About a quarter of a mile from Stacey’s house lay the village of
Meldrun, straggling along one side of a small river, which, having
flowed prettily through the Carroll property, its steep banks massed
with rhododendrons, issued thence into practical life, like a business
man after a condescending hour with the arts. It fell, that is, into
rapids, the water power from which was utilized by a small hosiery
factory. Around this plant had grown up the village, consisting of a
company store and of some fifty incredibly abject huts, leaning at
strange angles, propped up anyhow, when in acute danger of collapse, by
logs; the effect of the whole like that of a Vorticist picture.
The beginning of many of Stacey’s rides led him perforce through this
ignoble place. The brick factory itself stood close beside the road he
must follow, on a narrow strip of ground between it and the river, and
through the broken glass of its windows slovenly girls leered out at him
or shouted uncomplimentary remarks, and he could see the pale,
hard-featured faces of ten- and twelve-year old children. If Stacey was
walking Duke, he would wave his hat as he passed, but mostly he went
through the town at a gallop. He rode well, and with his impassive,
rather stern face, he must have looked like some callous medieval
_condottiere_. No one in Meldrun would have heard of _condottieri_, but
the effect would be the same.
Really, however, Stacey was far from impassive. This misery of which he
caught a glimpse troubled him profoundly,—the more since, so far as he
could see, there was nothing he could do about it. Yet, oddly, he rode
through Meldrun oftener than he needed to.
The house of the factory owner, a Mr. Langdon, stood on the crest of a
low hill some distance back to the left just before the village began;
on one side its grounds adjoined the Carroll property. It was an
imposing pillared mansion built as a plantation house before the Civil
War, but Stacey gazed across at it grimly each time that he rode out
through Meldrun. However, he did not see what he could do about this,
either. He tried to dismiss both house and village from his thoughts.
Mr. Langdon himself, a pleasant-faced elderly man with a young wife and
three small daughters, he knew by sight and nodded to curtly when they
happened to meet. But, for all his deliberate isolation, he had been
unable not to pick up a few scraps of gossip here and there, and also
there was Elijah, an unquenchable fountain of information. So Stacey
learned that the Langdons were a South Carolina family; that they had
formerly owned the house and a thousand acres round about—the whole
valley, indeed, including the property that was now Mr. Carroll’s; that
they had lost everything during the Civil War and emigrated to Georgia;
and that it was only five years ago that the present Mr. Langdon had
returned, to buy back the family home and with it the hosiery factory
that had been erected by some one else. Stacey also learned, listening
distractedly to Elijah, that there was no love for the factory owner
among his employees, and that that one young fellow—“yes, suh, he’s
_bad_, Mistuh Stacey!”—had said “how he was goin’ to _get_ Mistuh
Langdon one day.”
“Well—and then?” thought Stacey, with a shrug of his shoulders, finding
the intention laudable enough, but seeing no solution of anything in it.
But one night toward the end of April Stacey, lying awake on his
sleeping-porch, became aware of an odd glow in the moonless night. “A
fire, of course,” he thought, as he got quickly out of bed to make sure
that it was not in his own house. Houses hereabouts always burned down
sooner or later, what with the general carelessness and the lack of any
fire department. But from his porch, which faced west, Stacey could not
see the fire. It must be somewhere to the east, since it reddened the
near side of the shrubbery on the lawn and shone fantastically against
the glossy leaves of a tulip tree.
He hurried down the hall to the other end of the house. But tall trees
and the distant barrier of white pines that marked the Carroll boundary
cut off his view, and he could make out only that the fire was somewhere
in Meldrun. The confused murmur of many voices reached him.
He threw on some clothes, slipped an electric flash-light into his
pocket, then ran downstairs. Elijah was just starting up then. The old
man was breathless with haste and excitement. “It—it am Mistuh
Langdon’s house ’at’s buhnin’, Mistuh Stacey!” he stuttered. “My Lawd,
but she shuah is buhnin’, suh!”
For a moment Stacey was rather pleased at the news; then he shrugged his
shoulders at feeling so childish an emotion. “All right,” he said, “I’ll
go over and see if I can help.”
