1

On the afternoon of the fifth day of November, 1914, Edward Carroll was sitting as usual in his pleasant inner office, the windows of which looked down upon the middle-western city where Mr. Carroll had lived for forty of his fifty-six years. But he was not behaving quite as usual. At this hour he should normally have been conferring with other men upon matters of importance—matters concerning the cement works of which he was vice-president, or the bank of which he was a director, or the copper mines whose policy he principally determined. Or he should, at the very least, have been dictating replies to half a dozen important letters that had been placed on his desk while he was out at luncheon. Instead, Mr. Carroll merely sat in his chair and stared oddly at a calendar on the wall opposite, as though its large black announcement of the date had some deep significance for him, as perhaps it had.

At last he shook his head impatiently and with a quick gesture pressed a button in his desk. Almost at once his stenographer entered the room.

“Ruth,” said Mr. Carroll, “did you tell me a little while ago that some one was waiting to see me?”

A faint surprise showed in the young woman’s composed face, but she answered the question quietly. “Yes, sir. Mr. Barnett and Mr. King.”

“Well, they’ll have to wait a little or come some other time. I must see Stacey first. He telephoned that he’d be here at three o’clock. It’s three-five now,” Mr. Carroll observed, drawing out his watch; which was quite unnecessary, since on the table before his eyes stood a small, perfectly regulated clock encased in thick curved glass that magnified its hands and characters conveniently. “When he comes send him in at once,” he concluded.

But the stenographer had scarcely left the room when the door was opened again and Stacey appeared.

He was a tall, handsome, well-built, young man, with blue eyes, short brown hair, and a clear healthy complexion from which the summer tan had even yet not quite faded. He looked, and was, well-bred and well educated, but there was nothing unusual or distinguished in any of his features, except perhaps in his mouth, which was finely modelled and sensitive without being self-conscious. The only thing at all out of the common about him was the impression he gave of restless but happy eagerness, of being fresh and untired and curious. He appeared about twenty-six or seven years old.

“Sit down, Stacey,” said Mr. Carroll. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the young man, and took the chair at the opposite side of the desk.

There was a brief pause while the two gazed across at each other. Neither could consider the other with cool detached estimation,—years of familiarity were in the way; yet Stacey felt dimly that he was nearer to being outside than he could remember to have been before. He studied his father’s well-shaped head, with its thick gray hair, clipped moustache and firm mouth, in something of the spirit in which, being an architect, he would have studied a building. He saw his father to-day, quite clearly, as a man of tremendous, never wasted energy, and with a warm, generous, unspoiled heart. But it came over Stacey for the first time that the same directness which made his father go so unerringly to the point in business matters, discarding all non-essentials, made him inclined to hold very positive over-simplified opinions about things in general. Whereupon, all in this half-minute of silence, it also occurred to Stacey that business was like mathematics, founded on definite preassumed principles that you were always sure of, whereas those—Stacey supposed they were

there—beneath life seemed a trifle wavering and indeterminate.

“Well, son, what was it?” asked Mr. Carroll.

“You know, father,” Stacey replied.

The older man pushed back his chair impatiently, and his face took on an almost querulous expression that set small uncharacteristic wrinkles to interfering oddly with its firm, deeply traced lines.

“Yes, I suppose I know what it is,” he said, “but I don’t see why you should make me state it. You want to go to the war, and you have an answer ready to every objection I can make. Damn it all, Stacey! It isn’t our war! If it becomes so I’ll be the first to say: ‘Enlist!’ but it isn’t—not yet, anyway.”

“You know you think it ought to be, father,” replied the young man steadily. “I’ve heard you say so a score of times. Every one with any generosity whom we know thinks it ought to be. I only want to live up to that conviction. I believe it’s right against wrong, the—the—soul against the machine; and so do you, or you wouldn’t have given so generously to Belgium.”

His father did not seem to be listening. He was staring away over his son’s head almost dreamily. “I remember when I built a play-house for you and Julie back of the stable. You were six years old and tried to carry two-by-fours to me. You didn’t succeed.”

He paused and looked at his son again.

