After a while he came to the park. And there, sitting on the same bench from which she had called to him that afternoon when Stacey had broken his engagement to Marian, he found Mrs. Latimer. But now he saw her first and stood quite near to her for a full half-minute before she caught sight of him. Now, as then, she was poking holes in the gravel with the point of a parasol, but she did not seem the same, he thought; her pose was tired, and the droop of her shoulders. When she became aware of some one’s close presence and looked up he was shocked; she appeared so old and worn. Then her face flashed into glad recognition, and the impression lost its acuteness.
“Why, Stacey,” she exclaimed, “did you drop from the sky?” She moved over to make room for him on the bench, and he sat down.
“It’s just about a year ago—not quite,” he returned, “that I found you here in the same place. Only then you had to call me. This time it’s I who surprise you. I’m awfully glad to see you, Mrs. Latimer. I was coming to your house presently.”
“And you got back?”
“Yesterday.”
She gazed at him with affectionate curiosity. And now her familiar smile and bearing, all her known quality, was as a lack of focus in a lens, blurring the objective; yet, even so, he still felt that she was somehow changed—older, less resilient.
“You look very strong and composed and sure of yourself,” she said at last.
“Do I? Well, that’s good!” he returned lightly.
She let it go at that, tactfully, and they talked of outside things,—of his life in Pickens, of Vernon, of how lovely the month was. About herself Mrs. Latimer said nothing at all, and this worried Stacey until it occurred to him that she had never talked of herself, save only, suddenly, on that one afternoon a year ago here in the park.
“You must come home with me now,” she observed after a while, “and I will give you tea.” And she got up, rather wearily.
Her drawing-room was just as he remembered it. The light gleamed in just the same way from the ivory wood-work and along the polished surfaces of the same exquisite vases. But the room seemed to Stacey like a deadened melody played on muted strings. It was a romantic room and it needed Marian—the old elfish Marian, slipping in and out lightly,—to vivify it. He looked around him dreamily.
Mrs. Latimer had sunk down on a divan and removed her hat slowly. Now she was leaning back and looking at Stacey, not so much curiously as wistfully.
“It’s very good to have you here, Stacey,” she said at last simply.
“Thank you,” he replied, warmed by her affection and feeling soothed by the delicate hushed beauty of the room, which had no connection with the outside world. The maid brought in the tea things.
But the water had been boiling in the silver urn for some little time before Mrs. Latimer finally made the tea. It seemed to demand a conscious effort for her to lift her hand to the urn.
“You’re tired,” said Stacey suddenly. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
She started, so that some of the water spilled over upon the tray; for just a moment she gave him an odd pained look; then she turned about quickly and laid her head against the back of the divan. Her shoulders shook with sobs, and there was fatigue without relaxation in every line of her taut body.
Stacey was shocked. He had always thought of Mrs. Latimer as strong, cool, and too wise to be shaken by any tempest. He had no idea of what to do or say. Instinctively he desired to stand near her and comfort her, but he feared that this would only make things worse. So he sat silent and gazed at her pityingly.
After a while she looked up. “Forgive me!” she began; then at sight of his expression her mouth trembled and she cried again. But presently she regained control of herself and wiped her eyes. Then Stacey saw that she was an old woman with a weary tragic face.
“I beg your pardon, Stacey,” she murmured unsteadily.
“What is it?” he asked gently.
“Nothing! I just—can’t go on with it.”
“Tell me.”
She was silent for a moment. “It was only because you were kind, Stacey, and seemed to feel interest in me.”
She did not mean this as a reproof, he knew, but he was aware that it was a damning one. Her interest in him had always been immense and generous; what interest had he ever shown in her? He had taken her for granted.
“Tell me,” he repeated.
“But—there are so many things one doesn’t say—one isn’t allowed. If I told the truth I should seem shameful, violating decency.” Her eyes were chilly now and questioning.
He shook his head.
“Well, then,” she said suddenly, in a hard voice, “it’s my husband—or partly. Perhaps he finds me as faulty as I find him, but, oh, he’s finely greedy, finely futile, finely avaricious, finely sterile in every human sentiment! I could bear all those things—perhaps—but for his fineness in all of them. I can’t live with him any longer. I loathe him. What have I done with my life, Stacey? I look down on nothing but ruins. My only child does not love me, nor I her. What good to bear a child? What is such a life for? I’ve been tolerant too long. What’s it all about—life?”
“Don’t!” he said quickly. “You can’t do it that way! I—I know.”
His tone calmed her and she looked at him in a pathetic questioning manner, as though she, who had always been like a watchful mother to him, were now his child. He sincerely did not like to talk about himself; he would always have an almost fierce aloofness. But he would give Mrs. Latimer what he could—if there was anything to give.
“See!” he said. “Life is—life is a Medusa. Try to face it and it freezes you to stone. You must look at the—the mirrored reflection in yourself, in the shield of your own personality. Then you can see it, without horror, for the pitiful, snake-crowned, impotently ugly thing it is.” He paused, with an odd smile. “You even,” he added slowly, “can see a ravaged beauty in it.”
Mrs. Latimer stared at him in silence, but the tensity in her face had vanished, perhaps because she was surprised.
“And the sword—Perseus’ sword?” she asked finally.
“No,” he said, “that’s as far as the analogy goes. There is no sword.”
She gazed at him with a gentle eager look, and he saw that he really had helped her—not probably through anything he had said, but by awakening her capacity for sympathetic interest in others, her deep altruism. It was of him she was thinking now—proudly, as though he were herself. And, much as he disliked to, he would have gone on and told her everything he knew about himself if she had asked it. But she seemed to divine the effort he had made, and asked him nothing further.
“Oh!” she cried after a moment, with a tremulous laugh. “Your tea, Stacey!”
“I like it cold, thanks,” he said, also laughing.
And after this they managed to talk almost easily of common things.
But, having risen to draw a curtain at a window, Mrs. Latimer suddenly turned about. “Stacey, you must go now!” she exclaimed. “I have just seen my husband coming up the street. I couldn’t bear to have you here in the room with both of us after what I said. I exaggerated. It isn’t as bad as all that. I shall be all right.”
He held out his hand to say good-bye, but she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” she said.
As he left the house Stacey met Mr. Latimer. He looked like a steel engraving of a gentleman.
“Ah, you’re just going?” he remarked, with his cool polished smile.
“Sorry!” said Stacey. “I must.”
