Claude C. Washburn

The evening, pleasant as it was, left Stacey with a feeling of emptiness. When he had finally said good night to his father and gone upstairs to his own study he wandered about it restlessly, smoking cigarettes and staring blankly at one after another of the objects with which he had once affectionately filled it. Everything and every one, he said to himself, were just the same—or almost. It was inconceivable. He had gone through something that had destroyed every particle of his former self, and now he came back to just what he had left. Not, he reflected, that he wanted his people changed, certainly not in the way he was changed—whatever that was. What the devil did he want?

Well, for one thing, he would rather like to be able to feel a little more. Toward Phil and Catherine Blair, for example. He knew that he had treated them badly. What sort of gratitude had he returned them for their open-hearted welcome? He shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t help it. It was all he had felt.

Nevertheless, even though only intellectually, he was sorry. And all at once he found something he could do about it, and felt immediate relief. To do something had become his sole means of relief in any situation. He sat down at the desk in his study and drew out paper and ink.

Then he paused for a moment, reflecting. Of course he might be mistaken about it. Phil might be prospering. He remembered that he hadn’t even asked. But he shook his head. No, the signs were clear enough. And, if he was mistaken, it would anyway do no harm to write. He dashed off the brief letter at once, never pausing for the best word or expression.

“Dear Phil: It has occurred to me that under present building conditions you might be having rather a struggle of it on your own in New York. I’m writing to know whether you would consider coming out here for a time—or permanently, if you can stand the place. I think I could find you a job with my old firm. You’d be a great acquisition for them, you’d bring a little more vulgarity into our—what’s the word?—etiolated architecture, and you could live through this difficult and expensive period without worrying about how to make both ends meet. Of course I know what your independence means to you, and I may be all wrong in assuming that you would consider abandoning it temporarily; but I figure that when the difficulty of existence passes a certain mark it becomes absorbing to the point of destroying most of one’s real life, and that this mark is pretty sure to be passed by any young man trying to be an architect on his own in New York City to-day.

“I’ll add a postscript to-morrow morning after I’ve seen Parkins (the head of my firm).

“Good night.

“Yours,

“Stacey.”

Stacey glanced the letter through swiftly, folded and addressed it, and laid it on the desk.

Then he went to bed and fell asleep at once.

Waking early the next morning he did not lie still through those moments of delicious indolence in which most men indulge themselves, but slipped out of bed immediately and into his cold bath.

His body responded to the shock glowingly. It was magnificently fit. The muscles of his back and abdomen rippled smoothly as he rubbed himself with the rough towel. One would justly have admired Stacey as a healthy handsome animal. And it may be that his obstinate distaste for speculation, his barely conscious, undeliberate desire to avoid thought, arose out of his animal instinct of self-preservation, was but the deep determination not to allow his strong sane body to be affected by his sick and twisted mind.

He took from the closet a pre-war suit of his, a soft gray, civilian suit, and in regarding it felt a keener joy than he had felt in stepping off the steamer or in seeing Phil and Catherine or in drinking champagne last evening—a keener joy, alas, than he felt when he had donned the clothes; for they did not seem natural and easy to his militarized body.

Then he went downstairs and out of doors into the well-kept garden. It was still only seven o’clock and nobody was about—not even his father, who was an early riser.

But Mr. Carroll did presently appear. “Well, you are changed, Stacey!” he called jovially, as he drew near through the tall rose bushes. “Seems to me I remember the time when for you to get down to eight o’clock breakfast was—hello!” And he surveyed his son critically. “Back in civilian clothes already, eh?” he observed meditatively. “Well, that’s right, I suppose. You are a civilian again, of course. And I don’t think much of these lads who go flaunting their uniforms about for months after they’re out of the service, determined to wring the last drop of credit from their performance of duty. Still ...” He paused. “Well,” he concluded cheerfully, “there’s one thing. You can put on all the civilian clothes you like, but nobody with half an eye would be deceived. You don’t look like a civilian. You look like a soldier.”

