“I’ll tell you about it soon—by to-morrow, I hope,” Stacey remarked, climbing back into the car. “You copy out that list for our men, will you? and tell them we’ll be ready at seven to-morrow morning.”
Traile nodded, and Stacey set off. He drove the car slowly along the avenue until he sighted a policeman, then drew up beside him.
“Where’s Dodge Street, please?” he asked. “And where would eight-sixteen be?”
The officer explained carefully, and Stacey drove on. It was a long way to the street he sought, but he reached it at last and found the number—a boarding-house in the section near the railway.
“Is James Monahan in?” he asked the woman who answered the ring.
“Hall bedroom on the third floor,” she replied, looking suspiciously at his uniform. “I don’t know if he’s in.”
Stacey went up the stairs and knocked at the door. There was a kind of growl from inside that might have been meant for: “Come in”; so Stacey entered the room.
It was a small bare room, at the other end of which, beside the bed, an enormous red-haired Irishman stood like a herculean statue. He was bent forward in a half-crouching attitude and held menacingly at shoulder height, grasped in both hands, a chair, with the obvious intention of hurling it at the intruder.
Stacey involuntarily started. Then a gleam of appreciation came into his eye. The man’s attitude was magnificent. Rodin might have posed him.
“Well, upon my word, Monahan,” he said easily, “you give a fellow a cordial reception!” And he dropped into a chair—the only other one in the room.
The man lowered his chair slowly, a look of blank amazement, changing gradually to gloom, coming over his face.
“Christ Almighty! Captain!” he muttered finally. “So it’syouthat’s come to arrest me!”
“It isnot!” cried Stacey angrily, “and you ought to know it isn’t!”
The man shook his red hair back from his forehead and stood there, gazing at Stacey.
“Sit down, can’t you?” said Stacey sharply. “You take up too damned much room that way.”
A faint smile curved the giant’s mouth and wrinkled the corners of his eyes. He sat down carefully, the chair creaking beneath him.
Stacey reflected, staring at him thoughtfully. “Monahan,” he began at last, “I found your name on a list of men I was to go out and get for that Sunday night row. What’s the meaning of that?”
The Irishman’s face flamed. “I didn’t have a thing to do with it!” he burst out.
“Oh, hell! I know you didn’t!” said Stacey impatiently. “You were,” he continued slowly, “the most unmanageable man in my battalion (and the one I cared most for,” he added to himself). “You were quarrelsome, you had fits of sullenness, you made me trouble on an average about seven days a week, and you broke every rule it was possible to break, but you wouldn’t any more have been part of a mob to pick on amanthan you’d have turned tail and run in an attack. Now what is this charge about?”
A slow smile had spread over Monahan’s vast face. “That’s a hell of a fine character you’ve given me, Captain dear!” he observed.
“It might be worse. Go on. Clear this thing up.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the whole story, Captain,” he began. “I don’t hold much with niggers, but I don’t hold neither with getting five thousand men together—real bold-like—and going out and lynching one nigger. And Sunday night when I seen what was doing I was pretty mad. But not half as mad as I was when right in front of my nose a bunch of white-livered sons of bitches got hold of the mayor, who was acting like a man, and strung him up—by God! strung him up to a pole! I was there, Captain, and I pitched in and I fought the dirtiest I knew how—’n’ you know whether we was trained to fight dirty or not. And by ’n’ by I kicked one man in the guts and another in the knee—me getting madder ’n’ madder because all th’ time there was the mayor swinging and twitching up there—but some one else got up the pole ’n’ cut him down before I could get there, ’n’ then some damn cold-blooded skunk of a photographer took a flash-light picture, ’n’ then all of a sudden there’s Sergeant McCarthy of thepolice beside me, ’n’ he says: ‘By God! Monahan! I didn’t think it of you!’ So there I am in the photograph at headquarters ’s clear as life, and there’s McCarthy to testify I was one of them that lynched th’ mayor.” He paused, an expression of resentment and resignation on his face.
Stacey considered him thoughtfully. “Why don’t you go around to police headquarters, give yourself up, and tell the truth?”
Monahan shook his head. “There wouldn’t anybody believe me, Captain,” he said sullenly. “ ‘Fat story, me lad, withyourrecord!’ they’d say. They’d laugh at me.”
“What do you mean—‘your record’?”
“I’ve been twice in the jug, Captain, since I got back,” the Irishman growled, “and I’ll tell you about that, too, if you’ll listen.
“When I got back from across—and I wish to God I’d never come back!—I got me a job at the packing-house. Well, who should I find for my foreman but a white-livered skunk called Barton? ’N’ I’ll tell you about Barton, too. Barton, he got exempted from the draft as being the sole support of one poor aged mother ’n’ two poor little sisters. Now the truth about that skunk was, so help me God! that he never done one thing for them—not a red cent had he given them for years, Captain! All the little they had come to them from a brother’s son of the old lady.
