stacey had left vernon in december; it was on an afternoon in may that he returned to it. tulips bloomed gaily in well tended beds along the boulevard at which he gazed from his taxi. a fresh spring smell was in the air. the city was at its best.
stacey looked at it inquiringly, almost as though it were new to him. and in a sense it was new; for he did not feel toward it in any way that he had felt before. he saw the business buildings standing angularly against the blue sky, the handsome residences of varied architecture, the wide streets that were rivers of motor cars, and he noted, as often, that esthetically the city was faulty and aspiring, and that socially it was energetic and confident. he received again an impression of people striving relentlessly to attain certain things and clinging to them desperately when attained. but he did not feel for these characteristics either admiration or disapproval, affection or distaste. what he did feel was curiosity, because it seemed to him that he knew very little about vernon really, and an odd touch of pity. for the first time it struck him as rather pathetic to care so hard about motor cars and bathrooms and servants. here were wealthy men riding triumphantly in imported rolls-royces, and poor men riding in fords, or walking, and hating the rich men. what a to-do! oh, well, it couldn’t be helped! stacey supposed. economics were the order of the day.
presently he reached his father’s house. “hello, parker,” he said to the surprised servant who opened the door. “i’m back, you see,—and without so much as sending a wire. how are you? mr. carroll well? take this bag up to my room for me, will you, please? i certainly do need a bath. oh, yes, i’ve had lunch, thanks.”
an hour later he strolled down to the dining-room for a whiskey and soda, then, glass in hand, into the library. and there, sitting with a book in a high-backed chair, was catherine.
“why, catherine!” stacey exclaimed, going toward her quickly and holding out his hand.
she had risen swiftly, as surprised as he. she was wearing a black dress, but with a wide pointed collar of white lace at her bare throat. she looked firm and grave and slender.
“well, isn’t this jolly?” he said, shaking her hand cordially. “what are you doing here?”
“didn’t you get my last letter?” she asked, with some embarrassment. “i think your father wrote you, too.”
“i did get your letter and one from father,” he replied, “just before i left pickens, but, to tell you the truth, i’ve brought them back unopened in my bag. i thought it would be so much nicer to talk with you both. it sounds rude and unappreciative, but i didn’t mean it that way.” she was still gazing at him, and he saw that she was distressed about something and as shy as ever. “sit down, do!” he said.
she obeyed. “you see,” she began slowly, “i didn’t think you’d be back yet. and a little while ago, when the rent period on our house was up, your father said—he’s been so awfully kind to us always—and he said—”
“catherine,” stacey interrupted, “it’s oppressive to see any one with as much to say as you always have, so unable to say it.” (she bit her lip.) “my father said: ‘i insist on your coming to live here. it’s a big place and i need a housekeeper.’?”
but, though he laughed, stacey did not feel mirthful. he had a sudden perception of how lonely his father had been, how lonely catherine had been.
“yes,” she returned, “that was what he said. and i was weak enough to accept, though i knew it was only kindness on his part. but i was going away when you came back, stacey.”
“oh,” he remarked, “you were!”
again she bit her lip. “i mean,” she added quickly, “that we might have been in your way and—”
“catherine,” said stacey, getting up and standing beside her, “i think your being here is delightful. i should feel very badly if you went away. there’s my hand on it.”
she looked at him in a puzzled manner and thanked him, rather unsteadily, because he had been so cordial. a little of her shyness had vanished when he sat down again.
“you came back,” she said.
he nodded. “i’d ridden everywhere there was to ride; so all at once i decided i’d come back to the world.” and he became silent. “where are the boys?” he demanded suddenly.
“at school,” she replied, “but it’s four now. they’ll be here any minute.”
and only a little later they did come in. jack was unrestrained from the first, but carter, probably coached by his mother, was impressively correct until he caught sight of stacey and threw reserve to the winds.
the library echoed with noise and there was a touch of color in catherine’s cheeks when at five o’clock mr. carroll opened the door of the room and stood at the threshold, looking in.
“well, son!” he exclaimed.
stacey sprang up. “surprise party, dad!” he remarked, shaking his father’s hand. “quite a good one, don’t you think?”
“i should say so!” mr. carroll replied, while catherine quieted the boys and made them sit beside her with a book. “how was everything down there? did you ride over that garett creek path you and i found once?”
