You’re fixed—safe. You’ve everything. Of course you can talk
unselfishly; you can even talk like a revolutionary. You know damn well
there isn’t going to be any revolution—not yet.”

“Well, as for that,” said Stacey mildly, “I’ll admit that I live in a
luxurious house with all sorts of comforts—pleasant enough in their
way. Only how much do they amount to? I’m not essentially soft. I go on
inhabiting the place because it’s there, because I haven’t any
particular social theories (I don’t, for instance, see what good my not
living there would do any one), because of my father, and because of
Catherine Blair, my friend Phil’s widow, and her boys.”

Edwards’ face was crimson. “I didn’t mean what I said, Carroll,” he
blurted out. “I know well enough that—oh, well, I apologize.”

“Shucks!” said Stacey, “that’s all right. It’s a good thing to look into
one’s own existence now and then. For the rest, I dare say that I’m paid
more than I’m worth for my work here. I can’t tell, and I don’t intend
to waste much time worrying about it. I probably earn more than a
skilled mechanic like you, and that’s wrong. I earn less than a broker,
and that’s wrong. I can, because of my aptitude and a long training,
build decent houses. How’s any one to know what my exact remuneration
should be?”

“Under this system the Lord God Himself couldn’t decide.”

“That’s what I mean—under this system.”

Stacey was engrossed with the plans for the bridge one afternoon when
the office-boy poked his head in at the door.

“Lady to see you, Mr. Carroll,” he announced.

“All right,” said Stacey mechanically, not taking it in.

So when a moment later he looked up to see Irene Loeffler standing
opposite him he fairly gaped with surprise. But he rose quickly and went
around the desk to her.

“How are you?” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Sit down, do! It’s a
long time since I’ve seen you.”

She shook hands, dropped his hand quickly, then flung herself into a
chair. She was the same abrupt disconcerting person as ever. Just now
she was a trifle flushed with embarrassment.

Stacey sat down near her—but not too near—and considered her with a
polite external gravity. Inwardly he was amused by the recollection of
her advances, somewhat remorseful at having treated her so roughly, and
just a little apprehensive.

“Wanted to see you, Mr. Carroll,” Irene began gruffly, “and this seemed
a good place. Sorry to disturb you, though.”

But there was a faint tremor in her voice. Her affectation of
mannishness made her appear only the more feminine, Stacey thought. In
an odd way she was attractive.

“Not a bit of it! I’m glad to see you,” he replied, and waited.

Irene swallowed once or twice. “Well,” she said, trying again for a
beginning, “I wanted to tell you something. I suppose you’ve got a
rotten opinion of me. Haven’t you?” she demanded, staring at him, a
sulky childish look about her mouth.

Stacey cordially disclaimed having anything of the sort.

“Well, you’d have a right to, I guess. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you
was that I’ve come to my senses. You haven’t anything to fear from me
any more.”

Stacey choked at this and kept his face straight with difficulty.

“And I’m engaged to be married to Paul Hemingway. Know him?”

“Fine!” said Stacey, laughing in spite of his best efforts. “Awfully
good fellow! I think you’ve chosen well. I’ll send you a wedding
present.” And he held out his hand.

But she did not take it. Instead she twisted her handkerchief nervously
around her fingers. Stacey had never seen any one with so little repose.

“Do you think,” she demanded abruptly, “that it’s all right for me to
marry him?”

He stared at her. “Why, what do you mean?” he asked, completely lost.

“Well, I mean,” she said sullenly, her lower lip quivering like that of
a child about to cry, “I mean—after what I said to you.”

Stacey understood now and was touched. “Why, you silly child!” he
exclaimed, “I never heard of anything so absurd! If that’s the worst
thing you ever did you’ve the purest past in the world!”

She brightened, tears of relief standing in her eyes. “But anyway I must
tell Paul about it, mustn’t I?”

“No!” Stacey almost shouted, overcome with a mixture of amazement and
admiration. “There’s nothing to tell!”

Irene wiped her eyes, in obvious resentment at the need. “All right,
then,” she said. “Thanks.” And now she shook hands. Then she looked at
Stacey with a tremulous smile. “You’ve got a lot of charm,” she
announced.

But at this he retreated hastily behind his desk, and she departed,
laughing.

Stacey thought often of Marian, but he did not see her until July. He
had left the office late one afternoon and was walking briskly along the
boulevard on the way to the tennis courts when she called to him from
her open car. It drew up at the curb beside him, and Marian reached out
her hand to him gracefully. She was coming from a tea, she said, and she
was wearing a lacy dress of blue and silver and a drooping picture-hat,
white and transparent, that cast soft shadow over her face without
really obscuring it. Against the deep cushions of the tonneau she looked
small, elegant and sophisticated. It occurred to Stacey that it was
nonsense for him to be concerned about her. Their meeting must have
appeared to an outsider like one of those Salon pictures of an encounter
in the Bois de Boulogne.

“You’re looking very well, Stacey,” she said gaily, “but you don’t
deserve to have me say so. Here you’ve been back for two months without
coming near me! It’s not respectful.”

Stacey laughed. “What a funny word! Well, I will come. Love to.”

Marian’s arm hung limply along the edge of the car. She drummed idly
with her hand against the polished enamel. And the gesture seemed to sum
her up—perfection, graceful ennui, and all.

“Oh,” she said, “you’ll just say you’ll come, and that will be the end
of it unless I pin you down. So I will. Come—let’s see!—come on Monday
at five and have tea with me.”

“All right. Thanks. I’ll be coming straight from the office, so I’ll
look dingy probably. Hope you won’t mind.”

“Gracious, no!” she replied, apparently without malice, and laughing
rather delightfully. “It’s not your clothes I care about seeing. I’ve
_got_ clothes. Till Monday, then.” She touched the chauffeur’s back
lightly with the tip of her slender blue-and-white parasol, and the car
moved away smoothly.

He gazed after her for a moment, and again he dubbed himself a fussy
fool. He forgot that one’s thought of a person is direct, without veils;
so that in an actual encounter after long separation one is aware
chiefly of the veils.

But it was only his father and Catherine whom Stacey saw constantly. He
spent nearly all his evenings at home. Sometimes he would read or would
merely look on while Catherine and Mr. Carroll played cards. And he was
amused at this; for he did not think that Catherine liked cards really.
When he thought she had endured enough he would insist on playing in her
stead, declaring that she was usurping his place in the home. Or, again,
they would all three merely sit and talk. But this made Mr. Carroll
restless. He demanded, Stacey could see, some direct problem, even if a
small one, to occupy his mind. He could talk while he played cards, but
talk was for him no end in itself; it was a pleasant accompaniment to
something else that led somewhere.

On other evenings, when Mr. Carroll must speak at a banquet or welcome
some visiting potentate of the Republican Party (Mr. Harding was
nominated by now, and Mr. Carroll, at first disappointed, soon perceived
that the choice was a wise one), Stacey would sit with Catherine or,
more often, walk with her in the garden.

He felt that he did not know Catherine at all, and he was aware that
this was partly his fault. He had always thought of her as Phil’s wife,
and she still evoked for him the memory of Phil rather than any clear
image of her own. Yet, though he could not have said what she was like,
he admired her more than any one else he knew. It was no good to ask
himself why. He could say vaguely that she was clear and cool as deep
water . . . that she had a profound truthfulness . . . that there was a
quality of Fact in her:—what did all that mean? Only once had her
personality touched his in a flash,—on that afternoon when she had
pleaded with him—but commandingly almost, if gently—not to go to
Marian, and he had cut her with cruel words because he had yielded. He
bit his lip in shame at the thought.

And she was so shy, so immensely reserved. She was not really at her
ease with him, he saw, except when the boys were present or his father.
She would talk about herself, when Stacey questioned her, as though she
were talking of some one else.

“What do you do with your day, Catherine?” he asked once. “I mean, when
the boys are away at school.”

This seemed to startle her, rather. “I—I write, or try to, regularly,
Stacey,” she replied, after a moment.

They were walking in the garden, and he paused suddenly to stare at her.
“You mean—things to publish?” he cried, amazed.

“Yes. Does it seem incredible? I suppose it does,” she returned simply.

“No! No! I don’t mean that! I should think you probably had more to say
than any one else I know, only—pardon me, Catherine!—oh, well, let’s
be frank!—expression isn’t your forte.”

She laughed shyly at this. “It’s easier when you write,” she said.

“Yes, of course it must be. What kind of things?”

“Little articles,” she replied haltingly. “Mostly for English papers.
It’s hard to get them accepted here. One or two places—do—sometimes.”

“You’ll let me see them? Please!”

“Never!” she exclaimed, horrified. “And I don’t sign my own name, so
it’s useless to look.”

“You’re exasperating, Catherine!” he cried, and meant it. Then he
laughed suddenly. “I’ll bet they’re radical—oh, radical! Tell me,
Catherine,” he added maliciously, “when you’ve gone upstairs after my
father has talked about Bolshevism at some length, do you sit down then
and write your subversive stuff? A double life—that’s what you’re
leading!”

She flushed at this and would say no more.

Yet Stacey’s persistent attempt to get at Catherine was not the result
of mere curiosity, even the curiosity of affection. At heart he felt
vaguely that she was immensely lonely in her isolation, in great need of
sharing her grief for Phil with some one else. He would have her make
such a friend of him as Phil had made him.


                              CHAPTER XXII

In 1910 Harriet Price, Ames’s mother and widow of John Price, who had
been head of the Price Tractor and Motor Company, built a new house. In
1912 she died, and the mansion, together with many other good things,
among them a controlling interest in the tractor company, passed to
Ames, the only child.

The house, which was an immense square building of yellow stone in the
Italian Renaissance style, occupied, with its grounds, an entire block
in the best section of the fashionable boulevard. Stacey had always
rather liked the exterior, though it was not Parkins and May but a
Chicago firm of architects who had built the house. It was severe,
commanding, less inharmonious in Vernon than most anachronisms, and the
four great chimneys were really fine. Never having cared for the Prices,
Stacey had seen the interior but once—at a large house-warming affair
given in the winter of 1910, to which he had gone out of curiosity. It
had struck him then as Chicago decorators’ stuff (which it was), proper,
faultlessly in period, quite without character. He remembered perfectly
the dreariness of his impression.

So now, when he entered the vast hall, his first glimpse of it made him
aware of change.

“Mr. Carroll, sir?” asked the English butler. “Will you go upstairs,
please? Mrs. Price is expecting you there, sir.”

“Yes,” said Stacey, “half a minute.” He walked quickly across the hall
and stood for a moment at the entrance to the great drawing-room on the
left. As he looked in he smiled, half appreciatively, half ironically.
Change? Well, rather! To begin with, Marian—it was Marian, of
course—had swept away pretty much everything that had been in that room
when Stacey had first seen it. But, even supposing the discarded
furniture and pictures to have been sold, he hardly thought the present
relative bareness had saved Ames money. That long table, the Florentine
chest, and the copy of a relief in marble with touches of blue and gold
(Desiderio da Settignano?)—if it _was_ a copy—h’m! He turned back.
“All right,” he said to the butler. “I’ll go up.”

As he mounted the broad stone stairway, the man following, his glance
rested on a tapestry—a Medici tapestry, if he knew anything about it.
“Whew!” he thought. But his eyes were just a little hard now. Marian
would take and take—and give nothing. All the same, what did she get
from it? Again he felt suddenly unreasoningly sorry for her.

The butler conducted Stacey to the south end of the upper hall, tapped
perfunctorily at a door, opened it, and Stacey went in.

The room he entered was a small sitting-room—Marian’s own, most
certainly—English in feeling, crowded with a great many things. Or,
rather, no, on second thought Stacey knew it well:—it was like what
pleasant English people did sometimes to their smallest, best loved room
in a Tuscan villa. The French windows were wide open, but the heavy
wooden shutters were closed to shut out the heat, so that only a soft
summer air entered, with perfumes from the garden outside. There was a
kind of radiant greenish twilight in the room.

No one was there, though a flame burned beneath a silver kettle, two
fragile cups stood ready, and a tea-wagon with bread and butter and cake
was drawn up near the table. After perhaps a minute Marian entered
through another door.

