CHAPTER VI
Life in Vernon went on and on, and Stacey watched it proceed. But his attitude remained one of scornful indifference through which flickered occasional gleams of sudden eager interest, anger or hate. The perception of greed was one of the things that stirred him most frequently, and it grew within him until it amounted almost to a fixed idea. His hatred of money, its symbol, became fanatical. He would have renounced his own income entirely, except that he did not want to throw himself into the mêlée just yet, but somehow to see things through from outside—though through to where, he could not have said. As it was, he retained two hundred dollars a month and sent the rest to the relief fund for Viennese children. In this he was making no effort to live up to a principle, to conform himself to some ideal of life; if he had been, he would have sent all. He was, almost solely, striving for freedom from something he hated. Not quite solely, however, or why did he make this particular disposition of the money? He refused to answer the question. He would be free from what he loved as well as from what he hated.
One carefully covered-up aspect of life in Vernon did interest Stacey. Existence there seemed the same as formerly, people thought it was—though perhaps a few of them only pretended to think so; but at bottom certain fundamental relationships were shaken. Men paid eighteen dollars for a pair of shoes for which five years back they would have paid seven, or, not buying them, would next day have to pay twenty-three; women would offer sixty dollars a month for a maid, then not get her. The majority said that the cost of living was outrageous and servants scarce, and went superbly on as before. But Stacey grinned at them malignantly. He stamped on the ground and heard a hollow sound.
Therefore, although by this time his father talked to him almost with constraint and gave him often a wistful puzzled glance, Stacey himself felt a juster appreciation of his father than at first. Mr. Carroll was partizan down to the tips of his toes, but he did know that more was abroad than mere surface changes. His angry thought of Bolshevism was an obsession. And, knowing his father’s nature to be kindly and impulsive, Stacey gave him credit for something more than the mere desire to hold what he had got,—which Stacey thought he discerned beneath the vehemence of most perturbed capitalists—Colin Jeffries, for instance. No, Mr. Carroll was in arms for principles he believed in.
As for Stacey, he neither believed in them nor in those that opposed them. It was unfortunate. He would have been much happier if he could have thrown himself actively into the fray on one side or the other. Not because he craved human association; he did not. He was singularly solitary and aloof—with a white-hot kind of aloofness. But because he craved action.
There was strike after strike of labor in Vernon. They became almost the only subject of conversation. Even women discussed them, at teas or in their electrics as they drove to the movies. There was no coal for a while; then the workmen in all the mills struck; then the river dock-hands went out, and were promptly joined by the truck and dray men. This last strike tied up nearly everything.
Stacey was interested. He walked down to strike headquarters one afternoon and faced one of the sullen groups of men gathered in the dishevelled yard before the low brick building.
“What is it you fellows want?” he asked curiously.
There ensued a rumble of hostile voices and some sharp cries. “Beat it, you bum!” “Get to hell out of here, you damned aristocrat!”
“Oh, shut up! I want to know,” Stacey said impatiently. “You must have some idea about it.”