“Damn it all!” said Stacey, exasperated, “I know I do.”

His father laughed. “Come on in to breakfast. Do you still eat that idiotic excuse for a meal you used to—coffee and two bites of a roll?”

“No,” said Stacey, “I eat bacon, eggs, fish—anything I get.”

“By Jove, you have improved!” Mr. Carroll exclaimed, with another laugh.

After breakfast Stacey drove into town with his father, but left him at the door of the Carroll Building and walked briskly along the street until he came to the building in which Parkins and May, the architects with whom he had worked before the war, had their offices.

He was asked his business formally by the office-boy, new since his time, but waved him aside and opened the door of Mr. Parkins’s private room a little way.

“Yes?” said Mr. Parkins. “Oh, by the Lord! it’s Stacey Carroll! Come in! Come in!” he cried, rising and holding out his hand.

Stacey was pleased at the welcome. There exists between people who have worked hard together a camaraderie, approaching affection, but pleasanter since it makes no demands on expression. Stacey felt it for the men of his battalion; he had forgotten that he felt it for any one else. The rediscovery was a small pleasant surprise. He shook the architect’s hand cordially.

“Of course I saw by the paper this morning that you were back,” Mr. Parkins was saying, “but I’m blessed if I expected you to get around here to-day.”

“Thought I’d drop in,” said Stacey, collapsing lightly into a chair. “How are you?” And he scrutinized the older man’s shrewd clean-shaven face, which showed around the eyes little worried wrinkles, brought there by the perpetual endeavor to reconcile clients’ ideas with some modicum of architectural consistency.

“Pretty well! Pretty well!” Mr. Parkins replied. “These have been lean years, as you know. No building to speak of. But we’ve got all we can do again now and more too, even though the cost of material and labor is so high you’d think it would be prohibitive. But a good many people have made a good deal of money, and, after all, houses have got to be built. There aren’t enough to go round. We surely can use you, Stacey.”

“H’m!” said Stacey. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m out of the running for a while. Not coming back.”

“You’re not! Oh, now, look here! May and I talked it over and decided we’d offer you a junior partnership right off the bat, and now you—what’s wrong?”

“You’re awfully kind,” said Stacey, “but honestly I can’t—and I swear I don’t know why. I give you my word I couldn’t draw plans for a—bill-board at present.”

“Fiddlesticks!”

“Sorry!” Stacey remarked. “But that’s the way it is.” He smiled ironically. “All this returned-soldier-restlessness stuff, you know.”

Mr. Parkins considered him closely. “Now what have you gone and done to yourself?” he observed at last. “You look like Stacey Carroll, yet you don’t seem quite like him. I believe,” he added, with a laugh, “I really believe I’m half afraid of you. You’re a—”

“Little changeling, yes,” said Stacey, bored. “Now listen, Mr. Parkins,” he went on quickly. “There’s something I want to ask you to do for me. It’ll be a favor to me and a good turn to yourself at the same time.” And he stated Philip Blair’s case, without mentioning his name.

“Well,” said Mr. Parkins thoughtfully, “it might be done, of course. We’ll need a new man, since you’re not coming back for now—confound you! But what we need is a good safe man. Is your friend—what’s his name, by the way?”

“Philip Blair.”

Mr. Parkins uttered an exclamation. “Oh, I’ve seen his work!” he said. “Happened on a perfect wonder of a library he did in a small New York town. The villagers disliked it immensely. I asked about him afterward. He’s the real thing; but the idea of your recommending him to me as a safe man! It’s outrageous!”

“He’ll be as safe as you like,” Stacey insisted. “Five years of what he’s been trying to do would have crushed the danger out of an anarchist. Try him.”

“Well,” said Mr. Parkins, “I will. I’ll try him, because I think it’s a shame a man like that should be so hard pressed, but I know I’m making a mistake. You can write Blair that if he wants to come I’ll give him twenty-five hundred a year on a year’s trial.”