She was wearing a simple dress of a pearl gray color, short, as the
fashion was, and with a silver cord about the waist. She looked as Greek
as any one or anything modern could look, and Stacey drew in his breath
sharply with admiration of her beauty. Nevertheless, as he shook hands
with her and replied to her apparently natural greeting, he was wary.
All this delightful readiness for his visit, the coziness, the shining
tea things, Marian herself. . . . “‘I mistrust the Greeks and the gifts
they bring,’” he said to himself suddenly, and smiled, finding the
quotation apt, Marian looking as she did. But he kept it to himself.

Marian sat down at the table, but remained for a moment gracefully idle,
smiling at him, before beginning to make the tea.

“You see all my preparations, Stacey,” she said lightly. “You see what
an event it is when you come. Aren’t you flattered?”

“You know I am,” he returned, almost disarmed now by her remark. And
this was true. For Stacey was genuinely anxious to be friends with
Marian. After all, at bottom he was a simple person. That is, he was
complex only on his receptive side. He could perceive, quite without
effort, the subtlest, most tangled, personal relationships all about
him, whether or not he was himself involved in them; he had always been
able to do this. But the real Stacey Carroll in the centre of this rich
shimmering web remained simple. The impulses on which he acted were
simple, almost boyish sometimes.

Marian and Stacey were both silent while she measured out the tea and
poured the hot water. Gazing at her so closely, he noted that she was
very thin. Her fine pointed face was almost sharp, and her bare arms,
lifted prettily to the silver urn, were too slender. Stacey was sorry.
But, considering himself questioningly, he recognized that this
half-pity for Marian, together with an artist’s admiration of her
loveliness, was all that he felt for her now. Absolutely all. No touch
of love remained. And Stacey was immensely relieved.

“It has to brew seven minutes,” said Marian, glancing at her tiny
turquoise-incrusted wrist-watch, then leaning back in a corner of her
chair and resting her long slim hands on one arm of it.

“Most people treat tea-making so clumsily,” Stacey remarked. “You make
it an art, just as you do with all the other daily things. They acquire
distinction. That’s nice.”

“Thanks,” she said idly, “but it’s only that it tastes better if it’s
made right, you know.”

“And isn’t that something? Marian,” he added, noting that her fingers
were quite bare, “don’t you wear your rings any more?”

She glanced down at her hands. “No,” she said, “I don’t like them. And
they slip off.”

“You mustn’t let yourself get so thin,” he returned solicitously.

She gave him a quick hard smile. “Of course not. I must keep myself a
handsome _objet d’art_, mustn’t I? I remember all about the Parthenon,
Stacey.”

“No, no!” he answered, discouraged, getting a glimpse of her antagonism,
“I didn’t mean that! I only meant that you must stay well. What a rotter
you must think me, to take my remark like that! As far as that goes,
you’re more beautiful at present than I’ve ever seen you,” he added
simply.

But he saw her bite her lip after her pettish outburst, and he felt
lost—baffled. To save him, he could not make out what she was after;
whether she regretted her spiteful little attack because it was not in
line with a carefully prepared program or because she merely wanted to
be friendly and hadn’t meant to grow petulant. His mind played
restlessly over the whole situation and could make nothing of it.

“Yes, that was rather nasty of me, I admit,” said Marian after a moment.

It was some little time before she could again conquer his wariness, but
she did so at last. There is a smooth disarming intimacy about the
tea-hour. The ceremony of tea itself is so fine; it is elegant, aloof
and gracious; it ministers to taste yet not to appetite; people are not
there to chew and be nourished. And then the hour itself is lovable—the
sun’s rays growing level, dust in the air turned golden, a hush
perceptible even through the city’s noise. Stacey surrendered to the
atmosphere of intimacy. He drank the fragrant China tea and talked
without restraint of a number of things. Perhaps, he thought, he and
Marian might still be friends. He had treated her abominably and was
sorry for it now that he understood her better, though she, he admitted,
understood him better than he her.

They could be silent, too. Pauses were not awkward.

“You gather so much fineness together, Marian,” he remarked once. “All
that you touch becomes fine, turns to gold.” He ceased abruptly. That
was the wrong allusion, he thought, annoyed at his clumsiness.

But she did not seem to mind it. “You’re really quite kindly toward me,
aren’t you, Stacey?” she replied, with perhaps just a hint of irony in
her voice, but smiling pleasantly.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“No reason at all, of course,” she said prettily, making him a mocking
little bow. “Have some more tea.”

He held out his cup, watched her fill it, then set it down again, all
mechanically. “People get in states of mind—for no particular reason,”
he said vaguely, feeling apologetic yet not wanting to go into the
matter—as much on her account as on his.

“Yes, and then into others. Tell me:—do you feel kindly toward
everybody now?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t go so far as to claim that!” he replied uncomfortably.
It went against his whole nature to talk about himself to Marian, yet he
felt he owed her some sort of confession. So he went on haltingly. “I
used to get awfully worked up about a lot of things—about people being
greedy, for instance. I don’t mean any one person—everybody, whole
human race. But then,” he concluded diffidently, “it struck me that they
weren’t hateful on account of it, but only pathetic, since their greed
never brought them happiness—never!”

Marian’s face was half turned away from him and she was resting her chin
in her cupped hand—an old familiar pose—so that he could not see her
expression. But all at once she dropped her hand, lay back in her chair,
and laughed musically, startling him.

“Oh, Stacey, you’re so funny!” she exclaimed. “I’ve told you that
before. But I think,” she added, not laughing now, smiling at him
deliberately, “that I liked you better in your fierce, world-defying,
Byronic stage, when you were so dramatic, than now in this Christ-like
phase.”

He winced sharply. She had really hurt him there. He despised people who
went sweetly through the world doing good to others; which was what she
meant. Stacey flushed hotly. But he caught a fleeting gleam of triumph
in Marian’s eyes, and at this his anger and most of his shame left him,
and he only felt drearily that it was no use, she hated him and had got
him there on purpose to take this sort of small revenge. It was true
that she had led him on and stabbed just when he had generously
disarmed; she had not played fair. But, after all, why should she?

She baffled him to-day, though. He thought that now he was in for it,
that she would try to lead him into some further trap. Instead, she grew
suddenly listless, talked indifferently of casual things, or, again,
talked rapidly and artificially. She made no more onslaughts, was rather
kind to him than otherwise, ringing for the butler to bring up a brand
of cigarettes of which she knew Stacey was fond. But he felt her to be
immensely sophisticated, with no girlishness remaining. Leaning back in
her chair she had the weary perfection of something finished, complete
and soulless. There was no trace left in her of the elfish charm for
which he had once loved her idolatrously. Nor had there been at the very
beginning of the afternoon when she had seemed fresh and spontaneous.

She went down to the door with him when he left her, but she shook hands
almost apathetically.

He puzzled over it as he walked homeward. He could not understand what
Marian had been about. Surely she had not summoned him to give him that
one thrust. She was too clever not to have been able to do more than
that if revenge was what she had been after. It did not occur to him
that Marian might simply have been intolerably bored and have wanted him
as some kind of relief, to cajole or stab as the mood struck her. What
Stacey did feel was that it was restful to go back to Catherine and his
father from so much futile complexity. Not that they were so limpid,
either, come to think about it; Catherine especially wasn’t. But they
were direct.

The interview left him feeling a little sore,—not altogether, though
partly, because he had been wounded in his self-esteem. But this did not
last; the matter was too trivial to annoy him for long. He forgot all
about it in his work.

It was just two weeks later at about four in the afternoon when the door
of Stacey’s office was thrown open and Ames Price strode in. Stacey’s
first feeling was one of surprise and repressed amusement; for he had
not seen Ames since the evening of the outrageous jest played on him at
the road-house. Stacey’s second emotion, following immediately, was a
sick comprehending horror. It was as though he had known everything
beforehand in a dream that he had forgotten and that had fought in vain
to break loose and summon him.

Ames’s heavy face was set, in a struggle for self-control, and his voice
when he spoke was thick and difficult.

“Come with me, Carroll,” he stammered.

Stacey had already sprung to his feet. He was paler than Ames. “Yes,” he
said, and snatched up his hat.

The other clenched his fists. “You mean to say—you know already, damn
you? Some one’s told you?”

“No,” said Stacey dully, “no. Come on!”

“Slowly—through the office. No fuss. Got to smile. Latimer said so.” It
was as though Ames were reciting a ritual.

Together they went down in the elevator and out of the building. It was
August, but the car that Ames had brought was a closed car. “Latimer
again,” thought Stacey, with a touch of loathing beneath the horror that
filled his mind. They set off swiftly.

“It’s—Marian,” said Ames. “She shot herself this morning. Dying.
She—asks for you.” He looked at Stacey—dully rather than with hatred.

It was this, of course, or something like it, Stacey knew already; but
to hear it in words was abominable. A chill ran over his body. He felt
physically nauseated. He set his teeth.

“In—much—pain?” he muttered.

“No.”

The car drove up beneath the porte-cochère of the Prices’ house, and the
two men got out. They went upstairs together silently.

In Marian’s exquisite boudoir stood a black group of people. Stacey
recognized none of them at first, only caught a feeling of their heavy
incongruity in that place. Then he saw that Mr. Latimer was one and that
another was a doctor whom he knew. There was a nurse also. From
somewhere Mrs. Latimer appeared, and Stacey perceived that she was a
haggard old woman. A look of relief softened her eyes a very little at
sight of him.

“She wants to see you, Stacey,” Mrs. Latimer murmured. “I’ll speak to
the doctor inside,” and she went through a door.

Presently she returned with the doctor. “You can go in,” he said.

Stacey pulled him aside a little way. “It won’t do any harm?” he
demanded hoarsely.

“No, no harm. Better to let her have her way. There’s nothing to be
done. The bullet missed the heart and penetrated the lung instead. The
wound is dressed. Be as calm as you can.”

“There’s no hope?”

“Not the faintest. She is—well, there’s no hope,” replied the doctor,
rather kindly.

“Just a minute, then,” said Stacey. He leaned against a wall and
struggled for composure. Then he wiped his forehead with his
handkerchief. “All right,” he said, and went through the door with the
doctor and Marian’s mother.

The room beyond was hushed, cool and darkened. Mrs. Latimer led Stacey
to the bedside, then withdrew to a distant corner of the room and stood
there, motionless, with the nurse and the doctor. When he looked that
way he could see them like dim figures in the background of some faded
Venetian picture.

“Is that Stacey?” asked a thin voice.

“Yes,” he murmured, and knelt by the bed.

Marian was propped up within it, and her face, that was turned sideways
toward him on the pillows, was like alabaster, thin, veined and
bloodless; but her beauty was unmarred, heightened even—like a statue
of her beauty. The only color anywhere was in her bright hair that was
spread about the pillow.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said. “Take my hand.”

He did so, gently. Her voice was scarcely more than a musical murmur,
and between phrases she gasped for breath. “Don’t talk!” he begged. “Let
me talk to you, Marian.”

“No,” she said, “I must talk to you, Stacey. Not much—only a little.”
She paused, panting.

Stacey was wrenched with pain. This was unbearable. His forehead was
damp with sweat.

“I wanted—to tell you,” she went on almost inaudibly, “oh, lots of
things! Not to worry—for one. It’s just—as well. Only—isn’t it like
me,” she said, with a faint smile, “to fail—even in this?”

“Marian—please!” he muttered, tightening his hold on her hand for an
instant. It was the pathos of her frail attempt at cynicism that shook
him. For now she no longer looked the weary, perfect, grown-up woman;
she seemed a little girl. To watch her die was like watching a child
die—or a dream.

“I hurt you, Stacey. I—didn’t mean to,” she said softly, and managed to
stroke his hand, ever so faintly.

It was perhaps the first time he had found tenderness in her. He set his
teeth hard.

“I must say—what I have to—quickly,” she went on. “You are not
to—blame yourself, Stacey. You have—nothing—to—do—with—it.” She
paused for a moment, struggling for breath. “I was—all wrong—twisted.
You were right. You couldn’t love me—or I you—not even you. I could
not bear—life—any longer—having made—such a mess—of it.”

She closed her eyes weakly, and he thought that she slept or—had died.
But presently they fluttered open again. “I’m sorry,” she murmured,
“that I said—what I did—to you—the other day. It was not—true—and I
did not mean it—even then.”

“Oh,” he cried, in a choked voice, “don’t, Marian!”