“Stacey,” he went on, “I sent you to school and college for nine years, and then for two years all over Europe, and then for three years to the Beaux Arts in Paris. It’s taken—how old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You don’t look it. It’s taken thirty careful years to educate you. You’re an expensive instrument ready for use. Are you going to throw all that away to do what some untrained laborer can do as well—no, better than you? Are all those years of training going to be to fit you for no other service than to—to stop a machine-gun bullet?”

“They ought not to be, father,” said the young man. “They wouldn’t be in a normal world. They were given me in a normal world for use in a normal world. But all of a sudden the normal world has been upset. It’s been wickedly assailed, wiped out for the moment, by the greatest crime in history. It’s up to every one of us to help bring it back. And all over Europe better men than I, men equally well educated, have given themselves freely—poets, painters, thinkers,—and trained business-men,” he added hastily.

However, it did not for an instant occur to Stacey to question the justice of his father’s argument. It seemed to him the only considerable argument against his going to war, and he again respectfully recognized his father’s ability to go straight to the essential point.

“But you see, sir,” he said, “that, true as your contention is for the world as it was—and isn’t, it doesn’t hold good now. For it would be equally true if America were in the war, yet then you would, as you said, be the first to want me to go.”

“But—”

“I know. America isn’t in the war—yet; but every single trivial example like mine will help, just a little, to bring her in.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What about me, Stacey?” Mr. Carroll asked at last.

The young man gazed at his father sadly. “I know,” he said. “It’s horrible. But all over the world it’s going on. The same question’s being asked—and set aside—in thousands and thousands of families. And—though it isn’t adequate compensation—you still at least have your work; which is more than wives and mothers have.”

At this Mr. Carroll pushed his chair back sharply. “My work!” he exclaimed angrily. “Who’s it for? For you, every bit of it! For you and Julie.”

After all, Stacey was young and had a sense of the ridiculous; so laughter surged up within him now and, though he kept it silent, relieved his tensity. For he was earning a respectable salary from the firm of architects in which he would soon have a junior partnership, and his father had long since given him two-hundred-thousand dollars’ worth of excellent municipal and industrial bonds, some bearing five, some five-and-a-half per cent.; while, as for his sister Julie, she not only had a strictly equal private fortune, but was also comfortably married to a prosperous young lawyer. But, knowing his father, and knowing him better than usual to-day, Stacey carefully kept his amusement to himself.

It vanished anyway when his father added: “And Marian?”—and Stacey winced.

“I haven’t told her yet. I’m going to tell her to-night,” he said, a little hoarsely. “It’ll almost break her heart, I’m afraid. All the Marians in the world are having their hearts broken to-day.”

“And all the fathers and mothers. I could pretty nearly say: ‘Thank God your mother is not living!’ ”

Stacey nodded grave assent. “The individual’s gone by the board.” After which silence fell upon both men.

At last the older man drew himself together. “What army?” he asked. “The French?”

“No, I thought of that, since I speak French decently,” said his son briskly, glad of the change in mood. “But I rather think—though I’m not sure—that I’d have to join the Foreign Legion there. And sacrifice is all very well, you know, but it needn’t be suicide. I mean to come back alive if I can do so honorably. And of course I’ve thought of the Canadian army. But there’s too much neighborly dislike between Canadians and Americans. So I’m going into the English army, if they’ll take me. I’ve a lot of friends in England, you know. I’ve visited some of them at their homes. They’ll all be in as officers. Perhaps I can get into some regiment where I’ll be under one of them.”

“And you leave?”

“Next Wednesday. I’ll catch the ‘Mauretania.’ Don’t be angry with me, sir,” he begged.

His father shook his head. “No,” he replied dully, “I suppose as a matter of fact I’d have done the same thing at your age.”

“It’s the kindest thing you could say to me,” said the young man, with a deep sigh of relief. He rose. “I mustn’t keep you any longer now. The office is full of people waiting to see you. I say, dad, to-night I—I must go to see Marian, but to-morrow night let’s dine at the club together and have champagne and then go to a show and be awfully gay!”

“All right,” said his father.

They shook hands, and Stacey departed.