Running easily, he did the quarter of a mile in three minutes, and,
vaulting a fence, came out upon the sloping lawn of the Langdon home. It
was covered with people shouting and moving about busily—mostly workers
from the factory, and strewn with such household goods as had been
rescued. The east wing of the house was burning fiercely; flames lapped
the roof of the central part, and black smoke curled out of its upper
windows. The west wing was not yet burning, though its blistered paint
was peeling off in great flakes, and little spirals of smoke rose from
its roof where sparks had caught.
Glancing around him in the flickering light, Stacey perceived a young
woman sitting motionless on an overturned mahogany sideboard, a child in
her lap and two others clinging to her skirts. He went up to her
quickly.
“Mrs. Langdon?” he said stiffly. “I’m Stacey Carroll. Please tell me
what to do.” He spoke stiffly not because he was unfriendly, but because
Mrs. Langdon, like all the rest of the people around him, seemed far
away, unrelated, a mere distant mathematical fact about which no emotion
was possible.
“Thank you, Mr. Carroll,” she said pleasantly. “I’m afraid there’s
nothing. The men are getting out what they can.”
“Well, I can help with that,” he replied.
The youngest child, a girl of six, was crying bitterly in her mother’s
arms. “Mitzi, I want my Mitzi!” she sobbed monotonously.
“Who’s Mitzi?” Stacey asked quickly. “Some pet—still in the house?”
Mrs. Langdon smiled. “Mitzi is only Helen’s doll,” she explained. “We
forgot it in the hurry, and now it’s too late. Her room was full of
smoke even when we left it.”
Stacey, too, smiled—ever so faintly touched. “I’ll go and see if I can
help Mr. Langdon,” he remarked. “Where is he?”
“Oh, thank you!” said the young woman. “He’s there at the west end of
the house. Please don’t let him climb in again. He’s strained his
ankle.”
A ladder had been placed against the low porch at the end of the west
wing. Stacey scrambled up to the roof of the porch, where he found Mr.
Langdon and others among a heterogeneous collection of household goods
that had been carried out through an open second-story window. The tin
roof was uncomfortably hot, and there was a good deal of smoke. Mr.
Langdon was directing the lowering to the ground of a sofa and pausing
between times to toss down less fragile belongings as they were brought
out to him through the window. He appeared quite calm and greeted Stacey
courteously.
“Mrs. Langdon told me you had strained your ankle,” Stacey remarked.
“Hadn’t you better go back down and let me tend to this for you?”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” Mr. Langdon replied, “but I am all
right. I regret that I cannot go inside with the others.”
“Well, I can do that, anyway,” said Stacey curtly, and, disregarding the
other’s protests, went quickly over to the window and through it.
The room beyond was very hot but not yet burning, and there was not even
much smoke. Three or four men were gathering up the few objects still
remaining in it, and a frightened negro servant was standing very close
to the window and directing their efforts. No one paid the least
attention to his instructions, but a youth, coming in with a mattress
from a room beyond, called: “Come on in theah, Joe!” at which the negro
shook his head vigorously and the others laughed. Stacey went through
another door.
This room was smoky and also nearly emptied of its furnishings. But
three doors opened out of it and beyond one of these Stacey found
himself at once in a hot choking mist. Here he was alone. He drew out
his flash-light, and, his eyes smarting, explored the room. It was a
sitting-room, he saw,—Mrs. Langdon’s probably,—and he could be of some
use after all; for here hung a small Meissonier and there on a table was
a vase—“Sèvres,” he remarked hoarsely. “Better than—mattresses.” He
gathered up the vase, jerked the picture from the wall, and stumbled,
coughing, from the room.
Just outside the door he ran into the young man of the mattress. “Here!”
said Stacey wheezing, “take this—carefully—to Mr. Langdon, will you?”
“Shuah!” said the young man, who was chewing tobacco steadily. “You be’n
in theah?” he inquired, waving his hand at the door.
Stacey nodded.
“Well, wait a minute en’ I’ll go back in with you when I’ve toted these
out.”
“I’ll—have to—wait a minute,” Stacey replied, and the young man
departed.
Presently he returned, and together the two went back into the
sitting-room for more loot, emerging dripping with sweat and half
choked. Yet Stacey was beginning to enjoy himself.
They tried the other two rooms, the doors of which Stacey had already
noticed. From the first they got—with difficulty—a fine rug, slightly
scorched, and a mahogany stand. The second seemed impossible—a mass of
black smoke.
