Stacey considered him, feeling much the same appreciation he felt for Marian—only without the thrill and the sense of enchantment.
And, indeed, Mr. Latimer deserved appreciation. He was slim and straight, and his head was the head of a Greek youth grown old. Curly white hair, straight nose, short upper lip,—nothing was wrong. His profile, at which Stacey gazed now, was clear and perfect, like Marian’s. Until three years ago Mr. Latimer had lived, with his wife and daughter, his books, his pictures, and his Chinese vases, in Italy; and certainly a Florentine villa seemed the properer setting. For the life of him Stacey could not understand why the Latimers should have returned to live in America, and of all places in America should have chosen Vernon, Illinois, even if it was Mr. Latimer’s birthplace. But Stacey was devoutly grateful that they had done so. He rather thought it was due to Mrs. Latimer, and he was glad to think so, since it gave him something to like her for.
Mrs. Latimer, in fact, worried Stacey a little, because he could not make her out. She, too, was handsome in a way, but she seemed to Stacey not to be in the picture, but aloof, dispassionately commenting on everything and every one, including himself, her daughter, her husband, and her husband’s Chinese vases. Stacey recognized honorably that this was probably only his fancy; for Mrs. Latimer never passed such comment aloud. She was habitually quiet, letting others talk; but she was certainly not stupid. Sometimes she would laugh suddenly and spontaneously when neither Stacey nor Mr. Latimer had seen anything amusing until her laughter caught them up, and sent them back to look again, and made them laugh too, always appreciatively.
“You’re grave to-night, Stacey,” said Mr. Latimer, turning his eyes to the young man’s face. “I suppose it’s this catastrophic war. Of course it’s to your credit that you’re capable of feeling it intensely; the fact reveals a precious un-American gift of imagination. But you’re wrong, all the same, to let the thought of the war weigh you down, you know. I’m increasingly convinced that each man has a world of his own and that this is the only world in which he can profitably live. I’m more convinced of it than ever now when I see painters and philosophers and musicians dropping their arts and engaging in violent, quite futile polemics on something outside their own worlds. A painter’s ideas on, say, the correct method of building a sewer are without value; so also are his ideas on war. He wastes his own time and that of others in expressing them. To each man his own world. To you building noble houses. To me collecting vases. Also we have properly an outlet for our emotion there. We have no outlet for emotion concerning the war. That’s harmful.”
Stacey had listened to the melodious flow of Mr. Latimer’s words with a faint unaccustomed irritation. He could see no flaw in the argument; logically Mr. Latimer was right. Yet, even if uselessly and wastefully, how could one help abandoning cool logic while the terrible waves of the war flooded in from every side? Just as that afternoon it had occurred to Stacey that success in business entailed an over-simplified view of life, so now it occurred to him that success in living entailed too neat a perfection. Actually the two results were not so very far apart. How odd! “Of course,” he added to himself, “he does not know that I have found an outlet for my emotion about the war.” But Stacey was not going to tell Mr. Latimer of this. He was going to tell Marian—if she would only come.
“It’s the ‘tour d’ivoire’ theory, sir,” he said, after a brief pause. “I dare say—”
But fingers brushed his hair and forehead, and his words ceased abruptly, while his heart gave a bound, and a slow thrill crept over him.
“Marian!” he cried.
But she was gone already and smiling at him mischievously from the arm of her father’s chair.
“I wonder,” Stacey said appealingly to Mrs. Latimer, “if you’d think me very abrupt in asking Marian to go up to the library with me. There’s something I want to talk over with her.”