Mr. Carroll was nearly always gay at breakfast; on this morning he was delightful. But he did not tease Catherine, as he often tried to do. Instead, he joked with the boys, with great detriment to their table manners, and reduced Jackie in particular to a condition that shocked even Carter.
As for Catherine, she seemed to Stacey shyer than usual, more withdrawn. This was natural, he thought. After that splendid outburst in defence of him she must of course retreat hurriedly into herself. Which was rather obtuse of Stacey, since he should surely have known by now that for Catherine giving was not logically followed by taking back, but by further giving. At any rate, despite her silence, he felt a closeness to her, a deep intimacy with her. There was a touch of melancholy at his heart, too; for he felt more than he cared to admit. He did not venture to speak much to Catherine—only a few matter-of-fact words. Ah, well, last evening’s scene had temporarily stripped off too many discreet veils, left emotions too naked; by to-night everything would have become normal again. Yet Stacey did not precisely envisage this certainty with satisfaction.
He motored into town with his father and Catherine, but left them at the door of the Carroll Building and went on to his own office.
He worked that morning with less complete absorption than usual, and at half past twelve went to the lunch-room, hoping to find Edwards.
Edwards was not there, but before Stacey had finished eating he came in, looking radiant. “It’s all right, Carroll,” he said gaily, limping over with a sandwich and coffee. “Your father saw things our way. There’s something pretty fine about him. You can’t help liking him. And then Mrs. Blair, well, she’s just a wonder—the real thing!”
Stacey was rather calmer. “What did father say he’d do?” he asked.
“Oh, he was non-committal, of course! Said he didn’t know whether he could do anything, but he’d try. Remarked that Colin Jeffries was a fair man, one of the fairest he knew, also a great citizen! And I was a lamb, Carroll, swallowed that without even a gulp! So it’s pretty clear he’s gone to take the thing up with Jeffries—or will go.”
Stacey considered his friend curiously. Extraordinary, this thinking in classes! Edwards did not think of capitalists as men; he thought of them as parts of a whole, which was capital. It was only capital he thought about really, as something with an existence of its own. So he took it for granted that if you swung over one capitalist to your side you could swing the whole, just as when you pulled back the lever of an engine you set the entire machine in motion. Neat, very,—but not true. Stacey himself, though he had suggested the scheme, was far from confident that his father could bring Colin Jeffries around, because Stacey saw the problem as a personal problem.
“Well,” he said soberly, “I hope father can pull it off. Come on up to the office.”
They sat in Stacey’s room and smoked silently.