Stacey threw himself into work with a cold vigor that had in it nothing of fad or impulse. He did not find, as he had feared he might, that he had forgotten much. Everything came back to him at once; it had all been there, tucked away, neglected, within him. Neither did he chafe at the long regular hours he kept, nor feel them burdensome. In the old days he had perhaps been a little lazy; it had been hard for him on arriving at the office not to waste time—over a newspaper or a book-catalogue or anything that presented itself—before actually beginning his work; he had crept into work as a swimmer into cold water. Now there was no indolence about him; the instant he sat down at his desk he turned his mind on the problems before him; and, swiftly, intelligently, with intense concentration, he was soon accomplishing twice as much as any other man in the office. Indeed, less from a desire to be always busy than from a kind of impatient thoroughness, dislike of slovenliness, he often spent hours on drawings that he might have turned over to draftsmen. But, though he was extremely interested in his work, there was no such zest in it for him as he had once felt. Formerly he had romanticized it, had seen it all as something glowing and fine. Now it was only rarely that he experienced a little lifting sense of loveliness. This was when loveliness was really there to perceive.
Mr. Parkins, who was something of a dreamer and himself inclined to waste time, was amazed. He had difficulty in supplying Stacey with enough to do.
“Look here!” he said, before Stacey had been back a month. “What the devil’s come over you? You’re insatiable! You turn the work out as though it were arithmetic.” And he smiled in his uncertain reflective way.
“So it is, nine-tenths of it,—as unemotional as arithmetic. Nothing but concentration needed most of the time. Restful. A mistake to use your soul when you don’t have to.”
The architect sat down on the edge of Stacey’s desk. “But,” he suggested tentatively, “you don’t feel your old delight in it? Or do you?”
“When there’s any occasion,” said Stacey. “There, for instance.” And he pulled from a mass of papers a drawing of a detail—a wrought-iron balcony for a window. His eyes showed pleasure.
“Yes. By Jove, yes! That is good Stacey! Fine and—sure at the same time. You’re better than you used to be. For Henderson’s house? Pity it’s so sort of wasted. I mean, that it won’t be appreciated.”
“Oh, I don’t feel that,” Stacey replied. “I feel that it’s worth while enough to do anything good, even a molding for a room,—I don’t know why.”
Mr. Parkins looked surprised. “Well, that’s the right way to feel, of course. There’s one thing certain,” he added, getting up. “You go into the firm the first of the month. And there’s no favoritism about that, either.”
“All right,” said Stacey. “Thanks. It’s awfully good of you.” And he went to work again.
What Mr. Parkins had said was true. Stacey was a better architect than formerly. He was still affectionately interested in detail, because that interest had always been a part of him, and he knew enough now to understand calmly that nothing in one ever vanished; but he saw things in a larger, more solid way than once.
Hammond, a younger man who was put under Stacey’s guidance, questioned him about Stacey’s preliminary sketch for a competition. It was of a great stone bridge that was to cross both branches of the river in the heart of the railway and warehouse section.
“Don’t you think it’s maybe a little—oh, well, grim, Carroll?” asked Hammond, puzzled.
“Good Lord! man,” said Stacey, “think where it is—mud, noise, confusion!”
“Well, that’s just it. Oughtn’t one to brighten the place up a little?”
Stacey shook his head. “I’m no damned beauty-doctor. Just the facts—the right ones—in the best way.”
Stacey played tennis hard for an hour every afternoon when he had finished work; for his strong body craved exercise. But his mind did not crave companionship. He mingled with only a few people, and most of these doubtless resented his manner as seeming hard and cold. In this they were wrong. Stacey was merely aloof. He was not superior, judging these people adversely; he was simply not letting them in—or himself into them. He had a feeling that this world of personal relationships was too rich. It was more like a sea. One might be swept away futilely on it. Toward those whom he did admit as companions—and they were sometimes the unlikeliest people—he was prodigal of interest, in his own different way as altruistic as Mrs. Latimer.
For his hasty luncheon Stacey frequented a small cheap restaurant near-by. So, also, did Jack Edwards, who had been commander of the local American Legion post at the time Stacey had set it in a turmoil, but was so no longer, having been succeeded by some one less incongruously radical. The two fell into the habit of sitting down at table together for their fifteen-minute meal, and Stacey found himself at once attracted by the other man. Something in his firm lined face—perhaps the odd expression of the brown eyes—hinted at a tortured courageous personality. Stacey was friendly from the first. Edwards, on the other hand, was in the beginning obviously suspicious. But he thawed gradually, and the two became friends, united by some deep, almost unrecognized resemblance between them. Yet for a long time their talk was hardly more than casual comment on events.
“What do you do after lunch?” asked Stacey one June day, as they pushed back their chairs and rose. “You must surely take more time off than this before going back to work.”
“Oh,” the other replied, “I generally stroll around for twenty minutes—down to the river sometimes.”
“Come up to my office and smoke a cigarette, won’t you? There’ll be no one there for half an hour yet.”
“Don’t care if I do.” And the two men paid their checks and went out together, Stacey walking slowly, since Edwards limped badly on account of his wounded leg.
In Stacey’s room they sat down, with the littered desk between them, and smoked silently for some minutes. Stacey had his feet up against the side of an open drawer, but suddenly he swung them down and turned to face his friend.
“Edwards,” he demanded abruptly, “what do you think of the war, anyway?”
The muscles of the other man’s rather stern face contracted slightly. “Think of it?” he returned. “I don’t think of it. I don’t want to. Once in a while I dream.”
Stacey considered him with grim comprehension. From almost any one else the remark would have sounded melodramatic. Edwards made it quite sincerely, with no thought of effect. When the raw black-and-white stuff of melodrama became truth—that was horrible. Stacey shivered. But after a little he returned to it. “Yes, but I mean:doyou feel now that it wasallbad, all rotten selfish commercialism from the very beginning? Oh, you’ve every right to! I don’t blame you and your people if you do. Butdoyou?”
“We’ve been tricked,” Edwards replied bitterly, “duped! And I’ll take that point of view—the one you ask me if I have—publicly as long as I live. It’s the only way for me and mine to fight you and yours. Just as the way for your side to fight is to assert that the war was noble. But—it’s not so simple. No, I don’t think that.”
“No more do I!” cried Stacey. “I hate the war! It brought out everything rotten that lay hidden in men. But—some hundreds of thousands of young men did go into it nobly, and to just that extent it was a decent war. They’re mostly dead now—worse luck to the world!—and a good many of those that aren’t are turned beastly by what they lived through. But . . .” He paused. A kind of dark light smoldered in his eyes.
“There was courage,” said Edwards in a deep voice. “My God! there was courage! Not your romantic high-adventure sort, but the sort that could live through mud and intensive shelling and still push men on, afterward, to advance. But, oh, Christ! the wasted lives in the Argonne!—thrown away through sheer incompetence!Yourpeople did that!”