She held his fingers close. “Poor Stacey!” she whispered. “It’s not your
fault.”

Again she paused. And after a moment an elfish smile stirred her lips.
“Do I look—a fright?” she asked.

“No—lovely.”

“Well, that’s good!” she murmured, with the ghost of a laugh.
“Par—thenon.”

They were both silent for a while.

“Now I’m sleepy. You may—go. But first—kiss me, Stacey dear.”

He bent over and touched her white cheek with his lips, then rose slowly
to his feet and made his way back unsteadily to the others.

“I don’t know,” he muttered hoarsely to the doctor. “You’d better feel
her pulse.”

The doctor went quickly to the bed, then, after a moment, returned.
“Just the same—or only a little weaker. She’s asleep,” he whispered.

Stacey looked at Mrs. Latimer. “I’ll go, then. You’ll keep me
informed—by ’phone?” he pleaded.

She nodded, taking his hand for an instant.

He returned to the other room, dizzily. “She’s sleeping just now,” he
said to Marian’s husband. “Will you—have your car take me—home?”

They went out into the hall together. Stacey stumbled, and Ames grasped
his arm and held it.

But Mr. Latimer had followed them. “Stacey,” he said, “just a moment.”

Stacey turned mechanically to stare at him. Up to now he had only been
vaguely aware of the man’s presence.

“It is perhaps unnecessary for me to warn you to say nothing of this,”
said Marian’s father stonily. “It must be kept out of the papers.”

It was just what Stacey needed. He straightened up, anger rushing
through him like a hot flood. “Go to hell!” he said, then swung about
and walked quickly and firmly downstairs, with Ames following.

At the door of the car the two men gazed at each other helplessly. There
was no antagonism between them now. In some odd way they were even
united.

“I’m glad you said that to Latimer,” Ames remarked dully.

So was Stacey glad. His anger was all that sustained him on the ride
home. For he felt that everything was Mr. Latimer’s fault. All the worst
of Marian _he_ had given her. Almost he had pointed the revolver.


                             CHAPTER XXIII

Stacey let himself in with a latch-key, then hurried up the stairs to
his own rooms. Once in his study, he threw himself down upon a couch and
lay there for a long time, motionless, his hands thrown back and clasped
beneath his head. But there was no relaxation in his stillness. His body
was tense, and now and then a spasm contracted the taut muscles of his
face. The late western sunlight poured in through the windows and
flickered brightly across the wall, and the shrill distant voices of
children at play were audible.

At last Stacey turned his head slowly to look at a small travelling
clock on a stand near the couch. The hands pointed to six-thirty. He got
up with an effort, pressed the button of a bell, then sat down at his
desk, rested his head in his hands, and stared blindly out of the
window.

“If Mrs. Blair is in,” he said, without moving, when Parker entered the
room, “please ask her if she will be so kind as to come up here for a
few minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, and went out.

Presently Catherine tapped at the door, and Stacey rose wearily. “Come
in!” he called.

She looked fresh and very young to him who felt so old. “You wanted to
see me?” she began, then broke off to gaze at him in alarm. “Stacey!”
she cried, “what’s the matter?”

“Catherine,” he said in a monotonous voice, “do me a favor, please. Tell
my father I won’t be down to dinner—and why. Marian Latimer shot
herself this morning. She is dying. I have just been there. It has
rather knocked me out.”

Catherine had turned pale, and her eyes were wide with horror. “Oh!” she
gasped, then suddenly went closer to him. “Stacey,” she said gently,
“sit down.”

He obeyed and resumed his former pose, staring again out of the window.
“Don’t let the servants hear what you say,” he went on, in the same dead
tone. “It’s to be kept secret. And don’t let father come up to see me.
He would be kind, but I can’t see him now.”

She drew in her breath sharply, but said nothing,—only laid her hand on
his shoulder.

At this he swung about, as though the touch had loosened something
within him. “It’s the ghastly—waste that gets me—so hard!” he cried,
his face set with pain. “Death itself—that’s nothing! An episode! But
to see so much loveliness, so much fineness, all go wrong—obliquely—to
futile death as to—a climax! It’s unbearable!”

“Stacey! Stacey!” Catherine whispered.

“And it’s all my fault—”

“No! No! you mustn’t!”

“But yes! My fault! If I could only have gone on loving her, or if, not
loving her, I had married her, things might have been different. Not
so—complete a mess! We’d have become adjusted—somehow.”

Catherine drew up a chair swiftly and sat down close to him. “Stacey,”
she cried unsteadily, her eyes shining with tears, “I beg of you—you
mustn’t! The truth is bad enough,—ah, please don’t go beyond the truth!
It was not your fault—only in as much as what happens to any one in the
whole world is one’s fault. Poor lovely Marian!—there was something—I
don’t know—something twisted in her.”

At this and at the soft compassion of her voice Stacey looked toward
Catherine differently. “Twisted—it was what she called herself only
half an hour ago,” he said in a gentler tone.

They were silent for a time. Something in the young woman’s clear
presence comforted him.

“She looked like a little girl, Catherine,” he said at last, only
sorrowfully. “You would not have known her. And so beautiful! Oh,
wicked!” Again his face contracted.

And, indeed, though he did not see it at the moment, as poignant an
emotion for him as any in all the tragedy lay in the destruction of so
much sheer beauty. Afterward, weeks afterward, he perceived this, and
recognized with pain that Marian herself had understood it, even
tenderly at the last.

The bell of the telephone on Stacey’s desk rang, and he reached slowly
for the receiver. Catherine gazed at him apprehensively, but he spoke
quietly enough, just a few words, in reply to the message, then hung up
the receiver and turned to Catherine.

“She is dead,” he murmured. “She died in her sleep. She never waked
after I left her.”

There was nothing to say. The two sat there in silence for some minutes.

“You must go down, Catherine,” Stacey said finally. “It is almost seven.
Thank you.”

She rose reluctantly. “You’ll let me have something sent up to you?”

“No! No! I can’t eat!” he exclaimed with revulsion. “I have to think,”
he added, “of what to say to Mrs. Latimer. I must go to see her after a
while. What _can_ I say?”

Catherine gave him a look in which there was something like pride. But
all that she answered was that he must eat something; then went out.

He sat there, reflecting painfully. He felt tired, hopeless, alive in a
dead empty world, but he was less tense now.

After a while—in half an hour, perhaps—the door opened and Catherine
herself came in with a tray.

He smiled faintly at this. “You will have your way, won’t you?” he
remarked; but he ate a little while she sat watching him.

“Stacey,” she asked diffidently, when he had finished, “should you like
me to go with you?”

“To Mrs. Latimer’s?” he exclaimed. “Oh, would you? But no,” he added
impatiently, “why should I lay things on you?”

“You won’t be doing that. If I could, perhaps, share a little, I should
be glad. You’ve had—nearly enough, I think.”

“You’re kind,” he said gruffly. “All right. Come.”

“Now?”

He nodded.

“Then I’ll go for a wrap and come back at once.”

“Oh!” he said, with a start, when she returned, “I must order the car
brought around.” And he reached for the telephone.

“It’s at the door,” she replied simply.

And when they went down the stairs they met nobody either there or in
the hall. That, too, was Catherine’s work, he thought with a softening
touch of gratitude.

He sat silent during the ride, trying to think what he should say to
Mrs. Latimer. But he could find nothing; he could only trust to the
moment. It was a horrible task. Yet he was not undertaking it as a duty;
he was going only because he was overwhelmingly sorry for his old friend
and concerned about her. At any rate, Catherine’s quiet presence was of
some help. He felt her as not weak in her compassion but strong.

It demanded a real effort for him to ring the bell of the Latimers’
house, but he did so, and after a little while a maid opened the door.

“Has Mrs. Latimer got back yet?” Stacey asked in a low tone.

“Yes, sir, but—she said—”

“I know. That she could not see any one. But she will want to see me, I
think. Just let me go quietly in. She is in the drawing-room?”

“Yes, sir,—with Mr. Latimer.”

Stacey winced. This made it harder. But he went quietly through the hall
and into the familiar room; and Catherine followed him, a step or two
behind. Just across the threshold he paused.

Only a single shaded reading-lamp was burning, and that at the farthest
corner of the long room; so that the part nearest Stacey was all in
darkness. At first the only person in the room appeared to be Mr.
Latimer, who, his hands clasped behind his back, was pacing up and down
across the far end of it, from lamp to window and from window to lamp.
When he approached the lamp and turned, his face was illuminated from
below, so that the chin and the delicate selfish mouth showed clearly,
while the eyes and forehead remained shadowy. Stacey could not conquer
his feeling of bitter hardness. The man was suffering, no doubt, in his
own way, but he was not generous enough—so Stacey thought—to suffer
deeply. He looked proud even now, when it was no time for pride; he
should have been comforting his wife. And what had he done? What had he
done? Could he not understand?

But Stacey gave him only a moment of thought. His eyes were searching
the room for Mrs. Latimer. And presently he found her—a wrecked huddled
figure on a couch just opposite him. Her face was hidden among the
cushions; only her hair, her dark dress, and one clenched hand were
visible.

Stacey took a step forward. “Mrs. Latimer,” he said.

She sat up with a gasp; but it was her husband who spoke. “Who is
there?” he called sharply, pausing and gazing toward Stacey.

“It is Stacey Carroll, sir.”

Mr. Latimer stiffened. “This is no time for you to come to this house,”
he said coldly. “You should know that. I do not wish to see you.”

“No,” Stacey replied. “But I came to see Mrs. Latimer—unless she would
prefer not to have me.”

The woman on the couch leaned forward. “Oh, yes, Stacey!” she cried, in
a tone that went to his heart. He was sure of himself now; he was
indifferent to what Mr. Latimer might say.

The older man stood there, erect in the lamplight, handsome, implacable,
but to Stacey non-existent. “Either you or I, Carroll, must leave this
house,” he said haughtily. “Both of us—”

But at this Mrs. Latimer had sprung to her feet, tottering a little.
“Then,” she cried, in a tense voice that told Stacey much, “it must be
you, Herbert! _I_ wish to see Stacey. Oh,” she murmured weakly, but with
relief, “and Catherine—you’ve come! How—good!” And she sank down again
upon the couch.

As Stacey moved toward her he, too, for a moment thought of Catherine.
He knew well how shy, how retiring, even how shrinking she was by
nature; yet all through this brief unpleasant scene he had felt her
standing there, gently strong, not wincing.

But Mr. Latimer said only: “As you please,” and left the room.

Stacey knelt on the rug before the couch, but, though Mrs. Latimer
touched his hair tremblingly and had sent away her husband to have him
there, it was to Catherine that she turned, clasping her hand and making
the young woman sit down close beside her on the divan.

The half-hour that followed was atrocious, worse than anything Stacey
had ever been through. For he had seen bodies shockingly tortured and
minds driven to madness by pain and terror, but this was the destruction
of a noble personality, of a character built up bravely through long
effort; it was the negation of everything. And the worst of it was that
in the broken phrases that Mrs. Latimer cried out—sometimes to him,
mostly to Catherine—traces remained of her high, clear, unified
intelligence, like drifting debris of a wrecked ship. “My little girl!
My poor baby!” she broke out once. “A child again only when—dying!
Wasted—wasted—all for nothing, a whole life! Oh, it’s my fault!—no,
his! _his! his!_” (this with a terrible fierceness). “No, mine, too!
mine, too!”

But there were pauses of exhaustion between her outbursts, and after a
while she grew slightly calmer, merely clinging to Catherine, who spoke
little, but in a tone of infinite tenderness. Beneath everything else
Stacey felt an awe of Catherine for her deep calm that expressed the
very opposite of indifference. As for himself, he could find nothing to
do (which was perhaps as well) save once to slip out into the hall and
telephone the doctor whom he had seen at Marian’s bedside, to say that
he must come with something to put Mrs. Latimer to sleep.

“If I make you some chocolate, dear, you will drink it, will you not?”
asked Catherine at last, pleadingly.

“If you wish,” Mrs. Latimer answered, worn out and quieted.

But she kept the young woman’s hand tight clasped in hers, so that
Catherine looked up at Stacey for a moment with a faint questioning
smile. For the first time tears started to his eyes; there was so much
of selfless weary beauty in the look she gave him. He nodded, went
quickly out to the kitchen, found the scared cook, and presently himself
brought in the chocolate, which Mrs. Latimer drank with trembling gulps,
Catherine holding the cup.

