Stacey was unmoved, except in the way the subsiding sea is moved when a storm is past. He stood looking squarely at Catherine, a twisted ironical smile on his lips, his eyes cool and challenging.
“Well?” he said finally.
Catherine sank down in the chair where Marian had sat, and leaned forward, folding her hands above her knees. Her dark eyes did not leave his. He saw that for the first time in their relationship all shyness had slipped from her. There was something magnificent about her, he thought, now that he really saw her unveiled.
“Oh, Stacey, don’t! don’t!” she said at last.
“Why not?” he asked, with polite detachment. “Sanctity of the marriage relation?” She shook her head. “What then? Moral discipline of self-denial? Regard for Ames Price—Vernon’s third-best golf player? Or concern for Marian? You needn’t worry about Marian. She’ll never feel remorse, and no more shall I. Come, Catherine, you’re not communicative!”
“You—you know I can’t talk readily,” she said. “But, oh, Stacey, don’t! please don’t! I’m not speaking to you with reasons—only from my heart.”
“No,” he returned grimly, “you’re speaking with all the massed tradition heaped up under the impression that through it some purpose can be followed. All a mistake, I tell you!”
“No! No!” she cried, her grave face alight with expression. “I’m not!” Suddenly her eyes grew pitiful. “Oh, Stacey,” she said, “you poor hurt child! Do you want to hurt yourself more?”
At this his calm was shaken. A dull resentment stirred in him,—but not because he was vain, or even proud.
“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that because I—some one else that I used to be—felt in such and such a way about Marian, you would not have me trample on those old illusions, for fear of pain. Catherine, I do not givethatfor my illusions!”
“Oh, nor I, either, Stacey! ‘Don’t’ is all I can say. In your heart you know I’m right.”
“I do not!” he burst out. He was angry now.
But she nodded her head. “You do,” she repeated. “Ah, dear Stacey, think! You’re hard and bitter—or you think you are—really you’re only hurt”—(he winced)—“but the one impulse you have is to look at things squarely, and to be one who can look at them so. Will you, then, do—do—crooked things, have a secret back-stairs liaison, hide behind—corners, meet Marian in the dark, with whispers? Oh, you mustn’t!”
The thrust went deep. He walked up and down the room restlessly, his heart full of anger and pain. Finally he turned on her.
“I’ll do what I please!” he cried. “Who are you to preach to me like this? What are you in my life? Nothing!”
But at this she started, then buried her head in her hands and wept. And when he saw that he had hurt her, as he had intended, he was shocked.
However, she lifted her head, unashamed, almost at once. “Forgive me!” she said simply. “Who am I? Who are we? We—Phil and I—love you. That’s the only power we have over you.”
He gazed at her for a moment, helplessly and remorsefully. “I’ll do as you say,” he said dully. But, with his surrender, anger rushed upon him again furiously. “Only,” he added, trembling with rage, “I’ll tell you that you and Phil are impossible! You’re too good! Abominably good! It’s sickening! Leave me alone now, both of you!”
He snatched up his hat and coat and hurried out of the house.
Stacey plunged blindly down the hill, in an insane fury of rage and thwarted passion. His mind was a hot swirling confusion which he made no attempt to clarify. But in the welter two things remained firm—his will to go to Marian’s house to-night, his will not to go. These were two equal warring forces. Their conflict churned up anger—anger with Catherine, anger with himself for having inexplicably yielded to Catherine.
Under foot were wet snow and ice. Stacey slipped again and again. But he tore on, as though there were some definite place he must get to, though, indeed, had he been capable of reflection, he would have perceived the reverse to be true.
He reached the boulevard and turned into it, ploughing along at a tremendous pace in the direction of his home. But presently some small capacity for thought did return to him, and he became aware that he most certainly did not want to go home. He began to walk less rapidly, and at last stopped altogether, bewildered, and looked about him, not knowing what to do.
It was only five o’clock, but the early winter dusk was already darkening the air, and lights were beginning to shine out in the windows of houses. Stacey stood beneath one of the brilliant clusters of electric globes with which the city government had adorned the boulevard, and stared in front of him. But he was not really reflecting; his mind was simply at a deadlock between the two opposing forces that usurped it. Some new factor, however slight, must intervene before he could act.
The factor revealed itself externally as a high-powered racing car, which drew up, throbbing, at the curb, with a grinding of suddenly applied brakes and a spatter of slush.
“Hello, Carroll!” called the young man who was driving it. “Pretty nasty under foot. Can I give you a lift?” He reached over and flung open the door of the car.
Stacey looked up, with a start. His mind cleared swiftly. The pause before he was able to reply was hardly perceptible. “Oh, hello, Whittaker!” he said, in quite a natural voice. “Thanks.” He rested one foot on the step of the car and frowned. “The only thing is that I don’t know where I want to go. I was just trying to make up my mind.”
The young man at the wheel laughed. He was a big fellow, appearing still bigger because of the enormous fur coat he wore, and had a ruddy face, with pleasant eyes and a hard mouth. He looked like a commercial traveller come into a fortune. “Well,” he said, “that does make it a bit difficult, don’t it? Anyhow, hop in! You certainly don’t want to stick around where you are.”
Stacey obeyed, slamming the door after him, and sat down beside Whittaker, who started the car off slowly along the boulevard.
The young man was of the type known in current slang as “hard boiled.” This quality, however, was not the result of his service in France—he had been a lieutenant of infantry in a different division from Stacey’s. The war had not had the slightest effect on Whittaker. He had always been “hard boiled,” even before the term existed.