“yes,” said stacey, “there and everywhere else.”
after the initial burst of cordiality they fell silent, finding little to say to each other. how estranged they were! stacey thought. the murmur of the children’s voices and the subdued sound of catherine’s words explaining a story were comforting—to stacey certainly, to his father almost as certainly—filling in the emptiness.
mr. carroll called jack to him—jack seemed to be his favorite—and joked with the child much more naturally than he could joke with stacey. as for stacey, he talked with catherine and carter.
after a while catherine announced to the boys that it was half-past five and they must go wash and get ready for dinner.
“look here, catherine!” remarked mr. carroll. “do let them eat with us to-night.”
“yes! oh, yes, mother!” they cried in unison.
she shook her head. “no,” she said to them, “do as mother says,” and they went out slowly.
“no, please!” she replied to mr. carroll. “it’s awfully—good of you, but i’m sure it’s better this way.”
mr. carroll frowned. “idea of catherine’s,” he said, appealing to his son. “boys must eat at six—an hour ahead of us. i’d like to have them at table with me. can’t you do anything about it?”
catherine was shy but firm. “i’d rather they wouldn’t, please,” she said.
stacey laughed. “lord! no, i can’t do anything about it!” he returned. “you have my full moral support, but what’s the use? catherine’s the rock of gibraltar.”
his father laughed with him and spread out his hands in surrender. perhaps he rather liked being successfully opposed. at any rate, there was less constraint between him and stacey after this. if in no other way, stacey thought, they could at least be united in a league of men against women. when catherine went down to sit at table while her sons ate, the two men talked quite freely, though chiefly of her.
“you don’t mind my asking her and the boys to come over here?” mr. carroll asked apologetically.
stacey was touched. “good heavens, no!” he exclaimed. “it’s jolly for us and better for them. it was awfully good of you, sir.”
“no, no!” said his father gruffly. “purely selfish. brightens the house up. long time since there were children here. you and julie would grow up, confound you!” he added wrathfully.
stacey laughed a little at this. “couldn’t help it, dad,” he replied. “i regret it as much as you do.”
“fine girl, catherine!” mr. carroll went on, after a moment. “i like her honesty and lack of nonsense. some women would have refused to come because damned impertinent people might talk. they will, i suppose, having the kind of minds they’ve got.”
stacey opened his eyes wide. “i never thought of that,” he said. “but i should say,” he added, “that if they do, why, let them.”
mr. carroll nodded emphatically. “let them,” he assented.
so stacey and his father were also incongruously united in a revolutionary league against society.
“but do you know what catherine does, confound her!” mr. carroll added. “insists on paying me the same amount as it cost her to live in that other house! says she won’t stay otherwise!” he laughed, half admiringly, half in exasperation.
stacey enjoyed himself, in a mixed way, at dinner. indeed, he was never really bored. he had loved life once and hated it later. indifference was impossible to him, however much his attitude toward things altered. he looked across the table at catherine, studying her firm grave face over which her grief had lowered an intangible something like a veil, an expression of reserve, sweetness and knowledge. at bottom stacey was rather afraid of catherine. and, while conversation ran on well enough, he studied his father’s face, too. what an odd trio they made! he thought. and he noted that his father’s expression was stern to harshness when mr. carroll talked of general subjects such as the present democratic administration or article x of the league of nations, but softened when he spoke to stacey or catherine of individual things or people.
just at present he was talking about the state of the whole country, and, as the subject was especially large, he looked especially fierce, his white eyebrows meeting in a frown above his fine nose.
“the country’s had enough of wilson and his policies,” he was saying. “you can go way back to his action in knuckling down to the brotherhood of locomotive engineers if you want to get at the start of the whole trouble. a toady! a trimmer! a schoolmaster! yes, sir! the world has taken wilson’s measure pretty well by now.” mr. carroll drank a swallow of claret, then set his glass down with a bump. “then the armistice!” he burst out again. “look at that! all wilson with his idiotic fourteen points and his ‘peace without victory!’ there we had the germans on the run. two weeks’ time—a month—and our boys and the allies would have marched into berlin, and then we’d have known who won the war.”
mr. carroll did not stop here by any means. he continued, sweeping along like a surf-rider on the flood of his indictments.
but stacey lost track. he remembered, as something out of a dim different past, that he had countered this same argument in regard to the armistice at dinner that first night of his return, and that he had then apparently convinced his father. however, this awakened no antagonism in stacey. he merely felt amused. somehow, in some way not yet clear to himself, he had most certainly changed. he was recalled to the present by the vigor with which his father pronounced the word “bolshevism.”