But when the door had closed behind him Mr. Carroll did not at once summon his stenographer. Instead, he sat gazing, as before Stacey’s arrival, at the calendar on the wall opposite. At last he rose, crossed the room, and tore off the leaf—“Nov. 5.” He folded the paper once across and placed it carefully in his pocket-book.

Then he returned to his chair and pressed the button in his desk.

2

Stacey Carroll was not more unusual than most men, but he was as much so. The only difference was that his diversity had been fostered by his education, and that he was not ashamed of it, but clung to it as something of value, desiring only to suppress the appearance of it. He was healthy and vigorous mentally as well as physically, mixed easily with his fellows, and was as usual on the surface as were they—on the surface. But really he was unusual in being extraordinarily sensitive to impressions, to whatever was beautiful (provided it was also faintly exotic)—in short, to whatever was fine and delicate and fanciful.

And if one asks how it came about that, with this characteristic, he was content to live in the city of Vernon, which had two hundred thousand inhabitants, was situated in Illinois, was not very beautiful, and certainly had no touch of the exotic about it, the answer is that he was not—with this part of him. The part was not by any means the whole. With a great deal of the rest of him Stacey very much liked living in Vernon. He liked many Vernon people, he liked the physical comforts of his existence, and he did not dislike being a member of one of the city’s most prominent families. He had a great capacity for liking both people and things. He could perceive bad in them, but quite instinctively his mind singled out and dwelt on the good. Moreover, it should at once be said for Vernon that it differed from the average middle-western city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Being close to Chicago it was metropolitan in feeling; plays came to it and music; its citizens—the ones Stacey knew—were sophisticated, well

informed, almost too up-to-date; the houses that they built—often with Stacey’s help—were modern and handsome. The provincial spirit had long since vanished from Vernon.

And, after all, Stacey’s very eccentricity—his delight in what was wistful and lovely,—though it would certainly have been better satisfied in Paris, was not altogether starved in Vernon, as a love of classic line might have been. Books and music fed it; and where in the whole world could he have found more perfect satisfaction of it than in Marian Latimer?

For the three years that he had known her, to enter the door of the house in which she and her parents lived had been to him like crossing the threshold of fairy-land. Outside there might be street-cars and motors and the smell of soft coal; within there was charm and grace and peace—not stupid peace, tingling peace—and Marian, who embodied them all, with so much more, and spread them about her.

Never until this evening had Stacey entered the Latimer house without experiencing a sudden sense of buoyancy. But to-night his heart was so heavy that it seemed to weigh his whole body down. He had a curious feeling that he must tread carefully or he would break something.

In the narrow Colonial hallway he gave his coat and hat to the maid, then went into the drawing-room, which was white and spacious, though the house was small.

Mr. and Mrs. Latimer were there; Marian was not. Marian was never there. She was always coming from somewhere else or going somewhere else—both in space and time. At least, that was the impression she left lovingly in Stacey. Not that she was full of futile restlessness. It was only that her charm was the charm of movement, of running water, of a humming-bird. Mentally as well as physically—oh, far more!—she paused only at moments in her flittings. You hardly ever caught her. But that made the rare moment more precious.

Her parents greeted Stacey with quiet cordiality and made him sit down beside them in front of the open fire that, in the semi-darkness of the room, set reflections glowing here and there across the yellow of polished brass and the cool rich surface of statuettes.

“Marian will be down soon, I’ve no doubt,” said her father, with a low laugh at having said it so many times before.

Stacey considered him, feeling much the same appreciation he felt for Marian—only without the thrill and the sense of enchantment.

And, indeed, Mr. Latimer deserved appreciation. He was slim and straight, and his head was the head of a Greek youth grown old. Curly white hair, straight nose, short upper lip,—nothing was wrong. His profile, at which Stacey gazed now, was clear and perfect, like Marian’s. Until three years ago Mr. Latimer had lived, with his wife and daughter, his books, his pictures, and his Chinese vases, in Italy; and certainly a Florentine villa seemed the properer setting. For the life of him Stacey could not understand why the Latimers should have returned to live in America, and of all places in America should have chosen Vernon, Illinois, even if it was Mr. Latimer’s birthplace. But Stacey was devoutly grateful that they had done so. He rather thought it was due to Mrs. Latimer, and he was glad to think so, since it gave him something to like her for.