“I don’t want to go home,” Stacey explained. “Fed up with home. Where you going? Can’t you take me along?”
The other laughed again. “Sure! Ican, but you wouldn’t go. Too much of a high-minded puritan. Why, you wouldn’t even end up that dinner we had in Paris in any decent way! I’m going out to Bell’s at Clarefield for the night.”
“All right,” said Stacey, “so will I, if you’ll take me.”
“Well, well, the sky has fallen! My last illusion’s gone! War, thy name is corruption!” Whittaker exclaimed. “Sure! Glad to have you!” he added genially. “Now let’s figure it out. I’ve got a little girl I’m going to take along. We can squeeze you in all right—all the cosier, what? But you’d better go and dig up some one yourself and getyourcar.”
Stacey shook his head. “No, I’ll ride with you—if I won’t be butting in. Maybe I’ll find some one out there.”
“Maybe,” the other returned dubiously. “But everybody will be pretty much paired off.”
“Drive around to my house and we’ll have a drink while I get a few things together.”
“All right.” The car leaped forward.
In Stacey’s mind the will to have Marian, the will not to have her, and the anger persisted, but underneath. Above, as the active part, was the matter of this trivial escapade. His dissent from Whittaker’s suggestion that he get his own car and bring another young lady was not due to distaste—nothing so fastidious as that could get a hearing now—but to Stacey’s positive fear of being left alone. If he were left to himself, nothing, as night fell and his longing deepened, could prevent his going to Marian. He mustbeprevented.
“Parker,” he said to the man who took Whittaker’s snowy fur coat in the hall, “I’m going away again for a day or two. You’ll tell Mr. Carroll when he gets in. First, please get us some whiskey and a siphon—Scotch, Whittaker?”
“Sounds good.”
“And then kindly pack that very small bag of mine with things for the night.”
But when Parker had brought the drinks to the library he came up close to Stacey. “Excuse me, sir,” he said in a low tone. “There’s a young lady who’s called to see you.”
Stacey opened his eyes wide, but he rose immediately. “Just a minute, Whittaker,” he remarked. “Be back at once. Pour yourself a drink.”
“Who is it?” he asked Parker, when they were in the hall.
The man looked perturbed. “She wouldn’t give me her name, sir, and that’s why I thought I’d better speak to you quietly.”
“You did perfectly right. Where is she?”
“In the little drawing-room, sir.”
“Most likely a book agent,” said Stacey, and walked down the hall.
But it was not a book agent. It was Irene Loeffler. She stood waiting, an expression of mingled fear and determination on her face, across which the color came and went oddly.
“Hello!” said Stacey brusquely. “What are you doing here?” He did not offer to shake hands; nor did she.
The girl looked at him. She swallowed nervously. He could see the movement of her throat.
“I’ll—tell you,” she replied desperately. “I came to see—you, because you won’t come to see me. I—I don’t believe in silly old conventions. You—you’d come to me if you—were fond-of-me” (she blurted out the three words in one terrified syllable), “so I—come to you.”
Any one half-way normal would have laughed outright. Irene was so absurdly out of harmony with her speech. She was as shrinking and virginal as her words were shameless.
But Stacey was beyond humor. He was living in a state of nervous exasperation bordering on madness. “Oh, I see!” he said icily. “A declaration!”
Her face flamed. “You can be insulting if you want to!” she cried, with a sudden angry sincerity. Then she went on with her speech. “And when I came and—asked for you, your man—told me you were just—going away again—in a few minutes. And I thought—that is, I decided—I mean, take me with you!”
He stared at her in amazement and for an instant did feel a small flicker of amusement. The young woman’s polite offer chimed in so well with Whittaker’s suggestion that they needed another girl.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said coolly, “but I don’t think you’d like the place. I’m going out to Bell’s Tavern at Clarefield. It’s a bit rough there and not well thought of in Vernon society. Greatly as I should enjoy your companionship, I fear you’d find yourself rather disapproved of in the best Bolshevik circles on your return.”
She winced under his words and flushed crimson, but she faced him, not unheroically. “You’re hateful!” she cried. “But I—I’ll go—if you’ll take me!”
All the exasperation that he was feeling within him burst loose suddenly upon poor Irene, who had nothing to do with causing it.
“You little fool!” Stacey said savagely, “even the idiots in your club have got more sense than you! They don’t know anything about facts, and you don’t, either. But they know enough to let them alone. You go home and play with your theories and don’t mix them up with facts any more. If I had so much as a shadow of a fancy for you I’d take you with me. But I haven’t—luckily for you! I don’t care two beans about you! Now run along home.”
But, with the air of his mind cleared by this explosion, and when he saw how the girl had collapsed under his brutality, he felt suddenly sorry for her, and sick and tired.
“Look here, Irene!” he said, taking her arm. “I didn’t mean all that. Only, honestly, you don’t care anything for me. You’ve just built up an imaginary me and lavish an imaginary love on him. Forgive me for being so rough.”
What he said this time was true beyond a doubt, though Irene could hardly be expected to believe it. For when he took her arm she did not draw close to him in delight; she shrank instinctively from his touch. She was sobbing, but he was probably quite right in thinking that it was from anger and shame. She controlled herself presently and wiped her eyes.
“Well, then, I’ll be going,” she remarked, in a strangled voice.
He went to the door with her. “Good night, Irene,” he said cordially, shaking her hand.
“I—I’m sorry to have—put you out,” she said absurdly.
“Oh, that’s all right!” he replied, with a touch of amusement. “Good night.”