Then the doctor came and with Catherine’s help put Mrs. Latimer to bed,
while Stacey waited below.

At last Catherine came down again and they went out to the car. Her face
looked tired and drawn. The strain had been horrible. Stacey himself,
who had perforce borne so small a share of it, was ready to drop.

“Thank you,” he said almost timidly after a moment. “I’m sorry not to
have been able to do more. It wasn’t fair to you. You did so much.”

“I?” she exclaimed, but she was resting her head against the upholstered
back of the seat. “Poor lady!” she murmured then. “So pitifully—broken!
It wasn’t only—herself that Marian hurt.”

“I don’t suppose it ever is,” said Stacey wearily.

Catherine gave him a look of sympathy. “Can you sleep, do you think?”
she asked.

But at this he sat erect. “I refuse to have you bother your head about
me too,” he said sharply. “Yes, I know I can sleep.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mr. Latimer and the others interested succeeded in keeping the truth
hidden. Officially, even according to the account given by the
sensational evening paper, the death was an accident—there had been
burglaries, the times were unsafe, there was a wave of crime in Vernon,
Marian had been placing a revolver in the drawer of her desk, and all
the rest of it. Privately no one believed the story, and the various
things that people did believe were too wild to deserve mention. But
officially every one believed it. Officially every one in Vernon always
believed what he should. This was Vernon’s great strength.

Stacey did not recover easily from the shock. Perhaps it even worked
some permanent change in him. For it left him bruised, saddened, yet
somehow calmer and cooler. He worked tremendously at the office, and in
the days immediately following the tragedy did indeed value his work
mostly as a means to temporary forgetfulness. He saw but few people, and
only two or three of these willingly, for he found it hard to talk. He
was glad enough to see Edwards now and then at the luncheon hour—at
least after their first meeting, when, to excuse the manner he simply
could not help, Stacey felt obliged to tell him, who came from an
outside world, that Marian Price had been an old friend and that he was
pretty cut up by her death; which was hard. Yet Edwards’ gruff awkward
expression of sympathy was not unpleasant.

Stacey’s memory of Marian was as of something delicate, lovely and
frustrated, and it was softened by that final unwonted touch of
tenderness she had shown; but he could never quite forgive Marian what
she had done to her mother. In this she had been her father’s daughter.
Callous toward others, the Latimers! Hard, at bottom.

He went as often as he could to see Mrs. Latimer, or took her out with
him into the park. She recovered from the terrible prostration of that
first night, even quickly; she regained an adequate composure of manner;
and her sensitive receptive mind was intact. She had always had the
faculty of true intuition, which is (as opposed to the false intuition
that means merely guessing) the faculty of thinking so swiftly that the
logical steps along the way are barely brushed by the flying thought,
and the conclusion is so quickly reached that to the breathless beholder
it appears to have been attained at one leap. This faculty she did not
lose. But in her own attitude toward the world she was sadly changed, no
longer a strong flexible personality armed with a gentle irony, giving
more than she took, unafraid of facts; she had become a weak shaken
woman, with no shelter for her sensitive soul. Almost terrified she
seemed at times. And it was Stacey who now tried to give her the support
she had formerly tried to give him.

He noted one peculiarity that seemed rather horrible to him. For at
least two months after Marian’s death Mrs. Latimer could not see her
husband enter a room where she was without giving a shudder of revulsion
at his presence.

One thing of good Stacey had gained from the tragedy. He knew Catherine
now. Not entirely, by any means; but it was as though he had found a key
to the locked door of her personality, and had opened the door and
stepped inside just a little way. The intense shyness that wrapped her
about had nothing to do with self-consciousness; he had always known
that. Now he began to understand that the noble quality of her self lay
in her very selflessness. She barely thought of herself consciously at
all; and thus to have others do so disturbed her. She gave and gave and
took nothing. It was through her immense capacity for pity—not a pity
whimpering weakly over a wretched world, but a strong useful pity—that
one got to know her. She had given so much of her selflessness to Stacey
at the time of the catastrophe that she had given of herself, too; she
could not now take back what she had given, even if she wished to do so.
He was shocked and numbed by what had happened, and she continued
instinctively to give him all the quiet lavish help she could. She was
giving perhaps more than she knew.

One day she even brought him one of the articles she had written for a
London weekly. She was humble about it, but at heart he was even
humbler; for, simply worded, with no pretence at decoration, a brief,
clearly stated apology for the “Let-us-eat-drink-and-be-merry” attitude
of the day, it radiated a gentle warmth of feeling. Afterward she showed
Stacey other articles.

Generally he trod very carefully, taking pains to say nothing that might
drive this half-held prodigal friend back behind shadowy barriers of
reserve. But one Sunday afternoon in October, when they had gone for a
walk in the country, and the boys up ahead were plunging deliriously
through heaps of dead leaves, he suddenly turned on her.

“Catherine,” he said, “you give so much—always! But you cannot be all
selflessness. There must be a hidden self in you that could take a
little.”

She gave him a startled look and did not speak. It was as though she had
retreated to a great distance. Still she was there. He had thought she
might vanish utterly.

“I think it’s a kind of shy maiden-self that you neglect,” he added.
“You know next to nothing about it.”

“Oh,” she murmured, “I do take!”

But he was astonished and remorseful to perceive that her lips were
trembling and her eyes moist.

“Did I shock you, Catherine?” he exclaimed. “Silly meddler I am! I’ve no
business to bother you.”

“No, no,” she returned, “it’s not that! It’s only that you’re so kind.”

“I!” he cried in amazement.

“Yes,” she said, and then suddenly smiled at his expression.

“Well,” he remarked helplessly, “if prying into your thoughts can be
called kindness . . .” and paused.

“The kindness is in what you do it for,” she said quietly, and they came
up with the boys.

It was far closer than he had ever approached her before.

Stacey’s intimacy with his father, too, was closer since the tragedy.
Mr. Carroll could hardly be expected to understand the strange
relationship that had held Marian and Stacey together and apart; he did
not even have the necessary facts to go on. But he saw with all his
direct clearness the effect of Marian’s sudden death on his son, and was
very kind, and tactful as well. He even took obvious pains to avoid
discussion of subjects—such as Bolshevism, labor and the Republican
Party—on which he perhaps fancied his son did not at heart agree with
him. This touched Stacey, but was quite unnecessary. Stacey had no more
interest in Bolshevism or the other things than in the Mabinogion.


                              CHAPTER XXIV

In November a strike of the street-railway employees broke out. The
company, which had applied for and obtained a seven-cent fare six months
earlier, had now asked for the right to raise it to ten cents. The city
council refused; whereupon the company, alleging its inability to carry
on at even a modest profit under the existing costs, declared a twenty
per cent. cut in wages, and the employees struck. The clash was fierce
and there was much violence. The company imported strike-breakers from
Chicago, they were mobbed, there were deaths, the militia was called
out, and a few empty cars with shattered windows ran occasionally up and
down the city streets.

Stacey was not particularly interested, having other things to think
about. He barely glanced at the news headlines and smiled ironically as
he did so, knowing that Colin Jeffries, who had a controlling interest
in the stock of the street-railway company, also virtually owned the
evening (Republican) paper and was engaged in many business enterprises
with the owner of the morning (Democratic) paper. As for the editorials,
he would no more have read them than he would have read the latest novel
by Harold Bell Wright. But sometimes his father read them aloud at table
in a tone of fierce assent, and thus Stacey learned that they were all
about “one hundred per cent. Americanism” and the duty of labor to yield
something, just as capital was yielding something.

However, one afternoon Edwards, whom Stacey had not seen for a week,
suddenly entered the office.

“Hello!” cried Stacey cordially. “Come in. Where have you been?”—then
broke off at sight of the other’s appearance.

Edwards was unshaven and rather dirty, and his eyes glowed darkly in his
tense face. He shut the door behind him, then sat down opposite Stacey
at the desk.

“I want to talk to you, Carroll,” he said. “It’s about the strike.”

“All right,” said Stacey. “I hardly know anything about it, haven’t
followed it.”

Edwards’ eyes suddenly blazed. “No,” he cried, “of course not! What’s it
all matter to _you_? _You’re_ all right! _You’re_ not your brother’s
keeper! It—”

“Now look here,” said Stacey, firmly but pleasantly enough, “cut out the
class business, will you? You know that’s not the way you feel about me
or you wouldn’t be coming here to see me. I haven’t a doubt but that the
men are right in this strike, but the reason I’ve kept off the subject
as much as possible is because I don’t see what in the world I can do
about it, and I don’t know anything worse than futile sentimental
sympathy.”

“I apologize, Carroll,” Edwards returned moodily. “I didn’t mean that,
of course. And I’d probably better apologize in advance for anything
else I may break loose and say. I haven’t had much sleep lately.”

“That’s all right,” Stacey replied. “Go as far as you like.”

“Carroll,” said Edwards painfully, “we’re beaten. I mean, on every big
thing. There isn’t going to be any change in the rotten system, not for
now. There isn’t going to be any revolution. There isn’t going to be a
beginning of socialism, all men sharing tasks, each according to his
capacity. There’s just going to be the same tyranny there’s always been,
the same exploitation of a lot of men by a few. I tell you, I’m
broken-hearted!” He paused, his face set.

“You must be,” said Stacey, “if you hoped for that.”

“Oh, I did and I didn’t! I thought maybe—but now this strike,” he went
on sharply. “Six months ago there’d have been a general strike in
sympathy. Every workman in the city would have downed tools. Not—now!
We’re beaten, I tell you! There are thousands of unemployed, winter’s
here, coal costs what you know, the men don’t dare. Beaten! You’ve heard
what one of the big employers said openly—that pretty soon the men
would be eating out of their hands! And here am I fighting for this puny
little thing—that men be doled out enough to exist on! And fighting in
vain!”

Stacey looked at him with silent sympathy.

“Here!” said Edwards, tearing papers from his pocket. “Here are the
figures. Here’s what it costs a family of three to live—Government
statistics. Here’s what the men were getting. Here’s what they’re to get
now if they yield.” He pushed the papers across the table.

Stacey fingered them, but kept his eyes on his friend. “I know,” he
said. “I can imagine without studying them. What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Edwards nervously. “I’d thought of two or three
things. If you were to print the facts—just the facts—with your name
signed to them, in one of the papers. . . .”

Stacey smiled bitterly. “Fat chance! How much of a power in this town do
you think I am? Don’t you know that Colin Jeffries, who owns the
street-railway, controls the papers?”

“Yes, I know that, damn him!” Edwards burst out. “He’s everywhere! You
can’t get out from under his shadow.”

“And even if I could get such an article printed, what would it
accomplish? When did the public ever budge? Inert mass of sheep! And all
the time the papers harping on the idea that the street-railway company
can’t pay its stock-holders even a nominal interest on their investment
under current conditions.”

“Well,” Edwards fairly shouted, “and if they can’t! Do you know anything
about that company? I do. I’ve looked into it with a lawyer. Way
over-capitalized. Three millions of water, Carroll,—three cool millions
into private pockets! So men must starve, must they, to pay interest on
that stock?”

Stacey’s face was grim. “No,” he said shortly, “I hadn’t looked into it,
but it doesn’t surprise me. I’ll tell you what I _could_ do,” he said
hesitatingly after a moment. “I—er—the only available income I have is
what I make here at the office. I could turn over—say two hundred and
fifty dollars a month of it to the union. And I might—that is, I don’t
know what my sister does with her income—gives most of it away, I
fancy—but I dare say she’d put in as much more.”

Edwards stared. “Say,” he said shakily, “that’s decent! I thought you
had—well, it’s none of my business. But it wouldn’t be any use,
Carroll. Not a hundredth part enough. But—thanks!”

“Oh!” said Stacey deprecatingly, then fell to thinking. “Look here,” he
remarked finally, “there’s only one thing I can think of, and it will
have to be you to do it rather than I. Also it’s only a faint chance.
Now my father is an honest man—set in his beliefs, but honest. And he’s
also influential. Colin Jeffries probably defers as much to him as to
any one living, because father’s very likely the only thoroughly honest,
disinterested friend Jeffries has. Father believes in the principles
Jeffries only exploits to make money out of. If you can get him—my
father, I mean—on your side, he might take the matter up to Jeffries
personally.”