Mrs. Latimer, in fact, worried Stacey a little, because he could not make her out. She, too, was handsome in a way, but she seemed to Stacey not to be in the picture, but aloof, dispassionately commenting on everything and every one, including himself, her daughter, her husband, and her husband’s Chinese vases. Stacey recognized honorably that this was probably only his fancy; for Mrs. Latimer never passed such comment aloud. She was habitually quiet, letting others talk; but she was certainly not stupid. Sometimes she would laugh suddenly and spontaneously when neither Stacey nor Mr. Latimer had seen anything amusing until her laughter caught them up, and sent them back to look again, and made them laugh too, always appreciatively.

“You’re grave to-night, Stacey,” said Mr. Latimer, turning his eyes to the young man’s face. “I suppose it’s this catastrophic war. Of course it’s to your credit that you’re capable of feeling it intensely; the fact reveals a precious un-American gift of imagination. But you’re wrong, all the same, to let the thought of the war weigh you down, you know. I’m increasingly convinced that each man has a world of his own and that this is the only world in which he can profitably live. I’m more convinced of it than ever now when I see painters and philosophers and musicians dropping their arts and engaging in violent, quite futile polemics on something outside their own worlds. A painter’s ideas on, say, the correct method of building a sewer are without value; so also are his ideas on war. He wastes his own time and that of others in expressing them. To each man his own world. To you building noble houses. To me collecting vases. Also we have properly an outlet for our emotion there. We have no outlet for emotion concerning the war. That’s harmful.”

Stacey had listened to the melodious flow of Mr. Latimer’s words with a faint unaccustomed irritation. He could see no flaw in the argument; logically Mr. Latimer was right. Yet, even if uselessly and wastefully, how could one help abandoning cool logic while the terrible waves of the war flooded in from every side? Just as that afternoon it had occurred to Stacey that success in business entailed an over-simplified view of life, so now it occurred to him that success in living entailed too neat a perfection. Actually the two results were not so very far apart. How odd! “Of course,” he added to himself, “he does not know that I have found an outlet for my emotion about the war.” But Stacey was not going to tell Mr. Latimer of this. He was going to tell Marian—if she would only come.

“It’s the ‘tour d’ivoire’ theory, sir,” he said, after a brief pause. “I dare say—”

But fingers brushed his hair and forehead, and his words ceased abruptly, while his heart gave a bound, and a slow thrill crept over him.

“Marian!” he cried.

But she was gone already and smiling at him mischievously from the arm of her father’s chair.

“I wonder,” Stacey said appealingly to Mrs. Latimer, “if you’d think me very abrupt in asking Marian to go up to the library with me. There’s something I want to talk over with her.”

Mrs. Latimer looked at the young man steadily, for the first time since his entrance. “No,” she said quietly, “do go.”

“I wonder,” said Marian gaily, “whether Marian is going to have anything to say about it.” But then, before the earnestness of Stacey’s expression, she ceased smiling and led him away.

Upstairs in the library she made him sit down in an easy chair and perched herself on an ottoman at his feet. She was admirably quick in responding to moods and she looked up at Stacey now with a tender gravity. He longed to stretch out his hand and touch her and draw her to him. But he knew that if he did so she would slip away from him to become all motion and fluidity again; so he merely sat and gazed at her fair curly hair, her eyes, her small mouth, and the delicate contour of her cheeks, thinking her like a Tanagra come to life.

“Marian dearest,” he said at last, “I’ve made up my mind about something—all alone, without asking you first, because if I’d asked you I’d have made it up wrong, no matter what you said. Marian, I’m going to the war.”

For just an instant the girl continued to gaze up at him, clearly not taking it in. Then her face flamed with eagerness.

“Oh, Stacey!” she cried, her eyes shining. “Oh, Stacey!”

But Stacey’s heart had all at once grown intolerably heavy with pain.