“And even so,” said Stacey somberly, “you didn’t see the Somme.” Suddenly the dull glow in his eyes rose to a flame. He struck the desk with his clenched fist. “The thing that gets me, Edwards,” he burst out, “is these beastly cheap editors of weeklies sitting up and writing pertly about the war as if it had been all a game of grab, nothing decent! Damn them! Petty complacent asses! What do they know about it? What do they know about physical courage—or any other kind? Havetheysuffered? Havetheyfought for ideals and been given dung? The Intellectuals, they call themselves! An honest protester like Debs, all right, I’ll respect him. But these vulgar underbred egotists—faugh! The only ones I hate as much are the others who sit up and write about how everything was first-rate—bully war—noble—good clearly coming out of it!” He ceased, panting with rage.
“Don’t hate so, Carroll,” said Edwards slowly. “Where’s the good?”
Stacey drew his hand across his forehead. “You’re right,” he returned. “It’s idiotic! I thought I’d learned better. And,” he added, laughing shortly, “fancy wasting emotion on that tribe!”
He felt dizzy and faintly nauseated, as though poisoned, and he was rather ashamed. It was a flash out of an earlier side of him.
For Stacey was like a fabric that was being woven together steadily out of varied strands. But here and there the woof was faulty; the pattern was broken; threads stuck out loosely.
But moments of hate such as this were rare. Generally he was cool enough—cooler and perhaps more tolerant than Edwards, who always in general talk showed himself bitterly conscious of the “class struggle.” Edwards came up to the office for a few minutes after luncheon nearly every day now, and as long as the two men talked personally or of concrete subjects he forgot his obsession—or, rather, seemed almost irately unable to apply it in any way to Stacey; but at the least broadening of the conversation it emerged, a sullen thing.
“Come out to dinner with us some evening, will you? To-night, if you like,” Stacey suggested once.
“No,” said Edwards shortly.
Stacey laughed. “Why not? Bound to have no dealings with the devil or any of his allies? Better come. You’d like my father. You’d fight with him, but you’d like him.”
“I don’t want to,” said Edwards. “I don’t want to like any of your crew. It’s their likableness that I resent. Of course they’re likable. Why shouldn’t they be? They’ve leisure and all the appurtenances essential to becoming so. We’ve got to fight them—you, as class against class.”
“I see. Sentiment must be kept out. No fraternizing in the trenches.”
Edwards flushed. “You’re too rotten clever, Carroll,” he replied resentfully. “It’s easy for you to make me appear in the wrong.”
“No,” said Stacey, “I simply fancy you’re wrong to think in classes. They’re abstractions. If everybody would drop them men could meet as men.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Edwards, clearly out of patience, “it’s all very well for you to sit there and talk! You can afford to be sweetly reasonable. You’re fixed—safe. You’ve everything. Of course you can talk unselfishly; you can even talk like a revolutionary. You know damn well there isn’t going to be any revolution—not yet.”
“Well, as for that,” said Stacey mildly, “I’ll admit that I live in a luxurious house with all sorts of comforts—pleasant enough in their way. Only how much do they amount to? I’m not essentially soft. I go on inhabiting the place because it’s there, because I haven’t any particular social theories (I don’t, for instance, see what good my not living there would do any one), because of my father, and because of Catherine Blair, my friend Phil’s widow, and her boys.”
Edwards’ face was crimson. “I didn’t mean what I said, Carroll,” he blurted out. “I know well enough that—oh, well, I apologize.”
“Shucks!” said Stacey, “that’s all right. It’s a good thing to look into one’s own existence now and then. For the rest, I dare say that I’m paid more than I’m worth for my work here. I can’t tell, and I don’t intend to waste much time worrying about it. I probably earn more than a skilled mechanic like you, and that’s wrong. I earn less than a broker, and that’s wrong. I can, because of my aptitude and a long training, build decent houses. How’s any one to know what my exact remuneration should be?”
“Under this system the Lord God Himself couldn’t decide.”
“That’s what I mean—under this system.”
Stacey was engrossed with the plans for the bridge one afternoon when the office-boy poked his head in at the door.
“Lady to see you, Mr. Carroll,” he announced.
“All right,” said Stacey mechanically, not taking it in.
So when a moment later he looked up to see Irene Loeffler standing opposite him he fairly gaped with surprise. But he rose quickly and went around the desk to her.
“How are you?” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Sit down, do! It’s a long time since I’ve seen you.”
She shook hands, dropped his hand quickly, then flung herself into a chair. She was the same abrupt disconcerting person as ever. Just now she was a trifle flushed with embarrassment.
Stacey sat down near her—but not too near—and considered her with a polite external gravity. Inwardly he was amused by the recollection of her advances, somewhat remorseful at having treated her so roughly, and just a little apprehensive.
“Wanted to see you, Mr. Carroll,” Irene began gruffly, “and this seemed a good place. Sorry to disturb you, though.”
But there was a faint tremor in her voice. Her affectation of mannishness made her appear only the more feminine, Stacey thought. In an odd way she was attractive.
“Not a bit of it! I’m glad to see you,” he replied, and waited.
Irene swallowed once or twice. “Well,” she said, trying again for a beginning, “I wanted to tell you something. I suppose you’ve got a rotten opinion of me. Haven’t you?” she demanded, staring at him, a sulky childish look about her mouth.
Stacey cordially disclaimed having anything of the sort.
“Well, you’d have a right to, I guess. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was that I’ve come to my senses. You haven’t anything to fear from me any more.”
Stacey choked at this and kept his face straight with difficulty.
“And I’m engaged to be married to Paul Hemingway. Know him?”
“Fine!” said Stacey, laughing in spite of his best efforts. “Awfully good fellow! I think you’ve chosen well. I’ll send you a wedding present.” And he held out his hand.
But she did not take it. Instead she twisted her handkerchief nervously around her fingers. Stacey had never seen any one with so little repose.
“Do you think,” she demanded abruptly, “that it’s all right for me to marry him?”
He stared at her. “Why, what do you mean?” he asked, completely lost.
“Well, I mean,” she said sullenly, her lower lip quivering like that of a child about to cry, “I mean—after what I said to you.”
Stacey understood now and was touched. “Why, you silly child!” he exclaimed, “I never heard of anything so absurd! If that’s the worst thing you ever did you’ve the purest past in the world!”
She brightened, tears of relief standing in her eyes. “But anyway I must tell Paul about it, mustn’t I?”
“No!” Stacey almost shouted, overcome with a mixture of amazement and admiration. “There’s nothing to tell!”