Stacey returned to Whittaker. “Sorry to keep you so long,” he observed.
“No harm in that,” the other returned genially, “so long as you leave me in such good company.” He waved his hand toward the carafe.
“Yes, good stuff, isn’t it?” said Stacey, and took a stiff drink.
They set off presently, Stacey giving a sigh of relief at being out of the house and in some one else’s hands—no longer obliged to think for himself.
It was quite dark now. The car ploughed through the freezing slush and mud of a suburban district until at last it drew up before a small outlying drug-store.
Whittaker blew the horn, and a girl scurried out into the green and purple light, and down to the curb.
“Gee!” she exclaimed, “there’s two of you!”
“Uh-huh,” Whittaker assented. “My friend, Stacey Carroll, Minnie. Another hero of the late world unpleasantness. Minnie Prentice, Carroll. Hop in, Minnie, old thing!”
Stacey had stepped down to let the girl in. She shook his hand and turned her small piquant face to his for a moment, then sprang up lightly, dropping a kiss on Whittaker’s cheek, running her arm through his, and snuggling into place, all in a second.
“Minnie,” Whittaker remarked, as the car leaped forward, “was lately a prominent, if silent, member of that unfortunate production, ‘The Pearl Girl,’ which expensive show completely failed to arouse Chicago from its sleep, and passed away, with me finally almost the only mourner. Disgusted with the rouge and corruption of the stage, Minnie decided to reform; and where, as I explained to her, can you reform better than in Vernon? in which pleasant city she now holds a position at Leveredge’s department store (notion counter), and has me for a chaperon. Hey, Minnie?”
“You forget to tell Mr. What’s-his-name the rest, Bill,” said Minnie with dignity.
“Mr. Carroll, sweetness, Carroll! The Vernon Carrolls! So I do,” Whittaker rattled on, meanwhile driving the car consummately over a slippery expanse of ice. “Having a sweet pure voice, Minnie is on the very verge of being admitted to the First Presbyterian Church choir. Hence the obscure situation of our meeting-place. For, strange as it may seem, the First Presbyterian Church would not approve of my respectful appreciation of Minnie. Evil minds church people have!”
The young woman giggled. “My, but you’re silly, Bill! I’ll say you are!” she observed. “What’ll Mr.—er—Carroll—got it that time, didn’t I?—think of me?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that!” Whittaker replied. “He won’t think of you at all. He’s got a secret sorrow.”
The girl turned her face toward Stacey. “That so, Mr. Carroll? You got a secret sorrow?” she inquired. “What’s she like?”
Stacey laughed. He was not diverted by such patter, but he was soothed by it; it was precisely what he needed to tide him over these hours. “Blonde,” he returned. “As blonde as you are. At least, as blonde as I think you are from your voice. From what I’ve seen of you so far your coloring appeared to be mixed green and purple.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, sweetness!” Whittaker urged. “Coax the little mind along! Teach it to walk! Don’t be afraid, little pet! Toddle over to daddy!”
“Oh,” exclaimed the girl, “I get you! The lights there at that drug-store.”
“That’s it! That’s it! Why, the little darling took three whole steps by its own self!” Whittaker said admiringly. “Colossal mind Minnie has!” he added to Stacey. “Too big to work! Too big to move! Just lies still and pants!”
“Oh, you shut your face, Bill! I guess my mind’s as good as yours any time. You care a lot about it, anyway, like hell you do! I’ll tell you what you care about.” And she whispered, giggling, into his ear.
With such trivial talk they passed the time.
But presently the car swung into a wide road, where the snow, well packed and sanded, had not been torn into icy slush by city drays; and here Whittaker increased the speed. The hum of the engine became a smooth rhythmic thunder, the cleft air roared past, and any further talk was impossible.
Stacey was thrown back on his thoughts. They became the reality, the actual present only a shadow. He was but vaguely conscious of his surroundings—the cold flowing air, the car’s headlights on the snow, Whittaker, the girl’s warm body next him. The memory of Marian was more vivid than all these things. Soon now she would be expecting him at her house, and he would not be there. He writhed. And what would she think of him? She must hate him. Until to-day he had not cared what she felt toward him. But now it was different. He and she had been honest with each other to-day. Fancies gone, illusions gone, everything false and pretty stripped off, their two small remaining selves had met for the first time in harmony, each no longer asking anything that the other could not give, but demanding the possible fiercely. He had no right to break off in this way. So Stacey thought dizzily, anger with Catherine and himself returning at intervals, as a variation on the theme.
He came back wearily to the present, as the lights of Clarefield flashed up and the car swept over the curved driveway leading to the gleaming road-house. He stepped, shivering with cold, from the car, and helped the girl out. They waited on the hotel verandah while Whittaker drove the car back to the garage.
“H-how about-t it now, Mr. C-Carroll?” she demanded gaily, her teeth chattering. “Am I still p-purple and green?”
He forced as much interest as he could, and looked her over. “No,” he answered, “you’re—well, no matter! Only I shouldn’t worry about a mind, if I were you. You don’t need one.”
She really was pretty, he saw with indifference. Bad mouth, though, he noted, with an equal lack of interest. Loose and stupid.
The girl returned his scrutiny. “You’re not so worse, either,” she said, considering him with sophisticated sensual eyes.
Whittaker returned. “God! but it’s cold! Let’s run for drinks. Thank the Lord, the bar here is still wide open!”
