Stacey wasted no time. He sent a telegram to say that he was starting immediately, telephoned for a lower berth on the evening train, and pulled a suitcase from a closet. But in the midst of his neat methodical packing he suddenly paused and gazed abstractedly away. It had occurred to him that perhaps if Burnham could see him as he had been in France the sick man might be more likely to recognize him and might even—who could tell?—draw a little strength from the old revived relationship of command and protectiveness. Stacey took out the things he had already packed, chose a larger bag, and put in his uniform at the bottom.
He arrived in Omaha early the next morning, drove to a hotel, unpacked his bag, put on his uniform, and took a taxi to Burnham’s address.
The taxi stopped in front of a small dilapidated wooden house in a shabby quarter surprisingly near the centre of town. Stacey descended and paid the chauffeur.
But before he had time to reach the door of the house it opened and a woman hurried out to meet him. She was thin, haggard, dishevelled, though not slovenly, with a worn face and worn eyes about which strayed limp locks of black hair, but there were faded traces of fineness in her. Stacey remembered that Burnham had always spoken of his wife with pride. She had, he often said, had a high-school education.
“Oh, Captain Carroll,” she cried, “it’s awful good of you to come, sir! I knew I oughtn’t to’ve asked you, but I didn’t know what to do!”
“Of course you ought,” Stacey returned briefly, shaking her hand.
“And you wore your uniform, too,” she added, with a pale half-smile. “That was just right. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have thought of that.”
They entered the house, in which the Burnhams occupied one-half of the second floor. Three small children, shabby and not very clean, with frightened faces, were waiting for them just inside, and stared at Stacey.
“I keep them looking better than this, Captain Carroll, when everything’s all right,” Mrs. Burnham explained apologetically, and they all climbed the stairs in silence.
As they went, Stacey reflected swiftly on a number of things,—that what life did to Burnham was very like what it did to Phil, and that a lot of criminal rubbish was being talked about the prosperous workingman. Why, thought Stacey, even his father, who was a kindly man, declared bitterly that workmen were buying silk shirts to-day and denounced them as profiteers! Well, suppose a man did earn six dollars a day for manual labor, suppose he even earned it regularly for six days in every week (which he didn’t), how much was that a year? Let’s see. Eighteen hundred and some dollars, on which, with the price of everything gone wild, he was supposed to raise a family and live in luxury. What rot! Stacey himself, who lived at home, had a car that his father had given him, and cared little for luxuries, felt pinched with two hundred dollars a month. Oh, damn money!