Irene wiped her eyes, in obvious resentment at the need. “All right, then,” she said. “Thanks.” And now she shook hands. Then she looked at Stacey with a tremulous smile. “You’ve got a lot of charm,” she announced.
But at this he retreated hastily behind his desk, and she departed, laughing.
Stacey thought often of Marian, but he did not see her until July. He had left the office late one afternoon and was walking briskly along the boulevard on the way to the tennis courts when she called to him from her open car. It drew up at the curb beside him, and Marian reached out her hand to him gracefully. She was coming from a tea, she said, and she was wearing a lacy dress of blue and silver and a drooping picture-hat, white and transparent, that cast soft shadow over her face without really obscuring it. Against the deep cushions of the tonneau she looked small, elegant and sophisticated. It occurred to Stacey that it was nonsense for him to be concerned about her. Their meeting must have appeared to an outsider like one of those Salon pictures of an encounter in the Bois de Boulogne.
“You’re looking very well, Stacey,” she said gaily, “but you don’t deserve to have me say so. Here you’ve been back for two months without coming near me! It’s not respectful.”
Stacey laughed. “What a funny word! Well, I will come. Love to.”
Marian’s arm hung limply along the edge of the car. She drummed idly with her hand against the polished enamel. And the gesture seemed to sum her up—perfection, graceful ennui, and all.
“Oh,” she said, “you’ll just say you’ll come, and that will be the end of it unless I pin you down. So I will. Come—let’s see!—come on Monday at five and have tea with me.”
“All right. Thanks. I’ll be coming straight from the office, so I’ll look dingy probably. Hope you won’t mind.”
“Gracious, no!” she replied, apparently without malice, and laughing rather delightfully. “It’s not your clothes I care about seeing. I’vegotclothes. Till Monday, then.” She touched the chauffeur’s back lightly with the tip of her slender blue-and-white parasol, and the car moved away smoothly.
He gazed after her for a moment, and again he dubbed himself a fussy fool. He forgot that one’s thought of a person is direct, without veils; so that in an actual encounter after long separation one is aware chiefly of the veils.
But it was only his father and Catherine whom Stacey saw constantly. He spent nearly all his evenings at home. Sometimes he would read or would merely look on while Catherine and Mr. Carroll played cards. And he was amused at this; for he did not think that Catherine liked cards really. When he thought she had endured enough he would insist on playing in her stead, declaring that she was usurping his place in the home. Or, again, they would all three merely sit and talk. But this made Mr. Carroll restless. He demanded, Stacey could see, some direct problem, even if a small one, to occupy his mind. He could talk while he played cards, but talk was for him no end in itself; it was a pleasant accompaniment to something else that led somewhere.
On other evenings, when Mr. Carroll must speak at a banquet or welcome some visiting potentate of the Republican Party (Mr. Harding was nominated by now, and Mr. Carroll, at first disappointed, soon perceived that the choice was a wise one), Stacey would sit with Catherine or, more often, walk with her in the garden.
He felt that he did not know Catherine at all, and he was aware that this was partly his fault. He had always thought of her as Phil’s wife, and she still evoked for him the memory of Phil rather than any clear image of her own. Yet, though he could not have said what she was like, he admired her more than any one else he knew. It was no good to ask himself why. He could say vaguely that she was clear and cool as deep water . . . that she had a profound truthfulness . . . that there was a quality of Fact in her:—what did all that mean? Only once had her personality touched his in a flash,—on that afternoon when she had pleaded with him—but commandingly almost, if gently—not to go to Marian, and he had cut her with cruel words because he had yielded. He bit his lip in shame at the thought.
And she was so shy, so immensely reserved. She was not really at her ease with him, he saw, except when the boys were present or his father. She would talk about herself, when Stacey questioned her, as though she were talking of some one else.
“What do you do with your day, Catherine?” he asked once. “I mean, when the boys are away at school.”
This seemed to startle her, rather. “I—I write, or try to, regularly, Stacey,” she replied, after a moment.
They were walking in the garden, and he paused suddenly to stare at her. “You mean—things to publish?” he cried, amazed.
“Yes. Does it seem incredible? I suppose it does,” she returned simply.
“No! No! I don’t mean that! I should think you probably had more to say than any one else I know, only—pardon me, Catherine!—oh, well, let’s be frank!—expression isn’t your forte.”
She laughed shyly at this. “It’s easier when you write,” she said.
“Yes, of course it must be. What kind of things?”
“Little articles,” she replied haltingly. “Mostly for English papers. It’s hard to get them accepted here. One or two places—do—sometimes.”
“You’ll let me see them? Please!”
“Never!” she exclaimed, horrified. “And I don’t sign my own name, so it’s useless to look.”
“You’re exasperating, Catherine!” he cried, and meant it. Then he laughed suddenly. “I’ll bet they’re radical—oh, radical! Tell me, Catherine,” he added maliciously, “when you’ve gone upstairs after my father has talked about Bolshevism at some length, do you sit down then and write your subversive stuff? A double life—that’s what you’re leading!”
She flushed at this and would say no more.
Yet Stacey’s persistent attempt to get at Catherine was not the result of mere curiosity, even the curiosity of affection. At heart he felt vaguely that she was immensely lonely in her isolation, in great need of sharing her grief for Phil with some one else. He would have her make such a friend of him as Phil had made him.
In 1910 Harriet Price, Ames’s mother and widow of John Price, who had been head of the Price Tractor and Motor Company, built a new house. In 1912 she died, and the mansion, together with many other good things, among them a controlling interest in the tractor company, passed to Ames, the only child.
The house, which was an immense square building of yellow stone in the Italian Renaissance style, occupied, with its grounds, an entire block in the best section of the fashionable boulevard. Stacey had always rather liked the exterior, though it was not Parkins and May but a Chicago firm of architects who had built the house. It was severe, commanding, less inharmonious in Vernon than most anachronisms, and the four great chimneys were really fine. Never having cared for the Prices, Stacey had seen the interior but once—at a large house-warming affair given in the winter of 1910, to which he had gone out of curiosity. It had struck him then as Chicago decorators’ stuff (which it was), proper, faultlessly in period, quite without character. He remembered perfectly the dreariness of his impression.
So now, when he entered the vast hall, his first glimpse of it made him aware of change.
“Mr. Carroll, sir?” asked the English butler. “Will you go upstairs, please? Mrs. Price is expecting you there, sir.”
