Edwards continued after a moment, but with a shyness that in his rough rugged personality was appealing. “Now you’ve—got something, some solution for things. I don’t know what it is exactly, but there’s something. I just wanted you to know that I recognized it—that’s all.”
“That’s awfully decent of you,” returned Stacey quietly, “but I don’t think I’ve got anything really—any solution, I mean. Perhaps less than ever.”
Edwards shook his head. “Tell you what I think it is,” he observed. “You’ve come to see people as on a wrong track—struggling hard for things that don’t count, food and clothes more than they need, automobiles, fine houses, all things of existence that don’t get them anywhere,—totally without desire for life. That’s an easy enough point of view to take intellectually, but you feel it, really live it yourself. You live in a palace, but you’d as soon live in a hut. Because you don’t care any more for those futile things. Except,” he added, “when they’re the bare essentials—as in this strike. Then you turn hard as flint in your will to get them—for other people. Thanks, you know. Thanks awfully! ’Bye!” He stumped out, waving his hand as though to ward off an answer.
Stacey was touched. Edwards was an idealist, for all his rude indomitable spirit and his contact with the rough working world; Stacey knew that. Yet it was pleasant to have a friend who thought better of you than you deserved.
There was one corollary to the strike. Four days later a grateful city council voted to allow a flat ten-cent fare. So now every one was satisfied—except the public, who had exactly what they merited, Stacey thought. He laughed heartily, wondering a little whether Colin Jeffries had not all along counted on this possibility.
CHAPTER XXVI
Christmas a year ago had been a ghastly festival for Stacey, that he had gone through with somehow, his face stiffened into a fixed smile, his voice saying mechanical things, while within him only one emotion had been alive—the fierce, dizzy, dangerous craving to get away, from this, from everything and every one. And it could not have been much gayer for the others. Mr. Carroll had watched his son apprehensively, Jimmy Prout, too, had fallen below his customary debonair form, and even Julie, who, though more intelligent than people gave her credit for being, was not subtle, had a grave anxious air. Also the thought of Phil’s recent death and of Catherine grieving in that lonely squalid house hung over all of them. Only Junior had been quite himself. He had in truth been the life of the party.
Christmas this year was very different—Christmas Eve, especially. There was not quite the old exuberance; that could never return in this grayer sadder world,—or perhaps it was merely that Julie and Stacey and Jimmie were grown-up now. But there was a genial friendly warmth in the atmosphere. And then there were three children this year. They chattered and laughed and stamped impatiently in the long hall that led from the library to the big drawing-room where the tree was being prepared, and when at last the drawing-room doors were thrown open and the brilliant tree was displayed all three gave a howl of joy that would have satisfied even Dickens.
Mr. Carroll was extraordinarily good on such occasions. He delivered the presents—not too slowly, not too rapidly—from the great pile about the base of the tree, with a pleasant easy grace and sometimes a little speech. His own gifts he laid aside in a corner, to open later. They made an imposing heap, too; for many people outside of the family delighted to remember Mr. Carroll. Women, especially. He had great success with women and remained quite unspoiled by it, accepting it with apparent unconsciousness, or as a matter of course, as an aristocrat accepts his position. Old wives of old friends, young wives of friends’ sons, daughters of friends, spinsters to whom he had been kind,—he stirred all of them to liking. Perhaps it was Mr. Carroll’s good looks or his grace of manner or his goodness of heart or his youthful spirit or all of them together—Stacey did not know; but he recognized his father’s fascination and looked with affectionate amusement at the growing pile of prettily wrapped gifts. But it did not occur to Stacey that he himself had inherited that attractiveness to women; for he had inherited the unconsciousness of it along with the trait.
The three boys were making a tremendous racket, Julie was flushed and talkative, Jimmy Prout, a colored paper cap on his good-looking head, was lolling easily in his chair and drawing discordant wails from a toy accordion. Only Catherine seemed subdued. She sat near Julie, whom she liked warmly, and smiled and spoke quietly at times, but there was a faint tremulousness about her lips and a sensitiveness, as to pain, in the look of her eyes, that Stacey, who caught quickly the slightest change in Catherine, perceived clearly. Perhaps it was her shyness in all this confusion. Stacey did not know. She had not seemed quite herself of late.