They went in. A large room on the right was already half full of people dining and dancing. Whittaker paused for a moment to reserve a table, then the three hurried off to the bar. It occurred to Stacey that he had better slip away from Minnie and Whittaker after a little. He had no right to spoil their evening. Nice sort of companion they must be finding him! But Whittaker, with the geniality of his sort, seemed to find no fault in his guest, while, as for Minnie, she would clearly be benevolently uncritical of any man under forty, not bad looking, who would drink. Moreover, something soon happened to make Stacey change his mind.
Glancing across the room to another alcoved space opposite, he caught sight, over a woman’s shoulder, of a face he thought he recognized, started, half rose to make sure, then sank down again in his chair and burst into unforced laughter.
“What’s the joke, Carroll?” Whittaker inquired.
“Nothing—except that I—see Ames Price is here,” Stacey returned weakly.
“No, is he really?” exclaimed Whittaker. “Well, I say, it is a bit soon, isn’t it?” And he, too, rose to look, and laughed, though the real joke was lost on him. “Stewed, too! Stewed to the gills!” he added.
Stacey got up. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. “I’ll go over and worry him.”
Stacey crossed the room slowly. His mouth still twitched with amusement, but the expression thus given his face was malignant rather than mirthful. No, he was certainly not at his best when he smiled. He paused near the alcoved recess and stood gazing maliciously at Ames Price, whose back was toward him, and at the tall handsome young woman sitting across the table from Ames. She was slender and dark, with large eyes and a rather fine, weary mouth. She looked bored by her escort, and returned Stacey’s stare with cool interest. Then he touched Ames on the shoulder.
The man looked around slowly, but when he saw Stacey his mouth fell open, a slow flush spread over his smooth face and bald forehead, an apprehensive look came into his eyes, and he rose quickly, swaying a little.
“Say! What-ta you doing here, Shtacey?” he demanded thickly.
“Me?” Stacey returned. “Why shouldn’t I be here? I’m a free man, unbound, no ties at all, you know.”
Price clung to his arm and pulled him away to the edge of another booth, out of hearing of the young woman.
“ ’Sh’unfortunate!” he said hoarsely, struggling with his intoxication. “I mean to shay—say—you of all people!” He drew out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Look here, Shta—no, Carroll—you don’t mind if I call you Carroll? ’S’ easier to say than Shta—your other name. No lack of inti—intima—cy intended. Look here, Carroll! Now I’m drunk, of course! You can see that! Anybody can see that! Whole world can see that! Hell! that isn’t what I was trying to say.” He paused again, made an even greater effort at self-mastery, and really did achieve some moderate success. The expression of concern in his glazed eyes deepened. “Damn it all! You wonder what I’m doing here! Now don’t you?”
“Why, no,” said Stacey, enjoying himself evilly. “I saw you here and just dropped over to say hello.”
Ames reached for a carafe that stood among glasses on a table near-by, poured a tumblerful of water with a shaking hand, and drank. Then he shook his head solemnly. “No, you wonder. Of course you wonder.”
Stacey watched him critically. “Doing pretty well,” he thought. But beneath Stacey’s surface calm was hatred. So this—this sweating, panting, bald-headed animal—owned Marian, did he?
“Damn it all, Stacey!” Ames whispered raucously, leaning close to his tormentor, “I can’t help it! Marian’s so God-damned cold! ’S’no place to talk about her—I’ve got sense enough left to know that. But got to explain myself to you—you of all people! Cold, that’s what she is,—ice! Freezes a man. Honest to God she does! Looks-a fellow ’s’though he was dirt—yes, tha’s it, dirt! Locks her door. ’S’why I come here. Let her treat me like a man—I’d be best of husbands—none better.”
“Sorry to hear this,” Stacey returned smoothly. “Wished you both all sorts of happiness. But you don’t owe me any explanations. Besides, this is a place for light-hearted gaiety. Shame to spoil it with dull thoughts of home. I’m out here with Bill Whittaker and his young lady. Thought perhaps, when I saw you, we might all arrange to dine together in one large genial party. How about it?”
Ames stared at him, his face clearing slowly. “Why, sure!” he said at last, heaving a sigh. “Thought at first you’d—oh, never mind now! what? Come on over and meet Ethel.”
“I’d like to. Not cold, eh?”
“No, not cold. Not warmorcold,” said Ames judicially, “but friendly. Good sort, Ethel!” He drew Stacey back to the alcove. “Ethel, ’s Stacey Carroll. Wants us to dine with him an’ some other people. First-rate, what?”
Stacey bowed, and the girl looked at him appraisingly. She was really very handsome, he saw now, with an enigmatic quality in her face, caused perhaps by the fact that her black eyes were not quite horizontal, but slanted down ever so faintly toward the bridge of her nose.
“Yes,” she said finally, in a pleasant voice, “that’ll be nice.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Stacey remarked. “I’ll go back and arrange with Whittaker about it. See you both in a few minutes.” And he crossed the room, smiling again.
“Beautiful plan I’ve evolved, Whittaker,” he said, sitting down and sipping the cocktail that was waiting for him. “Ames is drunk, as you observed. Got over it a bit in talking with me, but will grow drunker presently. Very attractive girl with him—name of Ethel. I feel innocent sorrow for her. D’you mind if we all dine together? I propose to remove Ethel gently from Ames. Told you I’d find some one out here.”
Whittaker laughed. “Sure!” he said heartily. “That’s something like! We’ll help all we can, hey, Minnie?”
“Gee! Mr. Carroll, and I thought you was slow!” the girl exclaimed delightedly.