“Yes,” said Stacey, “half a minute.” He walked quickly across the hall and stood for a moment at the entrance to the great drawing-room on the left. As he looked in he smiled, half appreciatively, half ironically. Change? Well, rather! To begin with, Marian—it was Marian, of course—had swept away pretty much everything that had been in that room when Stacey had first seen it. But, even supposing the discarded furniture and pictures to have been sold, he hardly thought the present relative bareness had saved Ames money. That long table, the Florentine chest, and the copy of a relief in marble with touches of blue and gold (Desiderio da Settignano?)—if itwasa copy—h’m! He turned back. “All right,” he said to the butler. “I’ll go up.”
As he mounted the broad stone stairway, the man following, his glance rested on a tapestry—a Medici tapestry, if he knew anything about it. “Whew!” he thought. But his eyes were just a little hard now. Marian would take and take—and give nothing. All the same, what did she get from it? Again he felt suddenly unreasoningly sorry for her.
The butler conducted Stacey to the south end of the upper hall, tapped perfunctorily at a door, opened it, and Stacey went in.
The room he entered was a small sitting-room—Marian’s own, most certainly—English in feeling, crowded with a great many things. Or, rather, no, on second thought Stacey knew it well:—it was like what pleasant English people did sometimes to their smallest, best loved room in a Tuscan villa. The French windows were wide open, but the heavy wooden shutters were closed to shut out the heat, so that only a soft summer air entered, with perfumes from the garden outside. There was a kind of radiant greenish twilight in the room.
No one was there, though a flame burned beneath a silver kettle, two fragile cups stood ready, and a tea-wagon with bread and butter and cake was drawn up near the table. After perhaps a minute Marian entered through another door.
She was wearing a simple dress of a pearl gray color, short, as the fashion was, and with a silver cord about the waist. She looked as Greek as any one or anything modern could look, and Stacey drew in his breath sharply with admiration of her beauty. Nevertheless, as he shook hands with her and replied to her apparently natural greeting, he was wary. All this delightful readiness for his visit, the coziness, the shining tea things, Marian herself. . . . “ ‘I mistrust the Greeks and the gifts they bring,’ ” he said to himself suddenly, and smiled, finding the quotation apt, Marian looking as she did. But he kept it to himself.
Marian sat down at the table, but remained for a moment gracefully idle, smiling at him, before beginning to make the tea.
“You see all my preparations, Stacey,” she said lightly. “You see what an event it is when you come. Aren’t you flattered?”
“You know I am,” he returned, almost disarmed now by her remark. And this was true. For Stacey was genuinely anxious to be friends with Marian. After all, at bottom he was a simple person. That is, he was complex only on his receptive side. He could perceive, quite without effort, the subtlest, most tangled, personal relationships all about him, whether or not he was himself involved in them; he had always been able to do this. But the real Stacey Carroll in the centre of this rich shimmering web remained simple. The impulses on which he acted were simple, almost boyish sometimes.
Marian and Stacey were both silent while she measured out the tea and poured the hot water. Gazing at her so closely, he noted that she was very thin. Her fine pointed face was almost sharp, and her bare arms, lifted prettily to the silver urn, were too slender. Stacey was sorry. But, considering himself questioningly, he recognized that this half-pity for Marian, together with an artist’s admiration of her loveliness, was all that he felt for her now. Absolutely all. No touch of love remained. And Stacey was immensely relieved.
“It has to brew seven minutes,” said Marian, glancing at her tiny turquoise-incrusted wrist-watch, then leaning back in a corner of her chair and resting her long slim hands on one arm of it.
“Most people treat tea-making so clumsily,” Stacey remarked. “You make it an art, just as you do with all the other daily things. They acquire distinction. That’s nice.”
“Thanks,” she said idly, “but it’s only that it tastes better if it’s made right, you know.”
“And isn’t that something? Marian,” he added, noting that her fingers were quite bare, “don’t you wear your rings any more?”
She glanced down at her hands. “No,” she said, “I don’t like them. And they slip off.”
“You mustn’t let yourself get so thin,” he returned solicitously.
She gave him a quick hard smile. “Of course not. I must keep myself a handsomeobjet d’art, mustn’t I? I remember all about the Parthenon, Stacey.”
“No, no!” he answered, discouraged, getting a glimpse of her antagonism, “I didn’t mean that! I only meant that you must stay well. What a rotter you must think me, to take my remark like that! As far as that goes, you’re more beautiful at present than I’ve ever seen you,” he added simply.
But he saw her bite her lip after her pettish outburst, and he felt lost—baffled. To save him, he could not make out what she was after; whether she regretted her spiteful little attack because it was not in line with a carefully prepared program or because she merely wanted to be friendly and hadn’t meant to grow petulant. His mind played restlessly over the whole situation and could make nothing of it.
“Yes, that was rather nasty of me, I admit,” said Marian after a moment.
It was some little time before she could again conquer his wariness, but she did so at last. There is a smooth disarming intimacy about the tea-hour. The ceremony of tea itself is so fine; it is elegant, aloof and gracious; it ministers to taste yet not to appetite; people are not there to chew and be nourished. And then the hour itself is lovable—the sun’s rays growing level, dust in the air turned golden, a hush perceptible even through the city’s noise. Stacey surrendered to the atmosphere of intimacy. He drank the fragrant China tea and talked without restraint of a number of things. Perhaps, he thought, he and Marian might still be friends. He had treated her abominably and was sorry for it now that he understood her better, though she, he admitted, understood him better than he her.
They could be silent, too. Pauses were not awkward.
“You gather so much fineness together, Marian,” he remarked once. “All that you touch becomes fine, turns to gold.” He ceased abruptly. That was the wrong allusion, he thought, annoyed at his clumsiness.
But she did not seem to mind it. “You’re really quite kindly toward me, aren’t you, Stacey?” she replied, with perhaps just a hint of irony in her voice, but smiling pleasantly.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“No reason at all, of course,” she said prettily, making him a mocking little bow. “Have some more tea.”
He held out his cup, watched her fill it, then set it down again, all mechanically. “People get in states of mind—for no particular reason,” he said vaguely, feeling apologetic yet not wanting to go into the matter—as much on her account as on his.
“Yes, and then into others. Tell me:—do you feel kindly toward everybody now?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t go so far as to claim that!” he replied uncomfortably. It went against his whole nature to talk about himself to Marian, yet he felt he owed her some sort of confession. So he went on haltingly. “I used to get awfully worked up about a lot of things—about people being greedy, for instance. I don’t mean any one person—everybody, whole human race. But then,” he concluded diffidently, “it struck me that they weren’t hateful on account of it, but only pathetic, since their greed never brought them happiness—never!”
Marian’s face was half turned away from him and she was resting her chin in her cupped hand—an old familiar pose—so that he could not see her expression. But all at once she dropped her hand, lay back in her chair, and laughed musically, startling him.
