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 re?ntered 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.