An odd spasm contracted Stacey’s features, but passed at once. “Oh, but I say,” he protested, in a dead emotionless voice, “you were giving me four thousand before the war!”

Mr. Parkins shook his head. “I’ll make it three thousand, but not a cent beyond,” he said firmly. “Philip Blair’s a genius. A genius isn’t worth more than three thousand to me.”

Stacey laughed. “I like the implication,” he observed.

So he added a postscript to his letter and sent it off to Phil.

At three-thirty precisely Stacey was at Marian’s house. He knew he had a problem to face, since it was unfortunately true that he had no love left for Marian and did not desire to marry either her or any one else. But he had no plan and he had not said to himself that he would not marry her. He had not said anything at all to himself. He merely went to her house as per schedule. All that he felt was a sense of something burdensome—and just a little faint curiosity. After all, he had loved this girl once upon a time. That was it. “Once upon a time” exactly expressed it. It was the way you began fairy-tales.

He was relieved, if so slender an emotion can be called relief, that it was not Marian who opened the door of the house to him. He had been a little afraid that Marian herself would welcome him with an impetuous rush. But the door was opened by a maid—and not even the one the Latimers had had in the old days, at which also Stacey somehow felt relief.

He went into the drawing-room, hoping to find Mrs. Latimer there; for, besides feeling that her presence would put off the demand for emotional moments, he really did want to see her. But she was not there. The room was empty.

He went over and stood with his back to the fire-place and looked around him, an odd smile drawing at one corner of his mouth. For again he was feeling the weak futile tug of old discarded emotions. These vases and chairs and statuettes, the whole familiar setting of the room, reminded him of what he had once felt in their presence; which is the same as saying: what he had once been. Stacey was like a boat floating on the water, almost solitary, almost loose, but not quite; still attached by a frayed cord or two to his old self.

But the portiÈres at one end of the room were parted gently, and Marian stood between them.

Stacey caught the soft sound and saw her at once. But, as he gazed at her, he continued to smile the same smile.

Nevertheless, what he felt was mixed. He was straightforwardly contemptuous of her melodramatic behavior, unexpectedly struck by her fine beauty, and stirred uneasily by memories.

Well, that half pleasurable discomfort is all that most long-parted lovers truly feel on meeting again, no matter how earnestly in letters they may have lashed their old emotion to keep it awake. But, since, even though changed, they are still they, the discomfort readily grows again to love in the renewed proximity.

Not with Stacey. He was no longer Stacey Carroll, 1914. He was a different person. His discomfort faded, flickered and went out—all in the brief moment of silence.

“You certainly are beautiful, Marian,” he said appreciatively, but without moving.

“Well,” she returned, with a ripple of laughter, “I’m glad you still think so—and feel so sure of it.” She moved slowly forward a few steps, toward him.

His mind was quite clear now and working swiftly. He thought rapidly that five years ago this demeanor of Marian’s would have set his heart to throbbing with delight. He would have likened Marian to a shy, half tamed bird, fond yet afraid of being caught. What an idiot he had been! To-day he coldly found her behavior absurdly affected. All these little airs and graces! Fiddlesticks! But, far more strongly than admiration of Marian’s beauty and cool scorn of her coquetry, Stacey was feeling elation, because it was now obvious to him that she did not love him, probably had never loved him. Frank love would not accord with these mincing ways.

Yet with all this only a few seconds of silence elapsed.

Stacey crossed the room to a divan and threw himself down easily into one corner of it. “Come on over here, Marian,” he said comfortably.

She stood still and looked at him, half archly, half in a puzzled way. “Stacey, you are—you are the most ardent lover!” she exclaimed.

“And you!” he retorted calmly. “Let’s sit down and talk over our passion.”

Marian flushed and gave something like a pettish stamp of her small foot. “I won’t!” she cried.

“Then don’t!” he returned, with a laugh.