“My dear Minnie,” said Stacey, “of course you’ll find me slow. Here I am, Bill’s guest. I owe it to him to suppress all the evil desires you arouse in me. Besides, we’re Presbyterians in our family, have a pew in the church. I’d never feel the same again towards the choir if . . .” He finished his cocktail and gazed at her reproachfully over the glass, while she laughed.
They all three crossed the room to Ames, who presented them heavily to Ethel. He was no drunker than before, however,—perhaps even a little less drunk, and he entered the dining-room with dignified concentrated steadiness.
The table the head-waiter had reserved for Whittaker would only seat four comfortably. “I’m the outsider. I’ll sit here at the corner,” Stacey said firmly, and motioned the waiter to draw him up a chair close to Ethel’s. “You order, Whittaker, will you?”
The room was pandemonium, on account of the jazz band that was at one end and the cabaret performance that was everywhere. All conversations were necessarily shouted.
It occurred to Stacey that the age he lived in was devoted to noise, as a barbaric preventive of thought. No doubt it was right. What good had thought ever done the world? Here were the five of them, come out frankly in quest of food, drink, lights, noise, and sexual gratification. Nothing but animals, all five! Well, what of it? Clearly that was what the earth’s millions were all, in this glaring after-war illumination, revealed as seeking. The only difference among them was that some were more complicated and refined in their animalism than others. There wasn’t much complexity out here. So much the better! Strip off the last silken shreds of decoration! Leave the truth stark naked! The animal was all there was, and there was only so much, and no more, to the animal.
Thus Stacey mused, under cover of the hubbub, not perceiving that the fact of his musing denied its conclusion; not remarking that his own word was “quest”; not seeing that people were trying to be, and thus were not wholly, animals; certainly not seeing that this quest was as futile as any other.
How, indeed, could his thoughts fail to be superficial? They swam languidly on the surface waters of his mind. Beneath was a painful turmoil into which he struggled not to look.
He roused himself sharply, with a start, and looked around. Whittaker, on his right, was leaning over to Minnie just beyond, his face close to hers, his hand beneath the table. She was answering his glance and his words, her blue eyes dilated below the delicately darkened eyebrows, her loose mouth babbling or, between speeches, drooping sensually. Ames Price was concerned with nothing but the effort to control his intoxication. Stacey turned to the girl beside him.
Her pose was easy and graceful, and the curve of her cheek beneath the mass of her black hair was rather fine. Stacey felt the enigmatic quality about her even now when he could not see her slanting eyes. His knee touched hers, not intentionally but because they were sitting very close together, and she turned her face slowly toward his. Their eyes met. Hers were extraordinarily large and dark, and gazed into his, half curiously, half cynically, for a long moment. Strange eyes, unfathomable! Suddenly dull fire smoldered in them, and Stacey felt dizzy. He shivered,—but so did she; he felt her knee tremble against his. She smiled and lowered her eyes.
“I’ve heard of you, Mr. Carroll,” she observed calmly. “Every one in Vernon has, of course. I’d rather like to have been a man and fought as you’ve fought.”
Clearly she had better self-control than he. He paused before replying.
“Would you, now?” he said then. “That’s odd! You look too properly disdainful to care about fighting, and, as to being a man, you seem to me very thoroughly a woman.”
She looked at him again, squarely, appearing to study him.
“By the way,” he added abruptly, “what’s your name? Your drunken friend presented you merely as Ethel.”
“Wyatt. Ethel Wyatt. It wouldn’t mean anything to you. But I prefer Ames drunk, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She turned to Price. “Cheer up, Ames, old top!” she cried, in a jovial, quite different voice. “Cocktails! Here’s to you!” And she pushed his glass toward him.
Ames gave her a dazed smile, patted her hand heavily, and drank. “ ’S’a mistake!” he said. “Had one a minute ago. Oughtn’t to have any more. But mus’ drink with Essel—Ethel.” He beamed across at Stacey. “Told you so, Carroll. See her for yourself now. Friendly. Not warmorcold, but friendly.”
Again she turned to Stacey. “You believe him?”
“No.” He stared at her fiercely. “Will you chuck Ames and run off somewhere with me?”
“Yes, later,” she replied coolly, “when he’s quite drunk. I don’t want a scene. I hate scenes.” And she turned back to Ames.
Throughout the whole dinner she paid no more attention to Stacey, talking instead, with smiles and a coarsened voice, to her escort. But, beneath the table, her ankle was curved about Stacey’s, and now and again he felt it tremble, and trembled, too. But no touch of emotion was in her voice.
He had begun this merely as a savage joke on Ames. He was physically stirred now and going on with it eagerly, in search of oblivion.
After a while, Ethel being in sprightly conversation with Ames, Whittaker leaned close to Stacey. “I say! what’s the matter?” he demanded. “Wake up and get busy, Carroll!”
“Oh,” said Stacey calmly, “that’s all right! It’s all arranged. We’re only waiting for Ames to get completely blind. Miss Wyatt doesn’t want a scene.”
Whittaker stared, then laughed. “My heartiest apologies!” he exclaimed. “You’re a cool pair!”
“Where am I going to go from here?”
“Well,” said Whittaker thoughtfully, “you might go on to West Boyd. Fifteen miles straight down the road. There’s a good inn there, the Thorndike. Oh, but hang it, you haven’t got a car!”
“Can’t I rent one here?”
Whittaker shook his head. “Take mine, old chap!” he said generously. “I don’t need it. I’ll telephone my man to bring out the other to-morrow morning.”
Stacey hesitated.
“Sure! Sure! Go ahead! I’m all for helping young lovers. Need money?”