“But that ain’t all—not half, Captain!”
Monahan paused and thrust his shaggy red head forward. His eyes gleamed dangerously.
“I had a girl, Captain, when I went away,” he went on, in a deep rumbling voice, “and a good girl she was. But this Barton, he comes shining around and shining around, ’n’ she falls for him like a little fool, ’n’ after a while he goes ’n’ marries her,—which he wouldn’t have done, Barton wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been that she had two brothers, big strong up-standing men who sort of urged him on.
“Well, when I see this skunk there for my foreman things just busted up inside me, ’n’ the very first day at th’ noon hour I laid for him in a quiet place in the yard and I says: ‘Now fight, you God-damned, white-livered son of a bastard German skunk!’ ’N’ Barton hollered for help and a lot of men come running, but not before I’d handled him a little rough—though not half what I could have done with more time. Well, would you believe it, Captain? for that little bit of righteous trifling th’ judge give me six days!”
The aggrieved innocence in the Irishman’s face was too much. Stacey struggled, then gave up and burst out laughing. “Go on! Go on, Jim!” he cried at last.
Monahan, too, had laughed, finally, but at Stacey’s words his face grew dark again. “When I come out,” he continued angrily, “I went back for my job, ’n’ they wouldn’t give it to me, the rotten skunks! ’N’ they’d blacklisted me, too. Not another job in any packing-house could I get.” He paused, with a growl.
Stacey considered him, at once sympathetically and curiously. He noted that in recounting the damning evidence of the flash-light picture and McCarthy’s misinterpretation of his presence at the lynching, Monahan had displayed only a melancholy resentment against fate; it was his later discovery that an organization was against him which shook him with anger. Now McCarthy’s remark had been grossly unjust, and the attitude of Monahan’s employers was not altogether so; yet Stacey understood the distinction—understood it emotionally. His heart went out to Monahan. They were kin.
But the Irishman continued his tale. “ ’N’ then I said I’d do them dirt, ’n’ I done it, Captain. There was a strike among the boys before long, ’n’ ’twas me more than any other that brought it about. ’N’ they knew ’twas me, the dirty packers! but never a thing could they get on me. ’N’ th’ strike cost them money—the only thing that hurts a packer, Captain. Then there were scabs ’n’ fighting, ’n’ I couldn’t keep out of it, ’n’ that time they caught me, ’n’ the judge—a decent sort of man and not knowing the rights of the story neither—give me a month, ’n’ they was sore because they couldn’t fix it so I’d get five years.
“ ’N’ that’s all, Captain. But you can see how I can’t go to thepolice, quiet-like, ’n’ tell them th’ truth about Sunday night.”
Stacey saw. He meditated.
“Well, look here!” he said at last. “I didn’t say anything about you or why I didn’t bring you in, but Traile” (when he spoke to Monahan Stacey did not say “Lieutenant Traile”) “Traile, though he didn’t know your name was on my list, happened to say something that would lead the authorities to believe you’d left town, along with a good many others. Why don’t you?”
“I dunno,” replied the Irishman sullenly. “I didn’t like to beat it as if I’d really been one of them skunks that lynched th’ mayor.”
“Did you have money? Because I can—”
“Lord bless you, yes, Captain!” the man interrupted. “The boys come ’n’ offered me all I’d’ve needed.”
Stacey gazed at him. “D’you mean thatourboys did that?” he demanded. “Peters and Swanson and Petitvalle and the rest of them?”
“Sure they did!”
“Then, damn it all! they’ve known about this charge against you ever since I got them together, and not one of them’s come to me and told me!”
Monahan grinned. “Sure not, Captain!” he replied. “They done what you told them to, because you’re you, ’n’, as far as I can see, they’re enjoying themselves doing it, it not being what you might call strictly according to rule. But they didn’t any of them come ’n’ lay their curly heads on your breast ’n’ sob out their own little troubles.”
Stacey fumed, then got over it, and fell into thought. Here were these men who’d go to hell with him—at least, Burnham had said they would—yet he couldn’t get at them, not really. What difficult secret souls they had! He sighed. Yet somehow he was proud of their reserve.
“Besides,” Monahan remarked, as a final shot, “I give them orders they was to say nothing to you about me.”
“Oh, you did!” said Stacey drily. “You’ve been giving too many orders. It’s my turn. Now listen to me, you damned red-headed fire-brand! To-morrow afternoon I’ll try to see General Wood and I’ll tell him about you. He’s a square man and white, and I think he’ll fix the thing up. But, just in case he shouldn’t, you’ll decamp, beat it, quit this lovely city, right now. And you’ll take money from me to do that. (Confound it!” he reflected, “I’ll have to borrow money from Traile to get home myself!) And you’ll let me know where you are, but not till to-morrow night, so thatIwon’t know when I see the general.”
