“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 thermopyl? 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!”