However, she seemed to think better of it, for she did come slowly to the couch and perched herself on the end opposite Stacey. She sat there gazing at him, one foot on the upholstery, elbow on knee, her small pointed chin resting in her cupped hand.

Stacey, still smiling, considered her. “You’re perfect like that,” he said sincerely. “Some Greek sculptor of the Fourth Century—no, the Third—ought to have carved you.”

“Stacey, don’t you love me any longer?” she asked softly.

“Do you love me?”

She started up. “You’re horrid!” she cried furiously. “Each time that I ask you a question you ask me one in return. I’ve waited for you—nearly five years—and this afternoon I looked forward to your coming and sent everybody out of the house, and then when you come you look at me as though I were an objet d’art and laugh at me—laugh coldly at me!”

“Not at you, Marian,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t laugh at you. I find I don’t know you at all. Come! Forgive me for being rude. Let’s talk everything over soberly.”

She sat down again and looked at him hostilely. “I see now why you didn’t write oftener,” she said haughtily. “I thought it was because you were too busy. Fancy!”

“No, you don’t see,” he replied, “and it’s difficult for me to explain, because I don’t understand very well myself. Also the subject’s distasteful to me. But I owe it to you to try to explain.”

“I think you do,” she said icily.

He nodded, unimpressed by her tone. “It’s like this,” he went on, with an effort. “You’ve got to see me straight. And if I’m brutal, why, so much the better for you. I’m not only not the laurel-crowned knight of your flattering princess’s fancy. I’m not even the person I really was before I went away. Every bit of sweetness and light has been burned out of me. I don’t get delicate soft sensations out of anything any more. The overtones that you love don’t exist for me. Nothing has any glamour. All I can see in life is a mess of bare conflicting facts, stark naked.”

Stacey had forgotten Marian. His eyes glowed and there was a stern beauty in his face. Yet he was only leaning abhorrently over the upper edge of the well. He missed almost everything of importance.

While he spoke, the girl’s features had lost their expression of chill aloofness. Her lips were parted now, and she gazed at him as though fascinated.

“And if I tell you that I don’t love you,” he concluded fiercely, “I can honestly swear that it’s just that I don’t—can’t—love any one or anything. My saying so shouldn’t hurt anything but your pride, because you don’t love me, either.”

She leaned toward him ever so little. “How do you know I don’t love you?” she demanded softly.

“Because you create a setting, play a game, surround our meeting with little tricks,” he returned, quite unmoved by her coaxing grace.

She gazed at him intently, her breath coming and going rapidly. “Then you don’t—you truly don’t—even want to kiss me?” she asked.

He returned her gaze. Her coquetry did not stir him; her beauty did. “Yes,” he said somberly, “of course I do! But not because I find you shy and alluring. I don’t. Just because you’re beautiful and desire’s a fact.”

He seized her small wrists and drew her toward him slowly. She struggled fiercely at first, but then, when her face was close to his, yielded suddenly and returned his kiss.

“Now don’t you love me, Stacey?” she murmured.

“No!” he cried, releasing her. “Nor you me!”

She rose and smoothed her hair.

“You look precisely like a Tanagra,” he said admiringly.

“If you say anything more of that sort,” she burst out, “I shall hate you!”

“You’ll do that, anyway,” he replied.

She gazed at him strangely, an expression of cruelty in her fine mouth. “Ames Price has been imploring me—for two years now—to marry him,” she said slowly. “I think I’ll do it. Would you mind, Stacey?”

He winced. “Mind? Of course I’d mind! Animal jealousy, too, is a fact—nasty fact like all the rest of them! But go ahead and marry him if you’ll be happy with him.”

Her eyes shone for a moment with triumph. Then she laughed musically. “What a weird afternoon!” she observed, and pressed a bell in the wall. “Come! Let’s have tea. You’re quite Byronic, Stacey!”

Well, she was a sentimentalist, no doubt, but she was no fool, Stacey admitted to himself. Come to think of it, he was being Byronic in his intense antagonistic desire to stand alone, freed from all ties.