Edwards’ face expressed extreme dislike of the suggestion. “Can’t say I
care much for the idea—like begging for what you’ve a right to.”

“I didn’t suppose you would. But I estimate that what you’re out for is
to save a living wage for these men—by any means.”

“Yes,” Edwards muttered, “I’d do anything. But how on earth could I
swing your father into line?”

“Well,” said Stacey slowly, “come out to the house this evening at
eight-fifteen, just when dinner’s over, and talk to him, always about
the personal side, the facts of it, show him the figures, _and keep away
from all discussion of principles_! Appeal to his sense of fair play to
get him to go down with you to-morrow morning and see the men
themselves.”

Edwards reflected. “All right,” he said sullenly, and rose.

“Mind now!” Stacey called after him, “no principles!”

Stacey made himself very agreeable at dinner that evening. He was keyed
up by anticipation, his eyes glowed, and he looked younger. There was an
added warmth in the harmony that had been lately achieved in the Carroll
house. But Stacey saw Catherine glance at him wonderingly. It wasn’t
possible to hide feelings from Catherine.

He caught her alone for a moment on the way to the library. “Now
listen!” he said. “You stick by me. Don’t budge from the library. And
support me in every way you can.”

Her dark eyes were curious, but her lips curved faintly into a
smile—perhaps at his tone of command, that was so unlike his customary
tone with her.

He would explain nothing, however; only marched her on down the hall.
And a very few minutes later Parker came in to say that a Mr. Edwards
had called.

“Oh, yes,” Stacey exclaimed, “he’s a friend of mine! Bring him in,
Parker,—or, no, I’ll go get him myself,” and he went out. “Take it easy
now, and no principles,” he growled to Edwards, as he piloted him in.

“Father,” Stacey remarked, “this is my friend, Edwards,—was commander
of the Legion post, you know. Mrs. Blair, Mr. Edwards.”

“How do you do, sir?” said Mr. Carroll, shaking hands. His face had
assumed its keen yet non-committal business-look. Mr. Carroll knew
something about Edwards, of course, and disapproved of what he knew, but
he was a courteous gentleman in his own house; such a man as Mr.
Latimer, artistically conscious of every attitude, could not have
expressed the situation more nicely.

“I wanted to say a few words to you, sir, about this strike,” Edwards
began, sitting down awkwardly in the chair toward which Stacey had
impelled him.

Mr. Carroll did not reply at once. He gnawed at his moustache, his eyes
grew harder, and he shot one swift angry glance at Stacey.

Up to now Stacey had been rather pleased with himself; he thought he had
engineered things well. It suddenly struck him that, instead, he had
made a mess of them. His father was angry with him, and therefore more
hostile to Edwards. And Edwards was nowhere near at his best; he was
gauche, heavy, impressed by his surroundings—it had never occurred to
Stacey that he might be,—and correspondingly resentful. Oh, Lord!
Stacey looked across helplessly at Catherine.

She had poured out another cup of coffee and now handed it to the guest.
“Will you have sugar, Mr. Edwards?” she asked.

“No—no, thank you!” he replied, startled, and took the cup gingerly. He
looked as though he would much rather have refused it had he dared.

Mr. Carroll turned his eyes back to the young man. “I have no connection
with the street-railway company, Mr. Edwards,” he said deliberately,
choosing his words with care. “On the basis of such information as I
have been able to obtain in regard to the strike my sympathies are with
the company. I fail to see why capital should have to make all the
sacrifices and labor none. But since you—_and Stacey_—wish it, I shall
be glad to hear you state the men’s side of the case. I should think,
however, that some official of the street-railway company would be the
proper person to hear it.”

Edwards, who had flushed, made a quick angry gesture. But this almost
upset the fragile cup that he held; so he was forced into restraint. He
drank his coffee hastily before replying.

“Well, sir,” he began then, “Carroll—I mean Stacey—thought if I could
give you the facts as I did to him you’d maybe see them our way. I don’t
want to talk about principles, sir—”

“Why not?”

Edwards glanced wrathfully at Stacey. “Because we wouldn’t agree about
them and there wouldn’t be any use in our trying to.” His hand trembled
slightly, and the tiny silver spoon rattled against his coffee cup; so
he rose and limped over to a table to rid himself of the nuisance once
for all.

Catherine leaned forward. “Stacey told me you had been wounded in the
war, Mr. Edwards,” she said softly.

He looked toward her. “Yes, ma’am,” he returned, “at Les Eparges. My
right leg was rather shot to bits.”

Stacey drew a breath of relief. He hardly thought Catherine was being
deliberately tactful; she had spoken impulsively. But the result was
excellent. And Edwards in the tone with which he replied to Catherine
revealed that old-fashioned attitude of deference toward women just as
women, which was also Mr. Carroll’s attitude.

“I hope they fixed you up all right,” said Mr. Carroll gruffly.

“Pretty well, thanks. I happened to draw a good surgeon.”

As for Stacey, he said nothing at all. He had that much sense anyway, he
told himself. He’d have to face his father later on; for the present he
wanted to be as nearly forgotten as possible. So he sat still and
commented silently on the shifting fortunes of the battle.

“Have a cigar, Edwards?” asked Mr. Carroll, holding out his case. (Good!
There was a touch of something more personal in this.)

“No, thank you, sir.” (Oh, confound it! why didn’t he take one?).

Edwards drew his papers from his pocket. “Mr. Carroll,” he said, “I’m
not going to talk to you at all about social theories or about what sort
of stock it is that the street-railway company wants to pay dividends
on.” (“Well, damn it, then, don’t!” cried Stacey internally.) “I only
want to show you, in figures, the condition of the employees just as
men; what they were getting, what they’re going to get if they accept
this cut in wages, what it costs a family of three to live to-day.” And
he began to read.

He did not read aloud very well. He stuttered a little over a word now
and then. But there was an intensity in his deep voice that lent an odd
warmth to the figures about groceries, fuel, wages, and the rest. Mr.
Carroll must see that the man was in deadly earnest.

When he had finished reading he stretched out the papers. “Want to see
them?” he demanded abruptly.

Mr. Carroll shook his head. He was frowning and chewing at the end of
his cigar. “The trouble is,” he began, but with less than his usual
firmness, “that you can’t separate facts from principles. Labor—”

“Oh,” cried Catherine suddenly, “you must!”

Two of the three men started and turned toward her; Stacey had been
looking at her already.

But Catherine’s eyes were fixed now on the guest. “Do you mean, Mr.
Edwards,” she asked, in a voice that revealed both compassion and scorn,
“that the highest wage of any employee would be only forty cents an
hour?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Edwards bitterly, “if they accept the cut in wages.”

“And are there many families of three?”

“Most are a good deal more than three,” he replied. “About twenty per
cent. of the men are unmarried and perhaps bring the average down to
three.”

Catherine’s face had an odd expression. Stacey thought she looked like a
sorrowful goddess. “Before my husband died,” she said, “we were a family
of four. We were living on two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and
you thought, Mr. Carroll, that we had to live too sordidly. You will do
something?”

He gazed at her kindly, but did not reply at once.

Stacey was touched by the mention of Phil. The thought of Phil was with
him, almost like a gentle presence, very often. Catherine spoke of him
seldom but, when she did so, quite simply and naturally, as now. She
must miss him sadly, Stacey thought, and felt grieved for her. But,
since it was his instinct to carry through unswervingly anything he had
undertaken, he was also exultant, as well as faintly amused at his
father, who was being swept away from principles at every turn, simply
not permitted to play with them.

“I can’t say I like those statistics,” said Mr. Carroll at last, more to
Catherine than to Edwards. Then he turned to the latter. “But I’d have
to know more. I’d have to look into things. And then I don’t know what I
could do about it; I might do something, I suppose. Confound it! sir,”
he exclaimed impatiently, “why didn’t you take this up with some
official of the company?”

“I want you to know more, sir,” Edwards returned eagerly. “I’d like it
if you’d go down with me and see some of the strikers man to man, get
their story.”

Mr. Carroll reflected, frowning. “All right,” he said sharply. “Come to
my office to-morrow morning at nine.”

Catherine’s face fairly shone, and Mr. Carroll, looking back at her,
relaxed his sternness and leaned over to pat her hand.

“May I go, too?” she asked of them both.

“Yes, _ma’am_!” said Edwards, getting up. “I’d like that.”

He made his adieux clumsily, with too much formality, and Stacey
accompanied him down the hall to the door.

“Well,” Edwards remarked, “that’s something, I suppose,—thanks to Mrs.
Blair. Precious little help you were, though, Carroll!”

“Oh, yes,” said Stacey cheerfully, “I messed things up properly. But
then, look at you! What the devil do you mean by behaving like a
resentful commoner at a court function? Go on home, you sulky snob!” he
added with a laugh, and pushed his friend out of the door.

Then he returned to the library.

His father and Catherine were sitting there in silence, she gazing away
with dark abstracted eyes, he frowning slightly and staring down at a
closed magazine on which he tapped nervously with his fingers. He looked
up and turned to Catherine as Stacey entered.

“You a member of this conspiracy, Catherine?” he asked quietly.

“No,” Stacey exclaimed promptly, “she wasn’t! Didn’t know a thing about
it. It was all my damfoolishness.”

“I see,” said Mr. Carroll, and rose. “I’ll go to bed, I think. Good
night.”

But Stacey set his back against the door. “No, sir,” he returned, “let’s
have this out. I’ll concede that I was wrong to do this in this way. Now
you go ahead and tell me some more things.”

His father stood there, looking at him keenly, antagonistically, judging
him. Mr. Carroll’s upper lip was drawn in a little, and there was a
harshness about his face. One could see that he had fought hard fights
in life and that he was still an adversary to be reckoned with.

“I am not aware,” he began coldly, “of being in my dotage—yet. If
anybody wants anything from me the thing for him to do is to come and
ask me for it; then if I think he ought to have it he’ll get it. I’ll be
damned if I’ll be cosseted and cajoled into a good humor so that
something can be wormed out of me.”

Absolutely justified, his father was, Stacey thought helplessly. “You’re
perfectly right, sir,” he said, “and I apologize, My only excuse for not
being frank—and I admit it’s not good enough—is that I was so
confoundedly anxious for you to hear Edwards’ story, and was fool enough
to think you might refuse if I asked you to, point-blank.”

For just an instant Stacey glanced away to Catherine and saw with sharp
regret that her eyes were full of pain. Why the devil had he let her in
for this? Then he looked back at his father.

But Mr. Carroll’s wrath was not assuaged, and when he spoke again Stacey
perceived that a long resentment, dangerously repressed, had burst loose
finally.

“You take me for a damned fool,” Mr. Carroll went on angrily. “I’m a
fool perhaps, but not a damned fool. Do you think I can’t see how you
humor me?—the nice, kindly, tolerant spirit you show for my foibles,
your ‘poor-dad-he’s-growing-old’ attitude! Superior, sir! Intolerably
superior!”

This was pretty bad, and all the worse for the tiny element of truth it
contained. “Now look here, dad!” Stacey pleaded. “That’s not so. There
isn’t anybody in the world I respect more than I do you. Why—”

“Extraordinary method of showing it you take, then!” snapped his father.
“Respect—nothing! At heart you’re a Bolshevist, sir. Well, then, if you
are, _be_ one! You’re not consistent. You’re a Bolshevist in theory”
(“Oh, Lord! I haven’t got any theories!” Stacey thought, but did not try
to say), “a millionaire in practice. I gave you a tidy fortune. You took
it, didn’t you? You live here with me in a certain amount of luxury.
Well, why do you? Why don’t you go and live in a hut?” He paused, out of
breath, glaring at his son.

Stacey was pale; for this hurt. But he was further than before from
losing his temper, since now the attack was unjust. To his amazement,
and certainly to Mr. Carroll’s as well, it was Catherine who lost her
temper—or almost.

“Mr. Carroll!” she cried—and both men, turning suddenly toward her, saw
her standing erect, a slim firm figure with a face of angry beauty.
“That’s unfair and cruel and not like you! I know that Stacey cares less
for money than any one else in Vernon—and it is a shame that it should
have to be I to say so. He lived for four years in mud and horror
because he hoped it would do some good. It’s wonderful that when he came
back and seemed to find that it hadn’t done any good he could keep his
sanity. And still he’d go and live like that again if it were of any
use. And you accuse him of living here because of the luxuries you give
him! He lives here because of his affection for you and because of the
affection he thought you had for him. It’s—shameful—what you said!”
She ceased and sat down again, her breath coming fast, her lips
quivering.