A broad grin had spread over Monahan’s face, giving it an expression of gigantic good humor. “Faith! Captain,” he drawled, with a touch of brogue in his intonation, “as an example of sacred military discipline you’re in a class by yourself, you are! An Irishman you are at heart, Captain. And it’s sorry I am to have to disobey you. But I’d feel fine, wouldn’t I? to have General Wood saying sternly: ‘And where is this man, Captain Carroll?’ and you replying sweetly: ‘I gave him money ’n’ told him to quit the town, General!’ No, no, Captain! Right here will I sit ’n’ wait for you to come ’n’ say: ‘All is forgiven, Jim dear!’ or for thepolice to come ’n’ get me.”
Stacey, half furious, half delighted, capitulated. “Oh, well,” he said, “I hope you’ll go out and get something to eat now and then.” He rose to go, then paused. “Look here! You told me about all this. Why couldn’t you have told Traile?” he asked curiously. “He’s a good sort and he knows every one here. He’d have cleared things up.”
But the expression of sullen hostility had returned to Monahan’s face. “Traile’s decent enough, but a swell,” he growled.
“Rot! Traile’s father’s rich; so’s mine. No difference at all. I’m a swell, too,” Stacey observed, almost gaily.
“You can call yourself names at your pleasure, Captain,” said Monahan, “but let any one else say that about you and I’ll break his head.”
Stacey laughed and departed.
He and Traile found more zest in their work next day. Not being fools, they accepted Peters’ quiet advice that all six of them make the arrests together. Even so, they had their hands full. These, thought Stacey grimly more than once, were the men they were after. Four they took, with difficulty, in the attic of a disreputable boarding-house, four in a brothel, and five on a river barge after a running fight during which Traile got a knife thrust in his arm and Jackson a bullet in the shoulder. The rest they picked up separately or in pairs. But by five in the afternoon they had got them all—all twenty. Tired and grimy, Traile with his arm in a sling, they reported to the colonel.
“Good work, gentlemen! Good work!” he said soberly. “You even got Voorhies?”
“We did, sir,” replied Traile quietly, “but with two bullets in him, which the captain here put there on my account. Two of our men are hurt—Jackson shot in the shoulder—at the hospital—will be all right; Morgan laid out with a brick—came around after a while—a bit groggy now, that’s all.”
“And you, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing, sir. A scratch. Hardly notice it.”
“You’ve done well. I’ll let the general know. I think this ends it. You can retire into the bosoms of your families and cease calling me ‘sir’—always a strain on National Army men, I observe. Congratulations, Captain Carroll.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Stacey replied. “There was a favor I wanted to ask, sir,” he added. “Do you think it would be possible for me to see General Wood for a very few minutes?”
“I’ll find out,” said the colonel. “I feel sure he’ll be glad to see you.” And he left the room.
“Tell you all about it when I come out, Traile,” Stacey remarked abstractedly, thinking over what words he should use.
“This way, Captain,” said the colonel, returning presently. He led Stacey down a hall to a door at which he knocked. He opened it, and Stacey went through, alone, into the room beyond.
It was a large office-room, with in the centre a desk, at the further side of which General Wood was seated.
Stacey saluted stiffly.
But the general rose and held out his hand across the desk. “Come in, Captain Carroll,” he said, with his pleasant smile, and shook Stacey’s hand. “Sit down. I see you wear the D. S. C. ribbon. My congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The general considered him. “I’m glad you asked to see me, Captain,” he continued, sitting back in his chair, “because Colonel M—— has just told me of the extraordinary success you and Lieutenant Traile have had in making arrests. I have an entirely unmilitary curiosity to know how you did it.”
“Oh, well, sir,” said Stacey, “we didn’t really play fair. It happens that, though I’m not from Omaha, twenty-two of my men live here. I organized twenty of them, sir, and had sixteen of them go out in civilian clothes and locate the men on our lists.”
The general stared, then began to smile. Finally he laughed—a pleasant kindly laugh. “Most unmilitary,” he remarked, “but efficient.” Suddenly he became thoughtful. “And your men were willing to do that for you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s unusual. You say twenty out of the twenty-two?”
“Yes, sir. One of the other two is in bed with pneumonia. It’s about the twenty-second man that I should like to speak to you, sir.”
“Go on.”
“His name is Monahan, sir, a wild Irishman, the most difficult man I ever had and the best. He was on my second list of men to arrest.”
“Too bad! You arrested him?”
“No, sir.”