“Oh, Stacey, you’re so funny!” she exclaimed. “I’ve told you that before. But I think,” she added, not laughing now, smiling at him deliberately, “that I liked you better in your fierce, world-defying, Byronic stage, when you were so dramatic, than now in this Christ-like phase.”
He winced sharply. She had really hurt him there. He despised people who went sweetly through the world doing good to others; which was what she meant. Stacey flushed hotly. But he caught a fleeting gleam of triumph in Marian’s eyes, and at this his anger and most of his shame left him, and he only felt drearily that it was no use, she hated him and had got him there on purpose to take this sort of small revenge. It was true that she had led him on and stabbed just when he had generously disarmed; she had not played fair. But, after all, why should she?
She baffled him to-day, though. He thought that now he was in for it, that she would try to lead him into some further trap. Instead, she grew suddenly listless, talked indifferently of casual things, or, again, talked rapidly and artificially. She made no more onslaughts, was rather kind to him than otherwise, ringing for the butler to bring up a brand of cigarettes of which she knew Stacey was fond. But he felt her to be immensely sophisticated, with no girlishness remaining. Leaning back in her chair she had the weary perfection of something finished, complete and soulless. There was no trace left in her of the elfish charm for which he had once loved her idolatrously. Nor had there been at the very beginning of the afternoon when she had seemed fresh and spontaneous.
She went down to the door with him when he left her, but she shook hands almost apathetically.
He puzzled over it as he walked homeward. He could not understand what Marian had been about. Surely she had not summoned him to give him that one thrust. She was too clever not to have been able to do more than that if revenge was what she had been after. It did not occur to him that Marian might simply have been intolerably bored and have wanted him as some kind of relief, to cajole or stab as the mood struck her. What Stacey did feel was that it was restful to go back to Catherine and his father from so much futile complexity. Not that they were so limpid, either, come to think about it; Catherine especially wasn’t. But they were direct.
The interview left him feeling a little sore,—not altogether, though partly, because he had been wounded in his self-esteem. But this did not last; the matter was too trivial to annoy him for long. He forgot all about it in his work.
It was just two weeks later at about four in the afternoon when the door of Stacey’s office was thrown open and Ames Price strode in. Stacey’s first feeling was one of surprise and repressed amusement; for he had not seen Ames since the evening of the outrageous jest played on him at the road-house. Stacey’s second emotion, following immediately, was a sick comprehending horror. It was as though he had known everything beforehand in a dream that he had forgotten and that had fought in vain to break loose and summon him.
Ames’s heavy face was set, in a struggle for self-control, and his voice when he spoke was thick and difficult.
“Come with me, Carroll,” he stammered.
Stacey had already sprung to his feet. He was paler than Ames. “Yes,” he said, and snatched up his hat.
The other clenched his fists. “You mean to say—you know already, damn you? Some one’s told you?”
“No,” said Stacey dully, “no. Come on!”
“Slowly—through the office. No fuss. Got to smile. Latimer said so.” It was as though Ames were reciting a ritual.
Together they went down in the elevator and out of the building. It was August, but the car that Ames had brought was a closed car. “Latimer again,” thought Stacey, with a touch of loathing beneath the horror that filled his mind. They set off swiftly.
“It’s—Marian,” said Ames. “She shot herself this morning. Dying. She—asks for you.” He looked at Stacey—dully rather than with hatred.
It was this, of course, or something like it, Stacey knew already; but to hear it in words was abominable. A chill ran over his body. He felt physically nauseated. He set his teeth.
“In—much—pain?” he muttered.
“No.”
The car drove up beneath the porte-cochère of the Prices’ house, and the two men got out. They went upstairs together silently.
In Marian’s exquisite boudoir stood a black group of people. Stacey recognized none of them at first, only caught a feeling of their heavy incongruity in that place. Then he saw that Mr. Latimer was one and that another was a doctor whom he knew. There was a nurse also. From somewhere Mrs. Latimer appeared, and Stacey perceived that she was a haggard old woman. A look of relief softened her eyes a very little at sight of him.
“She wants to see you, Stacey,” Mrs. Latimer murmured. “I’ll speak to the doctor inside,” and she went through a door.
Presently she returned with the doctor. “You can go in,” he said.
Stacey pulled him aside a little way. “It won’t do any harm?” he demanded hoarsely.
“No, no harm. Better to let her have her way. There’s nothing to be done. The bullet missed the heart and penetrated the lung instead. The wound is dressed. Be as calm as you can.”
“There’s no hope?”
“Not the faintest. She is—well, there’s no hope,” replied the doctor, rather kindly.
“Just a minute, then,” said Stacey. He leaned against a wall and struggled for composure. Then he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “All right,” he said, and went through the door with the doctor and Marian’s mother.
The room beyond was hushed, cool and darkened. Mrs. Latimer led Stacey to the bedside, then withdrew to a distant corner of the room and stood there, motionless, with the nurse and the doctor. When he looked that way he could see them like dim figures in the background of some faded Venetian picture.
“Is that Stacey?” asked a thin voice.
“Yes,” he murmured, and knelt by the bed.
Marian was propped up within it, and her face, that was turned sideways toward him on the pillows, was like alabaster, thin, veined and bloodless; but her beauty was unmarred, heightened even—like a statue of her beauty. The only color anywhere was in her bright hair that was spread about the pillow.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” she said. “Take my hand.”
He did so, gently. Her voice was scarcely more than a musical murmur, and between phrases she gasped for breath. “Don’t talk!” he begged. “Let me talk to you, Marian.”
“No,” she said, “I must talk to you, Stacey. Not much—only a little.” She paused, panting.
Stacey was wrenched with pain. This was unbearable. His forehead was damp with sweat.
“I wanted—to tell you,” she went on almost inaudibly, “oh, lots of things! Not to worry—for one. It’s just—as well. Only—isn’t it like me,” she said, with a faint smile, “to fail—even in this?”
“Marian—please!” he muttered, tightening his hold on her hand for an instant. It was the pathos of her frail attempt at cynicism that shook him. For now she no longer looked the weary, perfect, grown-up woman; she seemed a little girl. To watch her die was like watching a child die—or a dream.
“I hurt you, Stacey. I—didn’t mean to,” she said softly, and managed to stroke his hand, ever so faintly.
It was perhaps the first time he had found tenderness in her. He set his teeth hard.
“I must say—what I have to—quickly,” she went on. “You are not to—blame yourself, Stacey. You have—nothing—to—do—with—it.” She paused for a moment, struggling for breath. “I was—all wrong—twisted. You were right. You couldn’t love me—or I you—not even you. I could not bear—life—any longer—having made—such a mess—of it.”