“What’s in there, I wonder?” said Stacey hoarsely.
“I dunno,” the young fellow replied. “We mout ask that nigger, Joe.”
Only two or three men were left now even in the room next the porch, and
Joe was definitely on the point of getting out of the window. However,
he paused for an instant to answer the question.
“That theah room, that’s Miss Helen’s bedroom. Don’ you go theah, suh,”
he said, and vanished.
Stacey reflected, with a half smile, then hurried back, his laconic
acquaintance still at his side. Voices shouted at them from the porch.
The house was a furnace now. There was a heavy roaring in the air and
every little while the sound of something crashing down. Nevertheless,
Stacey plunged into the bedroom, and so, too, did his companion. It was
unbearable, but, at least, one could see; a vivid flickering light shot
through the smoke. After a moment Stacey made out the crib, dived for a
blackened, almost unrecognizable object that lay on the smoldering
sheets, and leaped back just as a beam fell, with a shower of sparks,
from the ceiling. Together he and his companion fled back to the room
next the porch and leaned, coughing and choking, against the window. The
room was empty.
“Wh-what did you get?” Stacey asked hoarsely at last.
“A hoss,” replied the other, with a grin, holding up a toy.
“I got a doll,” said Stacey weakly.
And all at once, there in this burning room, it was as though something
snapped within him. The strange barrier was down. The world came rushing
up to meet him. He burst into a helpless fit of laughter.
“Do I—do I look as wild as you do?” he gasped, gazing at the other’s
grimy face and singed hair.
“You shuah look pretty bad,” said the young man.
Stacey pulled himself together. “I should say we’d better get out of
here,” he remarked.
“I reckon we had.”
They scrambled out over the smoking porch and down the ladder, surprised
at the anxious group awaiting them.
Mr. Langdon seized Stacey’s hand. “Thank God, you’re down safely, Mr.
Carroll!” he said. “We were worried, sir. You shouldn’t have stayed so
long. You’re not burnt? Your clothes. . . . But the things you saved
were very precious to me. That Meissonier . . .”
Stacey laughed. “Glad to be of some use,” he replied easily. “Where is
Mrs. Langdon?”
“Back here out of the heat—just a few steps,” said the other, and led
the way, limping.
The crowd had grown larger during Stacey’s absence. There were half a
dozen small motor cars, too, on the lawn, and the lights of others
standing in the road, a hundred yards distant, were visible.
Mrs. Langdon uttered an exclamation at Stacey’s appearance. But he gave
her no chance to thank him.
“Helen,” he called, “is this Mitzi?” and held out the burnt blackened
doll.
The child seized it, with a scream of joy. “Mitzi! Mitzi!” she cried.
Mrs. Langdon stared helplessly. “Do you mean to say that you risked your
life to save—that doll, Mr. Carroll?” she demanded, half laughing, half
crying.
“Oh, no, there wasn’t any danger—except of choking,” Stacey replied.
However, it occurred to him suddenly that to run risks blithely for a
doll was just what he had done, and that this was somehow—he didn’t
know—connected with the odd change of heart he was feeling.
“Oh,” he exclaimed suddenly, “and my friend saved a horse! Where’s he
gone?”
“I got the hoss, Mistuh Stacey,” said Elijah, coming forward with the
toy. “Mistuh Jim Bradley, he give it to me to bring. He’s done gone,
Mistuh Bradley is.”
“That was sweet of him!” Mrs. Langdon exclaimed.
“What the dickens did he go for?” Stacey remarked regretfully. Jim
Bradley? He’d heard the name somewhere.
“You must come over to my place for the night,” he observed. “No, no, it
would be silly to go into town when I’ve all those empty rooms,” he
added quickly, as Mr. Langdon attempted to protest. “And you’ll want to
get back here early in the morning to see to things.”
He was insistent, and they, no doubt, were very tired. At any rate, they
yielded.
“A cousin of mine has brought his Ford around,” said Mr. Langdon. “He’ll
take us over presently. But—”
“Good! Then Elijah and I will cut across and get things ready,” Stacey
concluded.