Stacey gazed at her, his heart beating rather quickly; he was
overwhelmed with the number of his emotions. He was astounded at the
brave magnificent way she had spoken, proud that it was in his cause,
deeply touched, and somehow profoundly sad.

As for Mr. Carroll, he looked in a dazed way from Catherine to his son.
“There is no excuse for what I—said to you, son,” he said at last. “I
don’t suppose you can forgive me. Try to, if you are able.”

Stacey walked over and shook his hand. “Oh—er—shucks, dad!” he
muttered. “It’s all right—forgotten.” It was the first time he had ever
heard his father apologize to any one for anything.

Mr. Carroll gave his son a strange wistful look of gratitude, then went
over to Catherine. “Are you going to let me sit down beside you,
Catherine?” he asked. “You’re not going to pack up and leave the house
just because your host’s an old fool?”

“No,” she said in a strangled voice, giving him her hand, but keeping
her face averted, so that neither he nor Stacey could see it.

“I’m not altogether an old fool, my dear,” he added, patting her hand;
then got up again. “Er—a game of pinochle, Stacey?” he suggested.

Stacey nodded, and moved to get the card table. “Sure! I’d like one. But
you don’t really think you’ve any chance against me, do you, dad?” he
said shakily.


                              CHAPTER XXV

At breakfast next morning no allusion was made to the promised excursion
with Edwards, but Stacey was confident of its success. On this account,
as well as on others, he was glad of last night’s storm. For he knew his
father. Mr. Carroll might fancy that principles were the foundation of
his life; they were not, they were mere dead wood. First and last it was
by personal relationships that he was swayed. It was this that gave him
his sweetness, his directness, his genius for holding friends, his
absolute inability to be impartial. He would have made a very poor
judge. As a result of the quarrel he would be unavoidably on Edwards’
side—because it was Stacey’s side.

Mr. Carroll was nearly always gay at breakfast; on this morning he was
delightful. But he did not tease Catherine, as he often tried to do.
Instead, he joked with the boys, with great detriment to their table
manners, and reduced Jackie in particular to a condition that shocked
even Carter.

As for Catherine, she seemed to Stacey shyer than usual, more withdrawn.
This was natural, he thought. After that splendid outburst in defence of
him she must of course retreat hurriedly into herself. Which was rather
obtuse of Stacey, since he should surely have known by now that for
Catherine giving was not logically followed by taking back, but by
further giving. At any rate, despite her silence, he felt a closeness to
her, a deep intimacy with her. There was a touch of melancholy at his
heart, too; for he felt more than he cared to admit. He did not venture
to speak much to Catherine—only a few matter-of-fact words. Ah, well,
last evening’s scene had temporarily stripped off too many discreet
veils, left emotions too naked; by to-night everything would have become
normal again. Yet Stacey did not precisely envisage this certainty with
satisfaction.

He motored into town with his father and Catherine, but left them at the
door of the Carroll Building and went on to his own office.

He worked that morning with less complete absorption than usual, and at
half past twelve went to the lunch-room, hoping to find Edwards.

Edwards was not there, but before Stacey had finished eating he came in,
looking radiant. “It’s all right, Carroll,” he said gaily, limping over
with a sandwich and coffee. “Your father saw things our way. There’s
something pretty fine about him. You can’t help liking him. And then
Mrs. Blair, well, she’s just a wonder—the real thing!”

Stacey was rather calmer. “What did father say he’d do?” he asked.

“Oh, he was non-committal, of course! Said he didn’t know whether he
could do anything, but he’d try. Remarked that Colin Jeffries was a fair
man, one of the fairest he knew, also a great citizen! And I was a lamb,
Carroll, swallowed that without even a gulp! So it’s pretty clear he’s
gone to take the thing up with Jeffries—or will go.”

Stacey considered his friend curiously. Extraordinary, this thinking in
classes! Edwards did not think of capitalists as men; he thought of them
as parts of a whole, which was capital. It was only capital he thought
about really, as something with an existence of its own. So he took it
for granted that if you swung over one capitalist to your side you could
swing the whole, just as when you pulled back the lever of an engine you
set the entire machine in motion. Neat, very,—but not true. Stacey
himself, though he had suggested the scheme, was far from confident that
his father could bring Colin Jeffries around, because Stacey saw the
problem as a personal problem.

“Well,” he said soberly, “I hope father can pull it off. Come on up to
the office.”

They sat in Stacey’s room and smoked silently.

“Mrs. Blair is a corker!” Edwards announced suddenly. “The best ever! Do
you raise many like her in your caste?”

Stacey smiled. “Not so you’d notice it,” he returned drily.

“Well, I’m glad of that. I should hate to find some real reason for the
existence of your plutocratic bunch.”

“Oh, you make me tired!” said Stacey wearily. “You talk like a child. At
heart you have a kind of idea that the people I know are different from
you. You resent it, but you have a secret feeling that they’re
superior—Olympians. That’s because—”

But at this point in his attack the telephone bell rang and he lifted
the receiver.

“That you, Stacey?” said his father’s voice, and Stacey knew at once
that the attempt had failed. “I saw Colin Jeffries about that matter,
had a long talk with him. But I couldn’t budge him. Said he’d do
anything else in the world for me, but that in the matter of this strike
he couldn’t even hear of a compromise. Said he’d be going back on every
principle he had if he did. That it had come to a show-down. Was
business to be run as an efficient competitive proposition with moderate
financial reward, or was it to become a charitable institution with the
investors as donators? He made a strong case for his stand—unanswerable
logically. All the same . . .”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve heard those statistics from Edwards and I’ve seen some of
the men. It’s not just that they should have to live like that.”

“What did Jeffries say when you pointed that out?”

“Said he was sorry for the men and their wives, very, but that he had to
think of the stock-holders also. That they, too, were men and women,
though you couldn’t get an employee to see it.”

“Neat point,” Stacey remarked. “Jeffries owns two-thirds of the common
himself. I’ve seen the list of the other stock-holders. There _is_ one
widow among them. I’d be willing to defray her losses myself.”

“I’m sorry, son.” (Mr. Carroll’s voice was regretful.) “I’d like to have
got this through for you—and because I think it’s right, though of
course my convictions on the labor and capital situation in general
remain unchanged.”

“Of course.”

“But I did what I could.”

“I know it, dad,” said Stacey. “Edwards will know that too. Thanks, just
as much as if you’d brought it off. Good-bye. See you at dinner.”

He hung up the receiver, then looked across at Edwards. “Nothing doing,”
he said, his face impassive.

Edwards’ face had flushed a dull crimson, and his jaw was set, so that
there was an effect of massive squareness about his head. His eyes
glowed.

“Yes,” he replied thickly, “so I judged. Bombs, Carroll, nice little
hand-grenades,—that’s what’s wanted!”

“I agree,” said Stacey coolly. “It would be a pleasure to toss one at
Jeffries; but that’s no use. Never was. The reaction swings you back to
below where you started.”

“You’re so damned cold-blooded about it!” Edwards cried furiously.
“Can’t you put yourself—”

“Shut up!” said Stacey harshly. “I’m twice as angry as you are—and I’m
going to take a hand in this somehow.”

And, in truth, an observer studying the two men carefully would have
ended by believing Stacey the more dangerous. With only a little extra
tautness in the muscles of his face to alter his appearance, there was
yet something hard and ruthless in his expression. It was quite clear
that if, as Stacey had learned, nothing of his fanciful, fastidious,
early self had really vanished, neither had anything vanished of that
embittered, stony, cold-and-passionate self he had brought back from the
war. This morning while he was at work his thoughts about the strike and
about Mr. Carroll’s undertaking had been haphazard, interrupted by warm
memories of the scene at home the night before. Now Stacey’s whole mind
was concentrated in a kind of chilly fierceness on the single problem of
how he could force Colin Jeffries to yield.

“It’s got to be personal fighting—no principles; they’re no good,” he
thought. “Now what handle have I got? What do I know about Jeffries?”

In response to this way of putting it, a casual winter-night’s memory
flashed into his mind. Of course! He threw up his head and laughed
unpleasantly.

“I’ve got a sort of half-idea, Edwards,” he observed. “Maybe it will
work out. Now you run along and let me think it over. See you
to-morrow.”

Stacey sat there, reflecting intensely, for perhaps a quarter of an
hour. Then he got up, went out, and walked over to the building in which
Colin Jeffries had his office.

The millionaire’s large outer-office was full of men waiting. They sat
singly or in groups and talked in low tones. Some of them, men prominent
in one business or another, Stacey recognized and nodded to. He gave his
card to a young man—some sort of secretary, probably—who promised to
take it in to Mr. Jeffries but said he feared there wasn’t the slightest
chance of seeing him this afternoon except by appointment.

“Take the card in, anyway,” Stacey remarked, and sat down.

Less than ten minutes later the secretary returned, obviously impressed,
to say that Mr. Jeffries would see Mr. Carroll now; then conducted him
to the financier’s private office.

“Come in, Stacey,” said Mr. Jeffries cordially, getting up to shake
hands. “Sit down, won’t you?”

“Thanks,” said Stacey, and did so, across the table from the
millionaire.

This being called by his first name amused him. It must be meant as a
kingly compliment by Mr. Jeffries, since he and Stacey had not met above
half a dozen times—or perhaps it was to aid in the effect of
cordiality. But there were many other things besides amusement in
Stacey’s mind. He was thinking swiftly, taking stock of his adversary,
all in the brief interval while he accepted and lighted a courteously
proferred cigarette.

This cordiality now,—it was not a warmth radiating from inner good
will; it was external, a fire built on snow. He felt the man as
cold—perhaps cruel, too. If so, cold even in his cruelty. Stacey felt
aversion, something in that personality was rasping to him; but he was
far from feeling contempt. He recognized that he was encountering a
strong and steely character, not one—like most—only apparently strong.
Not a touch here of the business-man as shown in romances or movies, no
nervous movement of papers, no abstracted air of meditation on vast
enterprises. Mr. Jeffries did not even say that he could spare Stacey a
few minutes of his time; he was as leisurely as though he were lounging
at a club. Yet the man was intensely busy from morning to night, and at
this moment his outer-office was crowded with those waiting to see him.

“It was about the street-railway strikers that I wanted to speak to you,
Mr. Jeffries,” said Stacey, blowing out his match. (There had only been
that much of a pause.)

A look of regret came over the millionaire’s face. “I’m sorry, Stacey,”
he replied, shaking his head slowly, “but there’s nothing I can do. I
explained my position to your father this morning.”

“Yes, I know you did,” Stacey continued carefully. “But you and he are
so much alike” (they were alike superficially; Stacey disclaimed almost
passionately that there was any deep likeness) “that I feel sure you
must both see this trouble as a matter of principle, as labor versus
capital, as a strike,—not as men striking. The men can’t live on the
wages you’re offering to pay them, Mr. Jeffries. Can’t—live.”

“And the company can’t live and give them any better ones,” returned Mr.
Jeffries quietly.

Stacey did not express his opinion of the company’s right to life. He
attended quietly to what Mr. Jeffries said. All this was no use, anyway.

“There’s more in this than you see, Stacey. It’s a test case—an
unfortunate one, I grant you; test cases are rarely the ones a man would
choose. It’s come to a question of whether business organized on private
capital can exist at all. If it can’t we’d better know it at once; if it
can then it will have to be run on the basis of a decent adjustment
between receipts and disbursements.”

Stacey, quite unmoved by this, shook his head. “I don’t see how this can
be a test case,” he observed. “Suppose you win,—it’s a paper victory
only. Neither these men nor any others can work for you permanently at a
wage that won’t support them and their families. Know what I think?” he
demanded, gazing sharply at the older man, “I rather think the whole
thing’s a threat held over the head of the city council.”

Mr. Jeffries laughed. “That’s shrewd of you, Stacey,” he remarked. “But,
if so, you’ll admit it’s not very successful.”

