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.