“Thank you, sir,” returned Stacey. They shook hands.
“Come on, Traile,” he said, a moment later. “Let’s drive like the devil over to Monahan’s place—on Dodge Street it is. I’ll tell you all about it on the way.”
But, with nothing left for him to do, apathy descended on Stacey. Despite Traile’s pleading he would not remain after the next night, when he took a late train for Vernon. He did not want to see Traile any longer. He did not want to see any one. He desired only to get away from this city. But he did not for a moment fancy that the train would carry him to any place better or even different. All life was like that. You travelled and travelled and got nowhere. One of those amusement booths where you sat perfectly still and received an illusion of motion from a painted landscape rolled swiftly past you.
CHAPTER XIII
If Stacey had been at all curious about himself he would probably have thought that his Omaha adventure had left him precisely as he was before. He might only have been concerned at the memory of the sudden ungovernable passion to which he had fallen a prey on the night of the lynching. But he was not interested in himself, even faintly. Impressions of others and, especially, impressions of things flowed in upon him, since that was the way he was made, but chaotically, since he did not seek them or try consciously to arrange them. He was apathetic but not weary. He saw life as flashes of lightning in chaos. Or, no, the figure was too grandiose. Sparks travelling with haphazard chain-like velocity in the soot of a chimney.
There was a wash-out on the road, and Stacey’s train was delayed for many hours, so that he did not reach Vernon until late in the afternoon. He hired a taxi and drove home. It was the fashionable hour. Vernon had certainly become metropolitan of late years. The streets were thronged, and the handsome boulevard into which the taxi presently turned was a river of gleaming motor cars, chauffeur in livery on the front seat, perfectly gowned women in the tonneau. Smooth, very! The mellow October coolness in the air and the lights that began to shine palely against the sunset played up to it. People waved to Stacey, smiling at his plebeian conveyance, and he lifted his hat abstractedly. But at heart he was full of a sick distaste for all this elegance, this physical luxury, that seemed to him not so much to hide as to reveal what lay beneath—the vulgarity, the stupidity, the greed.
Arrived at home, he bathed and dressed, then went down to the library, where he sipped a high-ball moodily and waited for his father.
Mr. Carroll’s handsome face lighted up at sight of his son. “Well, well, this is fine!” he exclaimed. “When did you get back? And what have you been doing in that disgraceful place all this time?”
“Oh, I saw the riot,” said Stacey, shaking hands, “and stayed on for the sequel. May I get you a high-ball, sir?”
“No. Come into the dining-room. I’ll mix a cocktail. Parker will have had the ice all ready. We can talk at the same time.”