Stacey, wary because of the note of flattery, continued to gaze at him.
How keen the man was! Not once had he said: “You young men who’ve come
back with socialistic ideas . . .” He had met Stacey with apparent
candor and with no touch of tolerant superiority. His manner proclaimed
equality,—but perhaps just faintly over-proclaimed it.

“You won’t even consider yielding,” Stacey asked, “so that these men can
support their families—now—in winter?”

“I can’t, my boy. It’s to your credit, though, that you take the thing
so much to heart. I admire you for it.”

The “my boy” and the admiration were under the circumstances a little
too much for Stacey. The muscles of his face hardened almost
imperceptibly, and he leaned back in his chair.

“Then, Mr. Jeffries, I’ve got to fight you,” he said coolly.

The other’s expression did not alter, no glint of amusement shone in his
eyes; but he considered Stacey intently. “I’m sorry for that,” he
returned after a moment, “but I guess I can only say: Go to it! I know
it will be a fair fight, anyway.”

“No,” said Stacey, “it won’t be. I want to warn you.”

The other’s gaze sharpened. “Well?” he asked quietly.

“Mr. Jeffries,” Stacey inquired, “do you remember a young woman named
Ethel Wyatt?”

“Yes,” replied the financier, his expression unchanged. “She was
governess to our children for a time. There were reasons which made us
let her go. Why?”

That last sentence was the only hint of weakness. Stacey felt an evil
exultation. However, his face was impassive. “I was told in confidence,”
he observed quietly, “that she left of her own accord because you hid in
her bathroom and otherwise persecuted her.”

A faint color showed on Mr. Jeffries’ high cheek-bones, and his eyes
hardened until they became like polished steel, but when he spoke his
tone was quiet and firm, as before. Stacey reluctantly admired him.

“That’s not a pretty story,” he said. “I shan’t even trouble to deny it.
May I ask why you repeat it to me?”

“Because I intend to use it against you.”

Mr. Jeffries considered him fixedly. “That _seemed_ to be what you were
driving at. I could hardly believe that I understood your meaning
correctly. We’ll waive all the moral aspects of such blackmail—”

“Yes, let’s!” said Stacey calmly.

Mr. Jeffries frowned at the insolence of the interruption. Only from a
certain tautness in his face could Stacey perceive that he was very
angry, so well did he keep himself under control. “Do you really fancy,”
he demanded, his words like sharp staccato taps of a hammer, “that any
one, any one of any account, in this city is going to believe such a
story?”

“Not officially, of course,” Stacey replied. “Being the power you are,
Mr. Jeffries, you could go out in the street and commit publicly almost
any crime short of murder, and officially even the witnesses wouldn’t
admit that you’d done it. But privately most people will love to believe
such a story.”

“Do _you_ believe it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Stacey indifferently, “or I wouldn’t use it. But, to
tell you the truth, I haven’t the slightest interest in the story. It
doesn’t even amuse me. I merely see it as a possible weapon.”

Mr. Jeffries continued to gaze at him sharply. “Do you know anything
about this young woman, Ethel Wyatt?” he inquired presently, his voice
frigid.

Stacey was wary. “A little,” he returned.

“Then you doubtless know the sort of person she has proved to be. She
has been the mistress of Ames Price, among others.”

“Well?”

“You would take the word of a harlot in the matter of this libellous—”

“Oh,” Stacey exclaimed scornfully, “let’s not go in for rhetoric!
There’s no dictograph in the room. Let’s not be benevolent millionaire
and returned hero deserving well of his country!”

“Very well!” snapped Mr. Jeffries, his cheeks slightly flushed. “You’d
take this girl’s word against mine?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Jeffries said nothing for a moment, merely regarding Stacey
intently. “How you do dislike me, don’t you?” he asked then. He had
quite recovered his calm.

Stacey raised his eyebrows. “That has nothing to do with it,” he
remarked coldly.

“Hasn’t it? You can say that and still be ready to smirch my good name
and make my wife miserable?”

Stacey drew himself up. “What’s a man’s smirched name or a weeping wife
compared with a man who’s under-nourished and a wife who can’t buy
proper clothes for her children?” he demanded bitterly. “It’s useless!
You _can’t_ see why I’m doing this thing. For you I must have some other
motive. Well, I haven’t.”

“And you’re going to use this story unless I give in on the strike—is
that the idea?”

“Yes. I don’t say I’m going to throw it around broad-cast. Perhaps. I
shall anyway tell it to my father. If you are a man and not just a
popular legend, that ought to hit you almost as hard as the other thing.
Because if I were you and had a friend like my father, I should want to
keep him.”

For the first time Mr. Jeffries withdrew his eyes from his enemy and
looked away, frowning. “You’ll hurt him a good deal,” he said quietly.
“When are you going to tell him?”

“To-morrow morning. I won’t spoil his evening, anyway.” Stacey got up.

“Just a minute!” said the older man sharply. “I suppose you understand
that you force me to play the same kind of game. I shall of course
endeavor to learn where—and how—you have known this girl, since I’ve
no doubt you got the story direct from her.”

“Oh, I should,” said Stacey indifferently. “It might prove
discreditable. Also I should fancy that what I am doing is a criminal
offence. I am really sorry for one thing,—to have taken up so much of
your time,” he added sincerely.

Mr. Jeffries considered him grimly. “You have peculiar compunctions,” he
observed.

Stacey went back to work. He was not particularly satisfied with the
interview and he felt rather soiled mentally. The threat of the story,
not the story itself, was what he had wanted to use. Once set going, the
story would only be punishment, and he was not at all interested in
punishment.

But that evening during dinner Mr. Carroll was called to the ’phone, and
when he returned he was jubilant.

“Good news, Stacey!” he cried, slapping his son on the back. “Colin
Jeffries has come around. Said you came up to see him and repeated the
things I’d said, told him how strongly I felt about it (why didn’t you
tell me?), and afterward he got to thinking things over till at last he
said: ‘To hell with principles! It’s been my experience that if Edward
Carroll wants a thing done the thing must be right.’ The strike’s off.
It’ll be in the papers to-morrow.”

Mr. Carroll settled himself again in his chair and beamed. As for
Catherine, she uttered a cry of joy, then suddenly looked across at
Stacey. But he avoided her eyes. However, though he felt smirched, he
also felt a fierce exultation.

Mr. Carroll leaned back in his chair. “Another thing Colin said,
Stacey,” he remarked proudly, “was that you were wasted on a job like
architecture, that you had—let’s see!—a concentrated directness of
purpose that would have got you most anywhere in business. I was to be
sure to tell you that.”

Stacey had looked up at this, startled. By Jove! the man was a good
sport! Stacey was filled with admiration, and it struck him that he had
been making Edwards’ mistake, had been seeing Colin Jeffries as a
symbol, not just as an individual. Always this haze of legend hanging
about everything! You had to tear it off.

Later, when he had gone upstairs to bed, he fell to meditating on the
whole affair. How incongruously people and things were tangled! The
great street-railway strike had come to an abrupt end because a year ago
he, Stacey Carroll, had run off to a disreputable road-house with a
strange reckless girl.

The entire front page of the paper next morning was occupied by Mr.
Jeffries’ statement. It was a masterpiece. It began by recapitulating
the facts—the doubled and tripled cost of material, the city council’s
refusal to allow a ten-cent fare, the company’s dilemma,—to the
accompaniment of persuasive figures. The _beau geste_ that followed was
all the more effective for their convincingness. There were other things
than gain in this world. There were human beings. We were our brothers’
keepers. (Stacey thought of Edwards’ remark, and grinned.) We owed them
a right to a decent existence even at the cost of sacrifice to
ourselves. A corporation was not a soulless machine. It had not, save in
theory, any existence of its own. (Stacey nodded approval. Good point!)
It was simply a group of individuals banded together, in accordance with
the law, for the prosecution of a legitimate business and for the public
service. The Vernon Street-Railway Company was such a group; and the
members of this group now, after a careful investigation of conditions,
made by themselves and by disinterested friends (here complimentary
mention was made of Mr. Carroll’s generous initiative), felt that they
could not at present, with harsh winter already here, require their
employees to live on a reduced wage. This decision was taken though it
meant not even a nominal profit but a considerable monthly deficit for
the company. Every effort at retrenchment would be made. Economy would
be rigid. The service might fall off slightly, but the public were
prayed to be lenient, remembering that the company was failing in its
business duty in order to accomplish a larger human duty.

There were also editorials.

Stacey felt no disdain,—only amusement and admiration. Mr. Jeffries’
telephoned message of last evening had revealed the man as not afraid to
face the truth squarely. He might live in an atmosphere of magniloquent
lies; that was because they served his purpose. At least, he was not
himself deceived by them.

Edwards was waiting for Stacey at the office. “By the Lord!” he cried,
waving the paper in one hand and wringing Stacey’s hand with the other,
“you did it! Damned if you didn’t! Now tell me: _what_ did you do?”

“Why, I just emphasized the things father had already said and pointed
out how much my father’s loyalty to Jeffries meant,” said Stacey
innocently.

Edwards stared at him. “The hell you did!” he exclaimed. “Carroll, you
did some sort of dirty work—awfully dirty work, I’ll bet!” And he
grinned with delight.

“Now look here, Edwards,” said Stacey soberly, “if you ever suggest that
to any one else, or if you even let on that I had anything to do in this
business at all, you’ll make things awfully unpleasant for me. Honestly!
That’s all I can tell you.”

“Well, I won’t, then. You can take my word for it.”

“Sit down,” said Stacey, dropping into a chair and lighting a cigarette.

“Can’t. Can’t possibly. I’ve got to get to work. Precious little I’ve
done these last days.”

Nevertheless, Edwards lingered. His jubilant mood had passed now, and he
looked at Stacey with a kind of awkward wistfulness.

“I say, Carroll!” he blurted out finally, “you remember that night of
the Legion meeting a year and more ago?” Stacey nodded. “Well, then I
felt the better man of us two—no, I don’t mean better—saner, perhaps.
You were”—he puzzled—“sort of twisted.”

(“Twisted,” thought Stacey. Again that word.)

Edwards continued after a moment, but with a shyness that in his rough
rugged personality was appealing. “Now you’ve—got something, some
solution for things. I don’t know what it is exactly, but there’s
something. I just wanted you to know that I recognized it—that’s all.”

“That’s awfully decent of you,” returned Stacey quietly, “but I don’t
think I’ve got anything really—any solution, I mean. Perhaps less than
ever.”

Edwards shook his head. “Tell you what I think it is,” he observed.
“You’ve come to see people as on a wrong track—struggling hard for
things that don’t count, food and clothes more than they need,
automobiles, fine houses, all things of existence that don’t get them
anywhere,—totally without desire for life. That’s an easy enough point
of view to take intellectually, but you _feel_ it, really live it
yourself. You live in a palace, but you’d as soon live in a hut. Because
_you_ don’t care any more for those futile things. Except,” he added,
“when they’re the bare essentials—as in this strike. Then you turn hard
as flint in your will to get them—for other people. Thanks, you know.
Thanks awfully! ’Bye!” He stumped out, waving his hand as though to ward
off an answer.

Stacey was touched. Edwards was an idealist, for all his rude
indomitable spirit and his contact with the rough working world; Stacey
knew that. Yet it was pleasant to have a friend who thought better of
you than you deserved.

There was one corollary to the strike. Four days later a grateful city
council voted to allow a flat ten-cent fare. So now every one was
satisfied—except the public, who had exactly what they merited, Stacey
thought. He laughed heartily, wondering a little whether Colin Jeffries
had not all along counted on this possibility.


                              CHAPTER XXVI

Christmas a year ago had been a ghastly festival for Stacey, that he had
gone through with somehow, his face stiffened into a fixed smile, his
voice saying mechanical things, while within him only one emotion had
been alive—the fierce, dizzy, dangerous craving to get away, from this,
from everything and every one. And it could not have been much gayer for
the others. Mr. Carroll had watched his son apprehensively, Jimmy Prout,
too, had fallen below his customary debonair form, and even Julie, who,
though more intelligent than people gave her credit for being, was not
subtle, had a grave anxious air. Also the thought of Phil’s recent death
and of Catherine grieving in that lonely squalid house hung over all of
them. Only Junior had been quite himself. He had in truth been the life
of the party.