“that’s the whole trouble—bolshevism! the country’s rotten with it, and will be until we get a sane business administration and put labor and radicalism in their place.”
mr. carroll was carving a chicken at the time—he scorned effeminate households where the carving was done in the butler’s pantry—and he thrust the fork deep down across the breast-bone of the chicken as though he were impaling lenin, gompers, haywood, and daniels all at once.
but a moment later, and quite instinctively, he laid the liver and the heart beside a drumstick on stacey’s plate; and at this stacey was touched, for he knew that, like himself, his father had retained a boyish love of the giblets. often he had seen his father on looking through the ice-box of a sunday night turn around and hold out with a triumphant smile a plate of chicken where reposed, brown, crisp and indigestible, a cold gizzard and perhaps a heart.
so: “i think you are very likely right, sir,” said stacey.
as a matter of fact, it cost him little to say this; for he found himself quite without interest in bolshevism, the labor problem, or the democratic maladministration.
as for mr. carroll, he gave his son a pleased, rather surprised smile, and presently dropped all problems. but catherine looked across at stacey with a strange startled expression.
after dinner they went into the library and catherine poured coffee.
“i wish, catherine,” stacey exclaimed, with a touch of exasperation, “that you wouldn’t glance at me in such a confoundedly apprehensive way, as though you were afraid i might object to your pouring coffee here! i like it. how many times must i tell you?”
“very well, stacey, i’ll try to be bold,” she replied, a faint smile relieving the gravity of her face.
mr. carroll laughed approvingly. “you’re going to be a great help to me, son,” he said.
but parker came in to tell mr. carroll that long distance was calling him on the ’phone; so stacey and catherine were left by themselves for a few minutes.
“any one not knowing my father well might think, to hear him talk of bolshevism and labor, that he was harsh,” stacey observed. “he’s not. he’s not even bigoted, really.”
“oh, i’m sure he’s not!” catherine exclaimed. “he’s the kindest man i’ve ever known.”
“yes. you see, partly it’s because he himself has worked all his life like three ordinary men and, conceding the system, has made his fortune honestly. it isn’t merely that he wants to hold what he’s acquired. it’s rather that unconsciously he feels any attack on the system as an attack on his own integrity.” stacey paused, with a frown. “it’s something even more than that,” he continued slowly. “if a man has all his life played the game vigorously and loyally according to the rules, he doesn’t at sixty-one want to be told that the rules were all wrong. that would be knocking everything from under him. father has to believe that what is is right, or where would he be? right and wrong mean a great deal to him—he’s old-fashioned in that. and then, i must say, it is a slovenly world at present for a man with clean-cut ideas to look out on. a bedraggled tattered place, with cocky young chaps sitting in literary offices and blithely announcing every week that something else is wrong with things in general. not that there isn’t enough that’s wrong, and the more truth that’s told about it, the better; but a lot of the complaining is either whining or just rotten cleverness. fancy being clever about a cyclone—or the judgment day!” he paused and lit a cigarette. “father’s an out-and-out idealist,” stacey concluded. “he’s got to believe passionately in something, and he’s too old to believe in something new. besides, nothing new is clearly presented to one.”
“yes,” catherine said, “that is very clear and fair, stacey.” but the look that her dark eyes gave him was full of perplexity.
“oh,” he observed lightly, “i know! you think i’m a reformed character. not a bit of it! ‘nothing of me that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.’?” he laughed ironically.
and catherine was much too shy, as he knew she would be, to pursue the subject.
when later he went upstairs he stood for a long time before the open window of his study. “it can’t be done,” he said to himself at last. “you can’t look at the world as a whole and stay sane. because there isn’t any such world. that’s a nightmare of ogre words. bolshevism, labor problem, greed, reaction,—they’re merely words. all that there truly is is a lot of puny little men like myself, dreaming dreams—mostly bad ones.”