“No, I’ve got my check-book. I suppose they’ll cash a check here.”
Whittaker nodded. “I’ll endorse it. They know me.” He laughed again. “What a lark!”
“Oh!” said Stacey suddenly, “one thing! Keep Minnie quiet! Don’t want to let Ethel know I had this planned before I met her.”
Before long Ames rose, staggering, his face livid. “ ’Scuse me,” he said thickly, “jus’ minute.”
“He’s going to be sick, I guess,” said Minnie delightedly, watching him lurch across the crowded room toward the door. “But, gee! Mr. Carroll, you—”
Whittaker cut her off.
Stacey scribbled a check, and Ethel drank her coffee.
“He won’t be back, I think,” she observed calmly. “Not for a long time. They’ll find him on some floor after a while. So . . .” She turned to Stacey.
“So we’ll leave you,” he concluded for her. “Thanks awfully for the car, Whittaker. And remember what the dinner check comes to. I’ll split it with you later.”
“Youwillnot! My surprise and joy at your behavior are reward enough. Come on! We’ll see you off.”
And presently, when Ethel had put on her wraps, and the car had been brought around, and the two suitcases put in, Whittaker and Minnie stood on the verandah to see the lovers depart.
“If I knew where Ames was I’d get his shoe and throw after you,” called Whittaker, as Stacey started the car.
But there was no sign of Ames.
The chill silent night was a relief to Stacey, and perhaps to the girl, after the heated promiscuity of the road-house. An aloof wintry moon shone coldly on the white fields and made the frozen ponds glitter.
Stacey and Ethel might have been husband and wife from their nonchalant indifference to conversation. They hardly spoke on the long ride; yet there was no constraint between them. Once he asked her if she was cold, and she said that she was not; and once she observed that there was a bad grade a little way ahead, and he noted idly to himself the absence of self-consciousness with which she admitted to knowing the road.
“I suppose,” he remarked, in a matter-of-fact tone, as they drew near West Boyd, “that I’d better register us as man and wife under some fancy name?”
The girl turned her head toward him slowly. “For my sake or your own?” she inquired coolly.
“For neither. To save the hotel’s face and avoid annoyance for us.”
She nodded, as though satisfied.
She entered the inn unconcernedly, except that she wrinkled her forehead and half closed her strange eyes in the sudden brightness, and she stood with equal unconcern by Stacey’s side while he registered and asked for a room. Yet even he, who was hardly at all curious about her, recognized that her calm was not the mere callousness of the prostitute. It was easy, not hard, and so it seemed to arise not from outer experience—however much experience she might have had—but from an inner indifference to facts. So, at any rate, Stacey thought; then thought no more about it.
When a bell-boy had accompanied them to their room and set down their bags and departed, closing the door upon them, she slipped out of her heavy coat and removed her hat gracefully. But then, at last, she turned slowly to Stacey, who had been standing, watching her. Still in silence, they gazed into each other’s eyes profoundly, as they had, two hours earlier, at dinner. The girl’s mouth trembled. Suddenly they kissed.
“You—you’re—brutal!” she stammered, much later, panting, her face convulsed in a savage ecstasy of delight.
“Well—and you?”
They remained at the inn for five days. But though physically their relation was unrestrained, entire, frenzied, no faintest intimacy of any other kind grew up between them, unless it may be counted as intimacy that they were perfectly at ease with each other in their hours of bodily calm, and could walk together across the frozen fields, silent or nearly so, unembarrassed, each thinking his own thoughts. Ethel might almost swoon in Stacey’s embrace; a moment after, her dark eyes, that had been moist and dilated, would become as unfathomable as ever. And, as for him, he might, and did, serve passion recklessly until pleasure turned to pain; nothing would come of it all, nothing be left over, no emotion, not even a grateful memory of delight, not even disgust,—only emptiness. Never in soft moments of assuagement did tenderness start up in him or show in her.
They talked, of course. And they did not say sharp things or get on one another’s nerves. They were not enemies. They talked only of general subjects, dispassionately, objectively. Or, rather, all subjects, even ideas, became external when Stacey and Ethel spoke of them. Yet the girl talked well and intelligently. It was simply that she revealed no emotional interest in anything they discussed. She seemed as detached and indifferent as he. But this, though it made their association comfortable, was not a bond between them.
Only once did their two personalities become conscious of each other and touch and draw a spark. When this happened it was immediately apparent that, though Ethel and Stacey were not enemies, they were antagonists, facing one another warily.
It was on the last morning of their stay. The girl was lying motionless on the bed, in the pose of Manet’s “Olympe” and with much the same exotic appearance. Stacey was sprawling in a chintz-covered rocker. He was suffering from a kind of bleak despair; for he was reflecting that everything he had done was impotent to destroy his desire for Marian. This was unfair, he thought sullenly, since his desire for Marian, too, was purely physical. Why, then, should not this liaison suffice? So, when Ethel spoke to him he answered her curtly.
“Isn’t it time,” she observed, without moving, “that you asked me about my past life, how I reached this regrettable condition,andso forth?”
He looked up slowly and considered her. “No,” he said, “I’m not interested.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Dear me! Not at all? How disrespectful of conventions! Why? Because you despise me?”
“You know I don’t despise you,” he replied indifferently. “Moreover, you don’t care whether I do or not.”