Back at the house, Stacey plunged into a bath, then hurriedly put on
other clothes. But all at once he paused in his dressing and uttered an
exclamation. Jim Bradley? Of course! It was the name of the young man
who, Elijah said, had threatened to “get” Mr. Langdon. Stacey smiled,
then frowned.
Before long the Langdons arrived, with a car-load of rescued clothes.
Stacey welcomed them cordially.
“Elijah has your rooms ready,” he said, “and there’s a bathroom next one
of them.”
“Thank you,” murmured Mrs. Langdon. “I’ll put the children to bed and
leave you my husband meanwhile.”
He helped them upstairs with their things, looked down with a smile at
Helen, as her father laid her, fast asleep, on the bed, Mitzi still
clutched in her arms, then returned with Mr. Langdon to the big
living-room.
They sat down, and Stacey gazed at his guest with interest. A simple
likable man, with a kindly face, and extremely well-bred.
“I trust,” said Stacey pleasantly, as he offered him a cigarette, “that
you carried adequate insurance.”
Mr. Langdon smiled faintly. “About enough to cover the first mortgage,”
he returned quietly.
Stacey paused in the act of lighting a match, and stared.
“The whole investment was a mistake, sir,” his guest continued mildly.
“For sentimental reasons I am sorry to lose the house, but it was a
burden. The factory has never paid, and the rate of interest banks
hereabouts demand on loans is ruinous—ten to twelve per cent. I shall
sell out for what I can get and go back to Macon. Forgive my troubling
you with such mention of personal affairs.”
“On the contrary, I am interested—and sorry,” Stacey replied sincerely.
He fell silent for a moment. So the villain of the piece must be sought
elsewhere? Among the bankers? Stacey shook his head. Not there, either.
He pulled himself back to his duties as host.
After a time Mrs. Langdon came down. She had put on another dress, and
there was a touch of coquetry in her manner toward Stacey. Both she and
her husband were behaving like good sports, he thought. Elijah brought
in coffee and sandwiches, and the three talked pleasantly together for
half an hour.
Nevertheless, Stacey was relieved when his guests went up to bed.
Somehow he seemed to have broken free; he was no longer a pacing animal
in a cage; and he wanted to think things out. He leaned against the
mantelpiece and gazed off across the room with grave abstracted eyes.
His absurd rescue of that wretched doll—why had so trivial an act
seemed to shake him out of a long lethargy? The answer leaped up at him
almost at once. Not the kindness but the sheer futility of his act—just
this was what had struck him as a heartening revelation. He had risked
his life for a doll! Jim Bradley had sworn to “get” an enemy, then had
gone through flames to save his enemy’s household goods!
For, thinking swiftly, Stacey perceived now that he had not told the
truth when he had asserted passionately to Mrs. Latimer that he found
the world chaos—with no scheme, nothing. What reason for anger in that?
No, as a youth, he had assumed the world to be built upon an agreeable
scheme, and then afterward, all unknown to himself, he had fancied it an
evil scheme. It was neither. It was what he had insincerely called
it—chaos, a grovelling incoherent assemblage of facts. The thought of
greed—he had been obsessed by it just because he had seen it as
something permanent, consistent—and successful. Pshaw! An ugly thing,
greed, but pitiful and futile, like everything else. Where did it get
any one? The greedy man was a man struggling for happiness. Well, did he
achieve happiness? Hate died out of Stacey. You could not hate what was
a failure.
So much he made out in a series of flashes. Much more, that lay behind,
was obscurer. He dropped into an arm-chair and sat there, motionless,
for a long time, reflecting intensely. Sometimes he would spring to his
feet and pace up and down the room for a while, and light a fresh
cigarette or pause to finger abstractedly some vase or book, then return
to his chair.
It was not, of course, he understood, this one evening’s performance
that had shocked him into sanity—or what he hoped was sanity. This long
isolation from men, from a world interested only in economics, had
calmed him; for in it his youthful gift of fancy, choked back for so
long, had been let loose again. You could not choke things back without
suffering for it. . . . He had been like a man living in
compartments—first in one, then in another. That was wrong. He ought to
live wholly, with all of himself. . . . What he had been in his
youth—that, too, he still was. Nothing in one ever died.
It was as far as Stacey could get—and this only slowly, with
difficulty. But he could, he thought, go back to the real world now and
start over again.