The general’s face grew grave. “Why not?” he inquired sharply.
“Because he is totally innocent, sir,” Stacey returned steadily, “but couldn’t prove it in court.”
“We’ll waive for a moment your action in not carrying out orders. How do you know he’s innocent?”
“Because, sir, with all his unruliness, this is exactly the sort of thing hecouldn’tdo. And, besides, he told me the real story himself. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
And Stacey very swiftly repeated Monahan’s story. As he did so, he watched the general’s face closely. A little gleam, Stacey thought, came into the candid blue eyes at the mention of Monahan’s black-listing. Leonard Wood, too, knew what it meant to be a man against a combination. When Stacey had finished the general made some hasty notes on a scratch-block. Then he looked up again.
“I’m glad you brought this matter up to me, Captain,” he said soberly. “I’ll see to it that the charge against Monahan is dismissed. I want every man punished who was implicated in Sunday night’s shameful affair; I don’t want any man dragged into it on account of something else he may have done. No taking advantage of this to settle old scores. However,” he concluded, with a smile, “you can’t expect me to approve officially of your action, can you?”
“Certainly not, sir,” said Stacey cheerfully. He rose.
But the general detained him. “Captain,” he asked, his mouth twitching slightly, “when you were in the service did you frequently employ your—er—admirable spirit of personal initiative?”
“No, sir,” said Stacey calmly. “Only once.”
“And—excuse my curiosity!—was it because of that occasion that you received your decoration?”
“Oh, no, sir, quite decidedly not!” answered Stacey reproachfully.
The general laughed and stood up. “Good-bye, Captain Carroll, and thanks,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” returned Stacey. They shook hands.
“Come on, Traile,” he said, a moment later. “Let’s drive like the devil over to Monahan’s place—on Dodge Street it is. I’ll tell you all about it on the way.”
But, with nothing left for him to do, apathy descended on Stacey. Despite Traile’s pleading he would not remain after the next night, when he took a late train for Vernon. He did not want to see Traile any longer. He did not want to see any one. He desired only to get away from this city. But he did not for a moment fancy that the train would carry him to any place better or even different. All life was like that. You travelled and travelled and got nowhere. One of those amusement booths where you sat perfectly still and received an illusion of motion from a painted landscape rolled swiftly past you.
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 tobepresident 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 forhimsometimes, 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 letmesay ‘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 thatyouwere interested in the suffering of Viennese children.”
Stacey gazed away absently at the gleaming city. “I don’t see anything strange about that,” he said finally. “There’s been enough suffering in the world, especially among children. You think, Phil, that I have some malevolent philosophy of life. You’re mistaken. I haven’t any philosophy. It’s only that every day I run across suffering—so much of it—that’s caused deliberately. Then I get a craving to destroy. That’s all,” he concluded listlessly.
“Not so much deliberately as stupidly,” Phil murmured.
But Stacey was walking up and down again. Presently he paused before the large window that opened into the sitting-room. He gazed in at Catherine and his father.
Phil, who had followed Stacey and stood now at his shoulder, smiled. “That always seems to me an unfair advantage to take of people,” he said, “to watch them when they don’t know you’re there—like looking at them in their sleep. No,—worse than that. For their personality is one thing when it’s focussed on you, quite another focussed on some one else. You’re not meant to see the other. It contains no adaptation to you.”
“That’s why it’s a relief,” Stacey returned. “For a brief moment you get the sense of being yourself abolished, and experience peace.”
“H’m!” said Phil reflectively. “Also,” he added, after a pause, “I dare say this matter of personal adaptation to the individual accounts for the emptiness of talk—and thought—in a group. The adaptation is necessarily lacking.”
Stacey smiled faintly. “Always thorough, Phil, aren’t you?” he observed. He had a strange shadowy sense of being back in his old pre-war relationship to Phil. There was pleasure in this for Stacey, but melancholy also, since he knew it was an illusion. He continued to gaze in through the window at his father and Catherine.
Mr. Carroll was leaning forward in his chair, with a certain courtliness, and smiling; Catherine’s face in the light from the electric lamp appeared mobile and full of expression. They seemed to be talking freely.
“I never saw Catherine so bold before,” Stacey remarked finally, turning away. “I swear I’m jealous.”
“Oh,” Phil returned quietly, “she’s always shyer with you than with any one else.”
“Is she? That’s silly. Now what do you suppose they’re talking about?” asked Stacey idly.
Philip Blair smiled. “You, no doubt.”
“Horrid thought! Come on! Let’s go in.”
“We were watching you from outside the window,” he announced maliciously, as they reëntered the room. Catherine flushed. “Phil said—”
“Oh, shut up, Stacey!” Phil interrupted. “I won’t have my wife teased. By the way, your friend, Mrs. Latimer, has been here a number of times.”