She smiled a little at this. “I don’t think that in all these five days I’ve expressed any appreciation of you,” she went on coolly. “You’re really very satisfactory. Now that’s what marriage ought to be like. Two healthy animals taking all the sharp pleasure they can from one another and letting each other’s immortal souls alone. Silly that they should be immortal, isn’t it? Perhaps they’re not. I think they must be, though; they’re so completely solitary. Nobody can ever have made them, they’re so solitary. They must always have been,—like stars in the empty sky; and so they must always go on.”
He felt interest now at last. Shewasstrange.
“I was with the Colin Jeffries’ until recently,” she went on, in the same cool tone and not even troubling to explain her revelation. Indeed, it was not like a personal revelation. She seemed to Stacey to be merely meditating aloud—and about a third person. “With the Colin Jeffries’—as governess to their children.”
Stacey smiled.
“An impossible house,” she continued imperturbably. “Mrs. Jeffries is the kind of woman who wants to dig into every one’s mind and pull out the weeds and plant it with proper vegetables—cabbages and such—in rows. And Mr. Jeffries is tiresomely lecherous. He was always trying to get into my bedroom. Once he hid in my bath.”
Stacey laughed. “I didn’t know that, of course,” he said, “but I might have guessed it. Any such public institution as Colin Jeffries must have to take it out privately somehow. I can see why you went away. Still I think you might have found something a little better than Ames Price.”
“Oh,” she explained simply, “I didn’t take him on at once. I had an idea that there might be something more interesting in a disorderly life than an orderly one. Silly, wasn’t it? One’s as dull as the other. Ames is really as good a solution as any. He is generous with money and unperturbing.”
Stacey frowned. “That reminds me,” he said. “We’ll have to go back to-day. I’m about at the end of my money and I have almost none in the bank.”
She expressed no surprise at this, even by a look, though she must have known that he was supposed to be rich. But a shadow of regret did cross her face. She gazed at him, and he at her.
“Come here!” she said finally.
He obeyed. His eyes caressed her slim form somberly. “Your body is as strange as your face!” he muttered.
She shivered, set her teeth, and stared at him in a fury of desire.
They left the inn early on the afternoon of that day and drove back over the road that led to Clarefield and Vernon. They were as separate as ever mentally, but they talked rather more freely, and Stacey, though he felt neither love nor friendship for the girl, felt esteem for her because she existed proudly by herself. He would not have her bruised. He would defend her in a matter-of-fact way from trouble, as one might defend a stranger from physical attack.
So: “What are you going to do,” he demanded suddenly, “when you get back to Vernon?”
“Go to my apartment,” she returned. “The one Ames took for me. Ames will come back.” She smiled faintly. “Are you concerned lest you’ve ruined my prospects?”
“Yes, of course,” he said unemotionally.
“How noble of you! Don’t worry. You haven’t.”
All at once he laughed. “I was thinking what a marvellous judge of character Ames is,” he observed. “ ‘Not warm or cold, Ethel, but friendly!’ ”
The girl turned her head and looked at him strangely, but this time without smiling.
At Clarefield they drove up to Bell’s Tavern where their adventure had begun, intending to warm themselves before going on. They sat down in the booth where Ethel had sat with Ames Price on the night of Whittaker’s dinner. Stacey reflected moodily, while they waited for the drinks he ordered, that, though nearly a week had passed since that evening, nothing whatever had happened. He had succeeded in staying away from Marian, but he wanted her as much now as he had wanted her then. Five full days of this affair with Ethel had not added a fraction to what he felt and was at the beginning of it, or taken a fraction away. If time were to be set back, the interlude wiped out, and he were to find himself sitting again with Whittaker and Minnie, looking across at Ames drunk, nothing would be changed.
But he was awakened from this reverie by the desk-clerk, who came up and touched his arm.
“Are you Mr. Stacey Carroll, sir?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so,” said the clerk. “I remember your cashing a check here last Saturday night. This telegram came for you two days ago. We didn’t know what to do about it, and so we just held it, thinking maybe you’d be back.”
“Thanks,” said Stacey, taking it. “Can’t imagine who’d address me here except Whittaker,” he observed to Ethel, as he tore open the yellow envelope, “and he’d have sent any message to West Boyd.”
But, as he glanced at the telegram, he started.
“Philip dangerously ill with pneumonia. Come at once. Catherine,” it read.
Stacey pushed back his chair and got up quickly. “We’ll have to go—at once!” he said. “A friend of mine is ill—pneumonia.”
She rose. “Your face is pale,” she observed, as he reached for her coat, “You really do care about something, don’t you?”
He nodded, holding out the coat.
“You ought to be glad,” she concluded, slipping it on. “I’m ready.”
“Drink your high-ball first—as quickly as you can,” he said, not unkindly.
“No,” she returned, “I don’t care about it. Come! Let’s go.”
He flung money on the table and hurried the girl out. “And the message is two days old!” he muttered, wondering dully who could have told Catherine he was at Clarefield.
He drove the car to Vernon at a tremendous speed, Ethel sitting silent by his side. He spoke but once, to ask her the address of her apartment.
But when they drew up in front of it and he had helped her out, he stood with her for just a moment on the sidewalk. For all that he was feeling anxiety for his friend so strongly as almost to wipe everything else from his mind, he nevertheless—and even, somehow, because of this—felt now at last a touch of human interest in Ethel.
“If you ever need anything at all—or want to see me for any reason, call me up at my house,” he said inadequately.
“Thanks,” she murmured. “Good-bye.”
He sprang back into the car and drove swiftly to Phil’s house.
There was another car standing at the curb. “The doctor’s!” he thought, with sudden hope.
Stacey did not ring, but opened the door softly and walked into the living-room.
