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 fa?ades 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.