Stacey was interested. “You like her, Catherine?” he inquired.
“Very much,” she replied, the old shyness back again, stronger than ever, in voice and face. Perhaps she was vexed with it and struggled against it, for: “The last time she came she brought her daughter, Mrs. Price, with her,” Catherine added, then bit her lip, lest she should have said something awkward.
“Marian?” Stacey exclaimed. But he was not perturbed. He had forgotten Marian completely in the last week. He was merely surprised; for he somehow could not fancy Marian and Catherine together.
“Mrs. Latimer is a fine woman, with an affected idiot of a husband,” Mr. Carroll observed. “Can’t say I care much for Marian.”
Stacey smiled, almost imperceptibly. What a straightforward loyal character his father had, he thought. Everything clear, black-and-white. And never more kindly than here now with Phil and Catherine. Stacey had a feeling of looking at his father from a long way off—or—or—at the reflection of him in a mirror. What an odd blurred evening—and pleasant! He fell into a reverie while the others talked. Why should there be this wistfulness about his father? Mr. Carroll had a strong personality; he could manage men; decisions snapped, clean-cut, from his mind. Perhaps he was wistful because he had no grown-up life outside of business. His ideas on general subjects were immature.
But before long Mr. Carroll rose. “Come on, Stacey!” he remarked. “Phil has to go to work early to-morrow, and Catherine must be tired, too. You don’t mind a grandfather calling you by your first name?” he asked her, with a pleasant smile.
“ ’Night, Phil!” said Stacey at the door, and shook his friend’s hand casually.
“Nice people, very!” his father observed, after they had driven for some minutes in silence. “But I don’t think Phil looks well, do you?”
“No?” returned Stacey, surprised. “I thought he seemed gayer to-night than for a long while. He’s always been atrociously thin, you know.”
But the strange soft sense of haziness vanished in the night. Next morning, after breakfast, Stacey stood looking absently out of his study window, with no sense but of a poignant emptiness.
Parker came up after a time to say that Mrs. Latimer had called to see him; but even at this Stacey felt nothing save a little surprise.
He went down at once and greeted Mrs. Latimer pleasantly. She looked, he thought, rather worn, faintly older; but he said to himself that this was probably the effect of the cruel morning light. Moreover, as soon as she spoke and smiled, the impression vanished, as carelessly as it had come.
“Of course you don’t want to see me or you’d have come to my house,” she said, “but I really wanted to see you, so I couldn’t resist coming. Silly, wasn’t it?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “An excellent idea. What the Italians callgeniale. 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.
It occurred to Stacey, however, that he had spent more than he could afford lately and had nothing with which to go on his travels. And this seemed an excellent excuse for remaining at home. But he presently recollected that on one War Christmas his father had made him a gift of Liberty bonds. He sold one, with a sense of resignation. He did not feel irony in the ease with which he could solve all financial difficulties, for the idea of personal virtue, asceticism, was absent from his mind. He was sending all that money to Vienna because he wanted to send it, not because he felt he ought to; he kept out two hundred dollars a month because he wanted them; and he sold a thousand-dollar bond now simply because if he was to go on a journey he needed money.
It is much more difficult to understand why he was going on a journey at all. He was not affectionate enough to be going simply because Mrs. Latimer had asked him to. And one can hardly take seriously the reason he gave his sister, Julie.
He drove around to her house the afternoon before his departure, and on his way caught sight of Irene Loeffler walking briskly toward him and signalling violently. He waved his hat, but dashed by her in a burst of speed.
“You know, Julie,” he said, a few minutes later, sprawling on the davenport in his sister’s living-room, “it’s all due to you that I’m going away.”
“To me!”
“Absolutely! You lure me to your house, and then you turn an unscrupulous woman loose on me, and she makes my life unbearable, and I—”
“Who?” cried Julie, her eyes dancing.
“Who?” Stacey returned. “Who but Irene?”
Julie giggled. “Wh-what in the world has Irene done to you?” she demanded.
He sat up straight and gazed at his sister. “Jul-ia,” he said, “you know me to be modest, you know how little I esteem my personal charm, caring more for simple things such as goodness and—”
“Oh, yes,” Julie interrupted, “I know all that! I want to hear about Irene.”
“Therefore,” he continued, “when, from never having seen the lady at all, I began to see her almost daily, and, when I didn’t see her, to get invitations to functions given by her or functions at which she was to be present, it was long before I suspected purpose in all this. But, Julie, though modest I am not a fool. Things have now reached such a point that I cannot take a walk in the park or motor anywhere without meeting Irene. And I tell you there is evil design in all this, and I’m going away.” Julie was giggling increasingly. “Only five minutes ago I evaded her—but not for long. My senses are growing as abnormally acute as those of Roderick Usher in Poe’s story.” He paused and listened apprehensively. “And, in his words, ‘I tell you that she now stands without the door!’ ”
At this moment the door bell did, indeed, ring. Stacey sprang up.