She closed her eyes weakly, and he thought that she slept or—had died. But presently they fluttered open again. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “that I said—what I did—to you—the other day. It was not—true—and I did not mean it—even then.”
“Oh,” he cried, in a choked voice, “don’t, Marian!”
She held his fingers close. “Poor Stacey!” she whispered. “It’s not your fault.”
Again she paused. And after a moment an elfish smile stirred her lips. “Do I look—a fright?” she asked.
“No—lovely.”
“Well, that’s good!” she murmured, with the ghost of a laugh. “Par—thenon.”
They were both silent for a while.
“Now I’m sleepy. You may—go. But first—kiss me, Stacey dear.”
He bent over and touched her white cheek with his lips, then rose slowly to his feet and made his way back unsteadily to the others.
“I don’t know,” he muttered hoarsely to the doctor. “You’d better feel her pulse.”
The doctor went quickly to the bed, then, after a moment, returned. “Just the same—or only a little weaker. She’s asleep,” he whispered.
Stacey looked at Mrs. Latimer. “I’ll go, then. You’ll keep me informed—by ’phone?” he pleaded.
She nodded, taking his hand for an instant.
He returned to the other room, dizzily. “She’s sleeping just now,” he said to Marian’s husband. “Will you—have your car take me—home?”
They went out into the hall together. Stacey stumbled, and Ames grasped his arm and held it.
But Mr. Latimer had followed them. “Stacey,” he said, “just a moment.”
Stacey turned mechanically to stare at him. Up to now he had only been vaguely aware of the man’s presence.
“It is perhaps unnecessary for me to warn you to say nothing of this,” said Marian’s father stonily. “It must be kept out of the papers.”
It was just what Stacey needed. He straightened up, anger rushing through him like a hot flood. “Go to hell!” he said, then swung about and walked quickly and firmly downstairs, with Ames following.
At the door of the car the two men gazed at each other helplessly. There was no antagonism between them now. In some odd way they were even united.
“I’m glad you said that to Latimer,” Ames remarked dully.
So was Stacey glad. His anger was all that sustained him on the ride home. For he felt that everything was Mr. Latimer’s fault. All the worst of Marianhehad given her. Almost he had pointed the revolver.
Stacey let himself in with a latch-key, then hurried up the stairs to his own rooms. Once in his study, he threw himself down upon a couch and lay there for a long time, motionless, his hands thrown back and clasped beneath his head. But there was no relaxation in his stillness. His body was tense, and now and then a spasm contracted the taut muscles of his face. The late western sunlight poured in through the windows and flickered brightly across the wall, and the shrill distant voices of children at play were audible.
At last Stacey turned his head slowly to look at a small travelling clock on a stand near the couch. The hands pointed to six-thirty. He got up with an effort, pressed the button of a bell, then sat down at his desk, rested his head in his hands, and stared blindly out of the window.
“If Mrs. Blair is in,” he said, without moving, when Parker entered the room, “please ask her if she will be so kind as to come up here for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man, and went out.
Presently Catherine tapped at the door, and Stacey rose wearily. “Come in!” he called.
She looked fresh and very young to him who felt so old. “You wanted to see me?” she began, then broke off to gaze at him in alarm. “Stacey!” she cried, “what’s the matter?”
“Catherine,” he said in a monotonous voice, “do me a favor, please. Tell my father I won’t be down to dinner—and why. Marian Latimer shot herself this morning. She is dying. I have just been there. It has rather knocked me out.”
Catherine had turned pale, and her eyes were wide with horror. “Oh!” she gasped, then suddenly went closer to him. “Stacey,” she said gently, “sit down.”
He obeyed and resumed his former pose, staring again out of the window. “Don’t let the servants hear what you say,” he went on, in the same dead tone. “It’s to be kept secret. And don’t let father come up to see me. He would be kind, but I can’t see him now.”
She drew in her breath sharply, but said nothing,—only laid her hand on his shoulder.
At this he swung about, as though the touch had loosened something within him. “It’s the ghastly—waste that gets me—so hard!” he cried, his face set with pain. “Death itself—that’s nothing! An episode! But to see so much loveliness, so much fineness, all go wrong—obliquely—to futile death as to—a climax! It’s unbearable!”
“Stacey! Stacey!” Catherine whispered.
“And it’s all my fault—”
“No! No! you mustn’t!”
“But yes! My fault! If I could only have gone on loving her, or if, not loving her, I had married her, things might have been different. Not so—complete a mess! We’d have become adjusted—somehow.”
Catherine drew up a chair swiftly and sat down close to him. “Stacey,” she cried unsteadily, her eyes shining with tears, “I beg of you—you mustn’t! The truth is bad enough,—ah, please don’t go beyond the truth! It was not your fault—only in as much as what happens to any one in the whole world is one’s fault. Poor lovely Marian!—there was something—I don’t know—something twisted in her.”
At this and at the soft compassion of her voice Stacey looked toward Catherine differently. “Twisted—it was what she called herself only half an hour ago,” he said in a gentler tone.
They were silent for a time. Something in the young woman’s clear presence comforted him.
“She looked like a little girl, Catherine,” he said at last, only sorrowfully. “You would not have known her. And so beautiful! Oh, wicked!” Again his face contracted.
And, indeed, though he did not see it at the moment, as poignant an emotion for him as any in all the tragedy lay in the destruction of so much sheer beauty. Afterward, weeks afterward, he perceived this, and recognized with pain that Marian herself had understood it, even tenderly at the last.
The bell of the telephone on Stacey’s desk rang, and he reached slowly for the receiver. Catherine gazed at him apprehensively, but he spoke quietly enough, just a few words, in reply to the message, then hung up the receiver and turned to Catherine.
“She is dead,” he murmured. “She died in her sleep. She never waked after I left her.”
There was nothing to say. The two sat there in silence for some minutes.
“You must go down, Catherine,” Stacey said finally. “It is almost seven. Thank you.”
She rose reluctantly. “You’ll let me have something sent up to you?”
“No! No! I can’t eat!” he exclaimed with revulsion. “I have to think,” he added, “of what to say to Mrs. Latimer. I must go to see her after a while. WhatcanI say?”
Catherine gave him a look in which there was something like pride. But all that she answered was that he must eat something; then went out.
He sat there, reflecting painfully. He felt tired, hopeless, alive in a dead empty world, but he was less tense now.
After a while—in half an hour, perhaps—the door opened and Catherine herself came in with a tray.
He smiled faintly at this. “You will have your way, won’t you?” he remarked; but he ate a little while she sat watching him.
“Stacey,” she asked diffidently, when he had finished, “should you like me to go with you?”
