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. what can i 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! i wish 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.”
mr. latimer and the others interested succeeded in keeping the truth hidden. officially, even according to the account given by the sensational evening paper, the death was an accident—there had been burglaries, the times were unsafe, there was a wave of crime in vernon, marian had been placing a revolver in the drawer of her desk, and all the rest of it. privately no one believed the story, and the various things that people did believe were too wild to deserve mention. but officially every one believed it. officially every one in vernon always believed what he should. this was vernon’s great strength.
stacey did not recover easily from the shock. perhaps it even worked some permanent change in him. for it left him bruised, saddened, yet somehow calmer and cooler. he worked tremendously at the office, and in the days immediately following the tragedy did indeed value his work mostly as a means to temporary forgetfulness. he saw but few people, and only two or three of these willingly, for he found it hard to talk. he was glad enough to see edwards now and then at the luncheon hour—at least after their first meeting, when, to excuse the manner he simply could not help, stacey felt obliged to tell him, who came from an outside world, that marian price had been an old friend and that he was pretty cut up by her death; which was hard. yet edwards’ gruff awkward expression of sympathy was not unpleasant.
stacey’s memory of marian was as of something delicate, lovely and frustrated, and it was softened by that final unwonted touch of tenderness she had shown; but he could never quite forgive marian what she had done to her mother. in this she had been her father’s daughter. callous toward others, the latimers! hard, at bottom.
he went as often as he could to see mrs. latimer, or took her out with him into the park. she recovered from the terrible prostration of that first night, even quickly; she regained an adequate composure of manner; and her sensitive receptive mind was intact. she had always had the faculty of true intuition, which is (as opposed to the false intuition that means merely guessing) the faculty of thinking so swiftly that the logical steps along the way are barely brushed by the flying thought, and the conclusion is so quickly reached that to the breathless beholder it appears to have been attained at one leap. this faculty she did not lose. but in her own attitude toward the world she was sadly changed, no longer a strong flexible personality armed with a gentle irony, giving more than she took, unafraid of facts; she had become a weak shaken woman, with no shelter for her sensitive soul. almost terrified she seemed at times. and it was stacey who now tried to give her the support she had formerly tried to give him.
he noted one peculiarity that seemed rather horrible to him. for at least two months after marian’s death mrs. latimer could not see her husband enter a room where she was without giving a shudder of revulsion at his presence.
one thing of good stacey had gained from the tragedy. he knew catherine now. not entirely, by any means; but it was as though he had found a key to the locked door of her personality, and had opened the door and stepped inside just a little way. the intense shyness that wrapped her about had nothing to do with self-consciousness; he had always known that. now he began to understand that the noble quality of her self lay in her very selflessness. she barely thought of herself consciously at all; and thus to have others do so disturbed her. she gave and gave and took nothing. it was through her immense capacity for pity—not a pity whimpering weakly over a wretched world, but a strong useful pity—that one got to know her. she had given so much of her selflessness to stacey at the time of the catastrophe that she had given of herself, too; she could not now take back what she had given, even if she wished to do so. he was shocked and numbed by what had happened, and she continued instinctively to give him all the quiet lavish help she could. she was giving perhaps more than she knew.
one day she even brought him one of the articles she had written for a london weekly. she was humble about it, but at heart he was even humbler; for, simply worded, with no pretence at decoration, a brief, clearly stated apology for the “let-us-eat-drink-and-be-merry” attitude of the day, it radiated a gentle warmth of feeling. afterward she showed stacey other articles.
generally he trod very carefully, taking pains to say nothing that might drive this half-held prodigal friend back behind shadowy barriers of reserve. but one sunday afternoon in october, when they had gone for a walk in the country, and the boys up ahead were plunging deliriously through heaps of dead leaves, he suddenly turned on her.
“catherine,” he said, “you give so much—always! but you cannot be all selflessness. there must be a hidden self in you that could take a little.”
she gave him a startled look and did not speak. it was as though she had retreated to a great distance. still she was there. he had thought she might vanish utterly.
“i think it’s a kind of shy maiden-self that you neglect,” he added. “you know next to nothing about it.”
“oh,” she murmured, “i do take!”
but he was astonished and remorseful to perceive that her lips were trembling and her eyes moist.
“did i shock you, catherine?” he exclaimed. “silly meddler i am! i’ve no business to bother you.”
“no, no,” she returned, “it’s not that! it’s only that you’re so kind.”
“i!” he cried in amazement.
“yes,” she said, and then suddenly smiled at his expression.
“well,” he remarked helplessly, “if prying into your thoughts can be called kindness . . .” and paused.
“the kindness is in what you do it for,” she said quietly, and they came up with the boys.
it was far closer than he had ever approached her before.
stacey’s intimacy with his father, too, was closer since the tragedy. mr. carroll could hardly be expected to understand the strange relationship that had held marian and stacey together and apart; he did not even have the necessary facts to go on. but he saw with all his direct clearness the effect of marian’s sudden death on his son, and was very kind, and tactful as well. he even took obvious pains to avoid discussion of subjects—such as bolshevism, labor and the republican party—on which he perhaps fancied his son did not at heart agree with him. this touched stacey, but was quite unnecessary. stacey had no more interest in bolshevism or the other things than in the mabinogion.