“You see? Good-bye, Julie! I’m going out the back way,” he concluded, and fled.
As for Julie, she threw herself down on the davenport and laughed helplessly, in which position Irene presently found her.
No one seeing Stacey with his sister could have reconciled him with the Stacey who set himself against society and flew into passions at his impotence to destroy. Yet there was no pose in his attitude toward her. Pose demands a marked consciousness of self, and this he was assuredly without. He behaved in that way because he felt that way when he was with Julie, which was not so very often; and he was obscurely grateful to her for making him feel so. He liked his sister better than in the old days. She had an ingenuous manner that concealed a rich sense of humor, and he was inclined to think that this was characteristic of her attitude toward all things, that, though her surface simplicity was unassumed, beneath it lay, not indeed a deliberate philosophy, but a mature apprehension of life. But he did not waste much thought on analysis of Julie; he accepted her as a pleasant fact.
Stacey, then, set off for New York the next afternoon. Julie was at the train to bid him good-bye, and so was Jimmy Prout, who tossed a book into his brother-in-law’s lap, and sat down opposite him. Stacey considered Jimmy’s agreeable face. Jimmy did no one any harm; on the contrary, he did people good by being such a companionable person. Why, thought Stacey, couldn’thebe like Jimmy? If turbulence of mind solved anything, got one anywhere, there would be something to say for it; since it didn’t, since it led only to impotent fuming, what was the use of it? But, even at the moment of putting the question to himself, Stacey was disconsolately aware that he might as well ask what was the use of the tides, since they only moved back and forth.
“You know, Stacey,” Julie was saying, “I’m over thirty, but every time I see any one off on the train I feel thirteen. I feel a positively aching desire to go too.”
“Come on along,” he returned. “Nobody I’d like better to have with me.”
“That’s nice of you, Stacey,” she said gratefully. “I would. I’d come just this way, without a thing, if it weren’t for Junior—he’s having whooping-cough. I’ve always wanted to do something impetuous like that.”
“Have you now?” asked Stacey, mildly surprised.
But Julie, who was sitting next the window of her brother’s section, suddenly gasped and burst into laughter. “Oh, Jimmy, Stacey, please, please, help me stop!” she cried, in a smothered voice, pressing her handkerchief against her mouth. “Oh, shemustn’tsee me in this state!”
“Who mustn’t?” demanded her husband.
“I-Irene Loeffler. She—she’s come to see Stacey off,” Julie stammered weakly. “She’ll be in the car in a moment. Oh, dear!”
Jimmy laughed, too, and Julie made a tremendous effort at self-control, as Irene strode briskly down the car and paused beside them. She held a book in her hand.
“Hello!” she said abruptly. “Who’s going away?”
“I am,” and “he is,” returned Stacey and Jimmy, who had risen politely.
“That so? Where you going? Sit down! Sit down!”
“New York first,” Stacey answered cautiously.
Irene dropped into the seat beside Jimmy and crossed her legs. “I was looking for Effie Prince,” she remarked casually. “Supposed to be leaving on this train. Most likely couldn’t get her trunks packed in time. Never can. Here!Youtake the book I brought for her.”
“Thanks,” said Stacey. “Then you’re not going away? Sorry! I hoped you were when I saw you.”
The girl flushed faintly at this, but her embarrassment was covered by Julie, who gave a desperate choking cough.
“Here!” said her husband gravely. “Take another pastille, Julie,” and he drew a box from his pocket. “It’s that kid of ours,” he explained. “Given her whooping-cough—not a doubt of it. You’ll both have it now, probably.”
But the conductor was calling “All Aboard,” and the three departed hastily, Irene giving Stacey a mannish grip of the hand.
Stacey waved at them through the window, then stretched out in his seat and picked up Irene’s book. He laughed suddenly. It was “Les Chansons de Bilitis.”
It was, anyway, an amusing departure, and Stacey felt in quite a good humor.
But it was not a prelude to an amusing trip. Stacey wandered from city to city drearily. Except for being larger, they were no worse than Vernon; if they had been, they might have seemed less unbearable. They were merely empty—one after the other; empty places inhabited by empty people. New York sickened him. It wallowed in wealth, dazzled the eyes with it; rugs, imported motor cars, china, lights, theatres, food, more food,—there was an absorbed attempt to minister to every demand of the most exacting body, with, so far as Stacey could see, not a thought behind it all. The “Follies” were typical—gorgeous color, selected girls, riot of noise—not a word spoken that could reach beyond the intelligence of a sub-normal child. Stacey yawned through the show, to the justifiable annoyance of his companion, an old college friend, who had paid God knew what for the tickets. A hundred magazines stared at Stacey from the subway book-stalls, with a hundred pictures of sweet American girls on their covers, and who could tell how many hundred stories of thwarted Bolshevik plots among the advertisements inside?