Christmas this year was very different—Christmas Eve, especially. There
was not quite the old exuberance; that could never return in this grayer
sadder world,—or perhaps it was merely that Julie and Stacey and Jimmie
were grown-up now. But there was a genial friendly warmth in the
atmosphere. And then there were three children this year. They chattered
and laughed and stamped impatiently in the long hall that led from the
library to the big drawing-room where the tree was being prepared, and
when at last the drawing-room doors were thrown open and the brilliant
tree was displayed all three gave a howl of joy that would have
satisfied even Dickens.

Mr. Carroll was extraordinarily good on such occasions. He delivered the
presents—not too slowly, not too rapidly—from the great pile about the
base of the tree, with a pleasant easy grace and sometimes a little
speech. His own gifts he laid aside in a corner, to open later. They
made an imposing heap, too; for many people outside of the family
delighted to remember Mr. Carroll. Women, especially. He had great
success with women and remained quite unspoiled by it, accepting it with
apparent unconsciousness, or as a matter of course, as an aristocrat
accepts his position. Old wives of old friends, young wives of friends’
sons, daughters of friends, spinsters to whom he had been kind,—he
stirred all of them to liking. Perhaps it was Mr. Carroll’s good looks
or his grace of manner or his goodness of heart or his youthful spirit
or all of them together—Stacey did not know; but he recognized his
father’s fascination and looked with affectionate amusement at the
growing pile of prettily wrapped gifts. But it did not occur to Stacey
that he himself had inherited that attractiveness to women; for he had
inherited the unconsciousness of it along with the trait.

The three boys were making a tremendous racket, Julie was flushed and
talkative, Jimmy Prout, a colored paper cap on his good-looking head,
was lolling easily in his chair and drawing discordant wails from a toy
accordion. Only Catherine seemed subdued. She sat near Julie, whom she
liked warmly, and smiled and spoke quietly at times, but there was a
faint tremulousness about her lips and a sensitiveness, as to pain, in
the look of her eyes, that Stacey, who caught quickly the slightest
change in Catherine, perceived clearly. Perhaps it was her shyness in
all this confusion. Stacey did not know. She had not seemed quite
herself of late.

The party broke up finally. Julie took her husband and her delirious son
home, and Mr. Carroll and Stacey were left with Catherine and her two
boys. Jackie, exhausted with happiness, sat on his mother’s lap and
played sleepily with a mechanical mouse; Carter leaned against Stacey’s
knee; Mr. Carroll sat, relaxed, in a chair near his gifts, which he
showed no eagerness to open. The tree was lifeless, all its little
colored candles extinguished, and the floor was strewn with ribbon and
tissue-paper. The room held the quiet sadness that broods over a
festival that is finished.

Catherine spoke first, setting Jackie on his feet and rising. “Thank
you, Mr. Carroll, for everything,” she murmured. “I cannot—express how
good you have been. And you, Stacey.”

The men had risen, too. “Why, my dear girl,” Mr. Carroll returned,
“you’ve given us far more happiness than we you.”

She shook her head. “I must take the boys up now,” she said. “I’ve
promised, as it’s Christmas Eve, to stay with them just for once while
they undress.”

“You’ll come back, Catherine?” Stacey asked.

“Yes,” she replied, without looking at him, “I’ll come back.”

“Well, sir,” said Stacey gaily, when he was left with his father,
“aren’t you going to open all those bundles?”

“Presently! Presently!” Mr. Carroll replied. “I’ll carry them up to my
study.”

“Oh, I say!” Stacey protested, “I want to see what you’ve got.”

His father shook his head. “There’s something better than that waiting
for us,” he remarked, with a smile. “In the dining-room. A bottle of Pol
Roger and some sandwiches and so forth. Come along!”

“Well, rather!” Stacey exclaimed. “What a happy thought! I’m starved,
too,—to say nothing of my thirst. You never eat anything at dinner in
the excitement of this sort of thing.”

He wondered a bit that his father had not suggested their waiting for
Catherine, then understood suddenly that this was a handsome tribute to
himself, an effort to express wordlessly that they two, father and son,
were close friends who needed no one else to help them achieve intimacy.
But the first thing Mr. Carroll did was to prepare carefully and set
aside a plate of good things to eat. “For Catherine,” he explained.
Then, with a boyish smile at Stacey, he took the bottle from the cooler,
uncorked it, and poured the hissing pale-gold wine into the delicate
flaring glasses.

“Aren’t you ashamed to violate the laws of your country in this way?”
asked Stacey.

“I’m not doing that,” Mr. Carroll returned. “When it comes to whiskey I
do some considerable violating, but this champagne has been in my cellar
for years. To your health, son!”

“To yours, sir!” Stacey replied cordially. They touched glasses and
drank.

They talked, like the good friends they were, in an easy desultory way
while they sipped the wine and ate a little. But all at once Mr. Carroll
became silent, then suddenly looked across at his son.

“Stacey,” he said, “don’t be a fool!”

It was an odd speech, but the oddest thing about it was the tone, which
was not rough like the words, but pleading, almost cajoling. Mr. Carroll
might have been saying: “Do me a favor, won’t you?”

Stacey grinned. “Try not to,” he said. “Explain.”

But his father was filling Stacey’s glass, and, when he had finished
doing this, took more time than seemed necessary to replace the bottle
in the cooler and adjust the napkin about its neck. And even then he did
not reply at once.

“Well,” he said at last, with an obvious effort, and not looking at his
son, “I mean to say—why the devil don’t you ask Catherine to marry
you?”

Stacey, who had lifted his glass, started so that some of the yellow
liquid spilled over upon the table-cloth. He leaned back in his chair,
amazed and shocked.

“Why, sir, I—” he stammered, then broke off helplessly.

“Where will you find any one who’s shown herself as good and sweet and
courageous?” Mr. Carroll went on, almost belligerently, as though
Catherine’s merits were in question.

“Nowhere,” Stacey replied soberly. It was abhorrent to him to see his
deepest emotion, which he hardly admitted even to himself, spilled over
the table, like the wine.

“Well, then?”

“There is—Phil,” Stacey muttered.

“Phil is dead,” Mr. Carroll answered gravely. “We have all felt his
loss. He was a noble character. And you were his closest friend—”

“Just for that—”

“Just for that he would trust Catherine to you gladly. It would not be
he to stand between you.”

“No,” Stacey said in a stifled voice, “I suppose not. It is not Phil,
but— Please, sir!” he begged.

His father nodded. “Pretty cheeky of me, I admit, son,” he said gruffly.
“Wouldn’t blame you if you’d grown angry, but you understand how I mean
it—er—”

“That’s all right, dad. I know,” Stacey replied quickly.

They finished their supper in an awkward silence.

“Well,” said Mr. Carroll, rising, “I suppose I’d better get those
presents of mine and open them. There’ll be a lot of notes to write in
reply.”

Stacey followed him back to the littered drawing-room, mechanically
almost, because he did not know what else to do. “Want any help, sir?”
he asked.

“No, thanks,” said his father, his arms full of bundles. “I’ll be down
again after a while.” And he went out.

Stacey, left alone, stared after him, then walked restlessly down the
hall to the library. It was painful to him that his father should have
divined his feelings. But this was not the worst. The worst was that, if
his father had understood him, so, assuredly, had Catherine. This
grieved Stacey deeply. He had been so careful, he thought; he had never
meant to let her see what he felt for her. But she did know. Of course
she knew! How stupid he had been! No wonder he found her changed! He
could see it all now. His father, it seemed, believed that Catherine
could care for Stacey as he for her; but Stacey knew better. She was
shocked and saddened by her discovery, uncertain what to do—whether to
go away or not, generously anxious not to give pain, all her peace of
mind gone. Poor Catherine! Stacey was furious with himself. But this did
no good—not the least bit. He shook off his anger impatiently. What was
to be done about it? That was the point. How without putting things into
words—which always made them worse—was he to let Catherine know that
she could count on him, that he would be merely the friend she wanted
him to be? He was puzzling over it when she entered the room.

She looked startled when she saw that he was there alone, and paused
just inside the door as though half inclined to retreat. It hurt Stacey
keenly that she should be afraid of him—and with reason. He had risen
and stood facing her, but across the room from her.

“Won’t you—come in?” he asked. “Or would you rather go somewhere
else—the dining-room? There’s luncheon ready for you in there.”

She shook her head. “No,” she answered, “and I’m not hungry.” But she
did not come farther into the room, and, though she smiled waveringly,
Stacey saw the expression of pain—or perhaps fear—in her eyes.

“Catherine,” he began in a low voice, after a moment, “why is it so
hard—and dangerous—to be frank?”

“Ought it to be either?” she replied gently. She looked at him steadily
as she spoke, but the expression on her face was odd and troubled. There
was compassion in it, though; he felt that strongly. Of course! A
generous emotion would always be dominant in Catherine.

He came a little nearer to her. “Catherine,” he said, “I have not meant
ever to—” then broke off. It was worse to say things than to leave them
unspoken, and she would understand them anyway. He tried desperately to
call the whole subject off. “Oh,” he remarked, with a positively
sepulchral gaiety, “Christmas is too emotional! We’re good friends,
aren’t we? and that’s all that matters.”

But she continued to gaze at him in that same odd manner. The very pose
of her body made her seem like a creature at bay.

And suddenly Stacey’s thoughts were swept away like so much rubbish by a
wave of sure emotion. He took a step toward Catherine, stretching out
his hands impulsively, and all at once she was in his arms, trembling
and weeping, her lips raised to his.

“Ah, Stacey, didn’t you know I loved you?” she murmured presently. “Your
father knew.”

“Wh-when?”

“Since the evening you quarreled.”

“Oh,” Stacey cried, “was it—for love that you defended me?”

“You—might call it that.”

She drew a little away from him now and made him sit down beside her on
the divan.

“I think,” she said gently, holding his hand against her cheek, “that
men can hardly ever think in facts; they must think in patterns; and
anything that will not fit into a pattern they find wrong. But I _want_
to tell you the truth. I have always loved you, Stacey, always! It was
not disloyalty. I am sure Phil knew. I loved you _and_ him. It was
different. I _can’t_ make you understand.”

Stacey, very shaken and confused, and not understanding anything save
(humbly) that this was giving on a scale beyond what was credible, drew
her to him and kissed her hot face.

“Oh, Stacey,” she murmured, “I feel so—immodest!”

“Aha!” he interrupted, laughing unsteadily, “now who’s thinking not like
an individual but like the whole female sex?” And at this she, too,
laughed a little.

They sat there, close together, scarcely speaking. But it came over
Stacey in a rush that in his love for Catherine there was a touch of
what he had felt for Marian and something more—far more! Truth, fact.
It was complete. This was reality. There was nothing left out.

“Catherine,” he cried, “you are not only a grown woman; you are a little
girl, too. And so I’m not afraid of you any longer—I always was, a
little, you know. Now I’m not.”

“That’s odd,” she said shyly, “because I—have also been afraid of you,
a little.”

“But really? On account of my temper, I suppose. You’re right. I’ve a
rotten temper,” he said remorsefully.

She smiled. “No, not on account of your temper. I think,” she explained,
grave now, “it was the—the serenity you have achieved, Stacey dear.”

He drew away to stare at her, but before he could speak the door of the
room opened and Mr. Carroll entered, then paused abruptly.

Catherine saw him first and hurried to his side, clasping his hand in
both of hers and laying her head against his shoulder.

Mr. Carroll reached out his other hand to grasp Stacey’s and gazed at
his son with shining eyes.

“Oh, Mr. Carroll, do you mind?” Catherine cried softly.

“Mind, my dear!” he replied. “Isn’t it exactly what I’ve hoped for?” And
he bent over and kissed her cheek, then made her sit down beside him on
the divan, while Stacey stood a little way off, looking at them.

“Er—where are you thinking of living?” Mr. Carroll asked presently in a
carefully matter-of-fact voice, while he slowly clipped off the end of a
cigar.

Stacey flashed a swift questioning glance at Catherine. “Why,” he
remarked then deliberately, “what with the scarcity of houses and all,
we were rather thinking of staying on here.”

“Well,” said Mr. Carroll, “if you will, you will, I suppose.” But he had
paused to light his cigar before speaking, and it had taken him rather
longer than usual.

                                THE END.




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Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. A few obvious
typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note.


[End of _The Lonely Warrior_ by Claude C. Washburn]





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