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.”