Stacey fled to Philadelphia, thence to Baltimore, then up to Boston. He went to dinners and dances and dinner-dances in one place and another. Débutantes a little nakeder and bolder than he remembered them in past years. Quite in keeping with everything else. The whole country singing one vast jazz song of praise to the body, sole preoccupation how to gratify every instinct it possessed. It was callousness carried further than was credible, since across the ocean were thousands who, too, were thinking only about their bodies—perforce, being unable to get sufficient food and clothes to keep them alive.
He gazed at it all with bitter aloofness. What could he do about it? What could any one do about a world like this? There was a desolate emptiness in his heart that inhibited even rage. He longed for annihilation, the absolute eternal extinction of self. He had certainly altered in these last months. Even he, who tried not to think of himself, could not help perceiving this. His reactions were more jerky, disconnected with any former reactions, incoherent. He was not a strong scornful soul, detached and looking at everything in one manner; he was a series of sterile unrelated emotions, with the only continuous theme that ran through them all, disgust.
He gave it up at last and returned to Vernon—why, he could not have explained. He wrote no one that he was coming.
It was a morning in early December when he got back. Snow was thick on the city. The taxi that Stacey hired splashed through slush in the centre of town and slewed madly, despite its chains, on the boulevard leading to the Carroll house.
Stacey flung himself on the couch in his study and presently fell asleep. He did not wake until Parker knocked at the door to call him to luncheon. Two hours of unconsciousness. Well, that was so much gained, anyway.
He spent as many hours of the afternoon as he could in bathing and dressing, then at last left the house and tramped away through the snow. He had no objective in mind, but after a while, finding himself near Philip Blair’s house, went up the steps to it and rang the bell.
Catherine opened the door. At first he thought that she looked wan and tired; but she smiled with pleasure at sight of him, and the impression vanished.
“I’m awfully glad you’re back, Stacey,” she said. “Phil was saying last night that it seemed years you’d been away. Come in. Marian—Mrs. Price—is here.”
He felt the faintest touch of surprise,—no more, for he was almost done with correlating facts. His mind no longer worked that way. He was rapidly growing unable to see people in relation to one another, and so to find one relation natural, another curious. Unity was beginning to desert his impressions. Each of them seemed to come separately.
Thus he was scarcely at all surprised when, at sight of Marian, whom he had nearly forgotten, his old passion for her leaped up like sudden flame. He shook her hand, with a word or two of casual greeting, but his eyes met hers electrically. He made no effort to combat the sensation. If anything, he was grateful for it. And the antagonism, as strong as the attraction, that formerly she had aroused in him, was absent, since he was living in the isolated moment.
Marian was lovely, he thought, sick with an unrecognized desire for loveliness. She wore a toque of white fur that fitted close to her small head, and there were white furs over her shoulders. She was a little thinner than before her marriage, and her delicate features were as clear and fine as those of a silver goddess on some Syracusan coin.
They all three sat down and talked, somehow.
“Well, where have you been this time, Stacey?” Marian asked gaily. “Fighting more dragons? Doing dozens of herculean tasks—Augean stables, hydras, taking Atlas’ place for a time?” She gave him a malicious smile.
Clearly Marian was as hostile as ever. No matter! On the contrary, he was instinctively glad of her hostility. It revealed warmth.
Oddly enough, it was Catherine who flushed at it. Stacey noted the flush with surprise. Oh, well, everything was odd! There was no use in trying to clear it up. It was also incomprehensible that, feeling as he was feeling toward Marian, he should not impatiently desire to have Catherine go away and leave them together. Yet he desired nothing of the sort.
“No,” he replied peaceably to Marian, “I’ve merely been boring myself to extinction in a stupid world. Any time that Atlas wants to let the sky fall on it he may, so far as I’m concerned. But,” he added, “it’s gratifying to have you make all your metaphors Greek, Marian.”
She bit her lip at this, and her eyes shone dangerously for an instant. But presently she smiled again.
Stacey turned to Catherine. “How are all of you?” he inquired.
“Not very brilliant, I’m afraid,” she said, a trifle wearily. “We’ve all got colds—all except Carter, who’s still at school now. I’ve got a cold, Phil’s got a bad cold, and Jackie’s got a horrid cold.”
“Poor old chap! Where is he?”