Catherine was sitting there, like some expressionless Byzantine Madonna, with Carter in her arms. He was sleeping, his flushed face and tousled yellow hair against her breast, his legs dangling limply from her lap. There was no one else in the room. Catherine looked up as Stacey entered, but she did not speak.
He stared at her. “Phil?” he demanded in a low voice.
The shadowy expression on her face deepened until it was unmistakable pain and fatigue, but still she did not speak.
“Dead?” Stacey cried hoarsely.
“Yes,” she replied gently, “he died last night—very peacefully.”
Stacey sat down suddenly and turned his head away. Tears did not come to his eyes, but he gasped, a choking feeling in his throat that made it hard for him to breathe.
“Poor Stacey!” said Catherine softly, after a little.
“Poor me?!” he exclaimed, “oh! . . . I only got your telegram an hour ago.”
“Of course. I knew you couldn’t have got it.”
Stacey became aware of the sound of feet moving on the floor above. “Who’s—up there?” he inquired.
Catherine’s lip trembled. “People doing—the things that have to be done.”
He winced. “And you’re—left alone here!” he murmured.
“I’d rather be. Mrs. Latimer has just gone. She took Jackie.”
“Do you want me to go?” he stammered.
“No—please!”
They sat there in silence for a long time. At last the solemn professional people came down from upstairs and went out, bowing gravely to Catherine. Then Mrs. Latimer returned. She looked at Stacey, first in surprise, then compassionately.
“You’d better go now, Stacey,” Catherine said. “I shall be all right. Mrs. Latimer and I must put Carter to bed. Would you like to go up and—look at Phil?”
He nodded. “Thanks!” he said, choking.
He stumbled up the stairs, went into Phil’s room, and stood there for some time, looking down at the peaceful emaciated face. Stacey was suffering acute pain and—worse than that—a deeper sense of desolation than he had yet felt. He had not dreamed that he cared so much for Phil. To have shown him so in some way! To have given something decent and human in return for Phil’s warm gentleness! The best that Stacey could do for comfort was to remember that the last time he had seen Phil he had shaken his hand at parting. Only that!
Stacey went downstairs finally and out of the house. He drove home, then sat down wearily to write a note to Whittaker thanking him for the car. He gave the note to Parker and told him to have the chauffeur take it, as soon as possible, with the car, to Whittaker’s house. He did not feel irony or bitterness or scorn of himself in doing these things. They were merely things that had to be done. He was through with proud hostility of spirit; he was beaten. But he did not say this to himself, either.
His father came home before very long. He was gentle with Stacey, asked him no questions, tried even to veil the look of apprehensiveness in his own eyes. And Stacey recognized his kindness, the sweetness of nature that lay beneath Mr. Carroll’s set firmness,—recognized all his father’s virtues, more clearly and justly than ever before. But it was as though he were recognizing the virtues of a convincing figure in a two-dimensioned movie play. The world of men had become a world of shadows to Stacey.
Catherine alone he felt as a real person—no doubt because she was suffering the same sorrow as he. He spent all the time with her that she would permit, and while the funeral service was being held in the sitting-room of the little house he sat with her and Carter upstairs in Phil’s old room. They were both silent, save when they spoke comfortingly to the frightened weeping boy. They could hear the grave accents of the clergyman’s voice downstairs.
“What are you going to do, Catherine?” he asked her one morning two or three days later. “Shall you go back to New York—to your sister’s?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay here for now, I think,” she replied. “The house rent is paid for a long time ahead, and I don’t want to take the boys out of school.”
“Do you need money? You must tell me if you do.”
“No—thanks,” she answered simply. “I have plenty for now, and”—her eyes drooped wearily—“Phil carried—quite heavy insurance. Your father, too, asked me that,” she added. “He’s been awfully good.”
“He would be,” said Stacey drearily.
Catherine considered him sadly. “Stacey,” she said, “you look dreadfully ill.”
“I feel a bit fagged,” he admitted. “I’ve been thinking that towards spring I might go down to father’s place in North Carolina.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “yes! But why not go now?”
“Well,” he said hesitatingly, then paused.
“I know. You’d like to help me. But there’s nothing you can do, Stacey. That’s sad, but it’s so. It only—”
“Yes. Gives you an extra worry.” He gazed at her. “Odd,” he thought, “how strong you are! Stronger than Phil, stronger than I!” But he only said yes, that he would go.
His father greeted the suggestion almost joyfully. “The best thing possible!” he exclaimed. “There’s the house, standing empty—hardly been used six months in ten years. Saddle horse eating his head off in the stable—old Elijah perishing for want of conversation. I was down there for a couple of months two years ago, but it bored me. I haven’t cared for the place since your mother died.”
Stacey nodded. “I understand how you feel about it,” he said. And, indeed, he did for a moment receive a sudden poignant memory of their winter life down there when his mother had been alive and they had all been young and gay. The memory faded almost at once. “Then I might as well be off some day this week, sir,” he remarked.
“You’d better wait till after Christmas,” said his father. “Er—Julie’s rather counting on Christmas together.”
“Of course,” Stacey assented remorsefully.
“Mind you have Elijah look after Duke’s feet,” Mr. Carroll added, in obvious haste to avoid the appearance of sentiment. “His hoofs were always brittle.”
So presently, Christmas over, Stacey departed. It was capitulation, but he did not care about that. The only thing that interested him—and this but idly—was that he should so crave to get away from men and women when men and women had become such intangible phantoms.
For the rest, there was only the heavy sense of Phil’s death and of Catherine bearing up under it bravely.