“To Mrs. Latimer’s?” he exclaimed. “Oh, would you? But no,” he added impatiently, “why should I lay things on you?”
“You won’t be doing that. If I could, perhaps, share a little, I should be glad. You’ve had—nearly enough, I think.”
“You’re kind,” he said gruffly. “All right. Come.”
“Now?”
He nodded.
“Then I’ll go for a wrap and come back at once.”
“Oh!” he said, with a start, when she returned, “I must order the car brought around.” And he reached for the telephone.
“It’s at the door,” she replied simply.
And when they went down the stairs they met nobody either there or in the hall. That, too, was Catherine’s work, he thought with a softening touch of gratitude.
He sat silent during the ride, trying to think what he should say to Mrs. Latimer. But he could find nothing; he could only trust to the moment. It was a horrible task. Yet he was not undertaking it as a duty; he was going only because he was overwhelmingly sorry for his old friend and concerned about her. At any rate, Catherine’s quiet presence was of some help. He felt her as not weak in her compassion but strong.
It demanded a real effort for him to ring the bell of the Latimers’ house, but he did so, and after a little while a maid opened the door.
“Has Mrs. Latimer got back yet?” Stacey asked in a low tone.
“Yes, sir, but—she said—”
“I know. That she could not see any one. But she will want to see me, I think. Just let me go quietly in. She is in the drawing-room?”
“Yes, sir,—with Mr. Latimer.”
Stacey winced. This made it harder. But he went quietly through the hall and into the familiar room; and Catherine followed him, a step or two behind. Just across the threshold he paused.
Only a single shaded reading-lamp was burning, and that at the farthest corner of the long room; so that the part nearest Stacey was all in darkness. At first the only person in the room appeared to be Mr. Latimer, who, his hands clasped behind his back, was pacing up and down across the far end of it, from lamp to window and from window to lamp. When he approached the lamp and turned, his face was illuminated from below, so that the chin and the delicate selfish mouth showed clearly, while the eyes and forehead remained shadowy. Stacey could not conquer his feeling of bitter hardness. The man was suffering, no doubt, in his own way, but he was not generous enough—so Stacey thought—to suffer deeply. He looked proud even now, when it was no time for pride; he should have been comforting his wife. And what had he done? What had he done? Could he not understand?
But Stacey gave him only a moment of thought. His eyes were searching the room for Mrs. Latimer. And presently he found her—a wrecked huddled figure on a couch just opposite him. Her face was hidden among the cushions; only her hair, her dark dress, and one clenched hand were visible.
Stacey took a step forward. “Mrs. Latimer,” he said.
She sat up with a gasp; but it was her husband who spoke. “Who is there?” he called sharply, pausing and gazing toward Stacey.
“It is Stacey Carroll, sir.”
Mr. Latimer stiffened. “This is no time for you to come to this house,” he said coldly. “You should know that. I do not wish to see you.”
“No,” Stacey replied. “But I came to see Mrs. Latimer—unless she would prefer not to have me.”
The woman on the couch leaned forward. “Oh, yes, Stacey!” she cried, in a tone that went to his heart. He was sure of himself now; he was indifferent to what Mr. Latimer might say.
The older man stood there, erect in the lamplight, handsome, implacable, but to Stacey non-existent. “Either you or I, Carroll, must leave this house,” he said haughtily. “Both of us—”
But at this Mrs. Latimer had sprung to her feet, tottering a little. “Then,” she cried, in a tense voice that told Stacey much, “it must be you, Herbert!Iwish to see Stacey. Oh,” she murmured weakly, but with relief, “and Catherine—you’ve come! How—good!” And she sank down again upon the couch.
As Stacey moved toward her he, too, for a moment thought of Catherine. He knew well how shy, how retiring, even how shrinking she was by nature; yet all through this brief unpleasant scene he had felt her standing there, gently strong, not wincing.
But Mr. Latimer said only: “As you please,” and left the room.
Stacey knelt on the rug before the couch, but, though Mrs. Latimer touched his hair tremblingly and had sent away her husband to have him there, it was to Catherine that she turned, clasping her hand and making the young woman sit down close beside her on the divan.
The half-hour that followed was atrocious, worse than anything Stacey had ever been through. For he had seen bodies shockingly tortured and minds driven to madness by pain and terror, but this was the destruction of a noble personality, of a character built up bravely through long effort; it was the negation of everything. And the worst of it was that in the broken phrases that Mrs. Latimer cried out—sometimes to him, mostly to Catherine—traces remained of her high, clear, unified intelligence, like drifting debris of a wrecked ship. “My little girl! My poor baby!” she broke out once. “A child again only when—dying! Wasted—wasted—all for nothing, a whole life! Oh, it’s my fault!—no, his!his! his!” (this with a terrible fierceness). “No, mine, too! mine, too!”
But there were pauses of exhaustion between her outbursts, and after a while she grew slightly calmer, merely clinging to Catherine, who spoke little, but in a tone of infinite tenderness. Beneath everything else Stacey felt an awe of Catherine for her deep calm that expressed the very opposite of indifference. As for himself, he could find nothing to do (which was perhaps as well) save once to slip out into the hall and telephone the doctor whom he had seen at Marian’s bedside, to say that he must come with something to put Mrs. Latimer to sleep.
“If I make you some chocolate, dear, you will drink it, will you not?” asked Catherine at last, pleadingly.
“If you wish,” Mrs. Latimer answered, worn out and quieted.
But she kept the young woman’s hand tight clasped in hers, so that Catherine looked up at Stacey for a moment with a faint questioning smile. For the first time tears started to his eyes; there was so much of selfless weary beauty in the look she gave him. He nodded, went quickly out to the kitchen, found the scared cook, and presently himself brought in the chocolate, which Mrs. Latimer drank with trembling gulps, Catherine holding the cup.
Then the doctor came and with Catherine’s help put Mrs. Latimer to bed, while Stacey waited below.
At last Catherine came down again and they went out to the car. Her face looked tired and drawn. The strain had been horrible. Stacey himself, who had perforce borne so small a share of it, was ready to drop.
“Thank you,” he said almost timidly after a moment. “I’m sorry not to have been able to do more. It wasn’t fair to you. You did so much.”
“I?” she exclaimed, but she was resting her head against the upholstered back of the seat. “Poor lady!” she murmured then. “So pitifully—broken! It wasn’t only—herself that Marian hurt.”
“I don’t suppose it ever is,” said Stacey wearily.
Catherine gave him a look of sympathy. “Can you sleep, do you think?” she asked.
But at this he sat erect. “I refuse to have you bother your head about me too,” he said sharply. “Yes, I know I can sleep.”