“Upstairs. You can hear him cough regularly every thirty-two seconds. I timed him last night.” She made a brave attempt to pass it off lightly. But Stacey perceived that she was worn out, and felt sorry for her.
“Can’t I go up and sit with him and let you rest?” he asked. He was quite sincere in the demand, too; which was as strange as everything else, since his passion for Marian was bubbling in his veins like a Circean draft.
“No—thank you,” said Catherine, with a rare beautiful smile. “He’s asleep now. I’ll go up when he wakes. I’m afraid,” she went on, with involuntary formality, and turning to Marian, “that I don’t seem very cordial. Really I’m glad you came—both of you.”
“Truly?” asked Marian prettily. “Then I’ll stay a few minutes longer. I was afraid I might be tiring you.”
Stacey considered her. He felt that she was hard beneath her beauty. She was not pitiful. She was not interested in sickness. It annoyed her. Yet this judgment made not the slightest difference in what he was feeling toward her. The only thing that affected him was his perception that she was somehow tense, and that she was staying for him. This stirred him.
A strange trio—even Stacey could feel that; yet they managed to talk with apparent ease—of Vernon, New York, the weather,—anything. What a thing training was!
But a small pathetic whine came from upstairs. Catherine rose hastily. “It’s Jackie,” she explained. “You’ll excuse me for a few minutes, won’t you?”
“Hadn’t we better go?” Marian asked.
“No, please! I’ll give him his medicine and get him to sleep again and be back down presently.”
“Not a thing I can do? You’re sure?” Stacey begged.
“No, truly, thank you,” Catherine replied, and hurried out.
Neither Stacey nor Marian moved, but their eyes met instantly. They gazed at each other in silence. Stacey’s heart beat heavily; he could feel the throb of it chokingly in his throat. Marian’s eyes were inscrutable, but her lips were shut closely in an expression of sullen anger.
At last he leaned forward. “Marian!” he said.
She did not reply, but her fine nostrils dilated slightly. There was another moment of silence.
“Are you happy?” he demanded brusquely.
“No!” The monosyllable seemed to spring forth without her volition. “You know I’m not, Stacey Carroll,” she added presently, with concentrated bitterness. “Why do you want to insult me?”
“I—don’t!” he replied, a sudden touch of pity softening his passion.
They were, in some strange, partial, imperfect manner, made for each other; for they caught each other’s emotions unerringly. The hostility went out of Marian’s face.
“I couldn’t have believed,” she said, after a moment, “that any one could be so unbearably stupid as Ames is, hour after hour, day after day.” Hatred flared up again in her eyes—but not hatred of Stacey this time, he knew. “And—brutal!” she added, between her teeth.
Stacey could follow her thoughts as clearly as though they had been small distorted goblins leaping up and vanishing in the air. The cult of her body,—Marian had always had it, refined upon it fastidiously. Not at all vain, she had been aloofly physically proud. What she had felt for her own body was precisely what her father felt for his Chinese vases. And now she had had to turn this one cherished possession over to a new and despised master. Stacey caught it all, not through such analysis, but in a swift intuitive glimpse. He writhed. “It’s all your fault, yours!” her eyes seemed to say to him. He sprang up.
“Marian!” he cried, and strode across to her chair.
But she had risen, too, and her arms were about his neck almost as soon as his own encircled her. She lifted her lips to his with a long tremulous sigh. A flood of passion submerged them. When he released her she tottered, shaking, and clung to the back of the chair. He had never seen her so moved—he could think this even while his own heart bounded. Her face was glowing, transfigured and beautiful—oh, beautiful!
“Ames—will not—be—home—to-night!” she stammered.
He nodded, dizzily, holding her hands so tight that he must have hurt them cruelly.
He was reckless. Nothing, not the faintest bond, held him back. He wanted Marian and would have her. As for Ames’s absence from home, it was negligible. He did not care a rap that Ames was away, either on his own account or because of Marian’s reputation; or for any other reason. He would follow this instinct, this desire. But the truth about Stacey is deeper. He would now have followed equally any desire—a desire to commit murder, for example.
He gazed at the girl, then slowly drew her to him again, but more gently this time, till his cheek pressed her hot cheek and his nostrils inhaled the fragrance of her curly hair.
“Oh, Stacey, if—if Catherine—were to come in!” she murmured.
And at that moment Catherine did come in. She started. Her hand went to her heart. Then she stood there in the doorway, silent, motionless, not accusing, only like a somber intruder on a tragedy. It is astounding, but the truth, that even at such a moment Stacey could receive from Catherine an impression of something fate-like, goddess-like, more than human, a sense of bigness. Again the unrelated character of his impressions.
But Marian, who had torn herself away from Stacey, gasped, then gave a little hysterical laugh, and fled from the house without a word, gathering her trailing white fur swiftly about her throat.