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Basic Structures for Engineers and Architects 1st Edition
Philip Garrison Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Philip Garrison
ISBN(s): 9781405143745, 1405143746
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.35 MB
Year: 2005
Language: english

Basic Structures
for Engineers
and Architects

Basic Structures
for Engineers and
Architects
Philip Garrison
BSc, MBA, CEng, MICE, MIStructE, MIHT, ILTM
School of the Built Environment
Leeds Metropolitan University

© 2005 Philip Garrison
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Editorial offices:
Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1865 776868
Blackwell Publishing Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
Tel: +1 781 388 8250
Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd, 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053,
Australia
Tel: +61 (0)3 8359 1011
The right of the Author to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garrison, Philip, CEng.
Basic structures for engineers and architects / Philip Garrison.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-4051-2053-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Structural engineering. I. Title.
TA637.G37 2005
624.1--dc22
2004023324
ISBN-10 1-4051-2053-3
ISBN-13 978-14051-2053-1
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Set in 9.5/12 pt Palatino
by Sparks, Oxford – www.sparks.co.uk
Printed and bound in India
by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd, Kundli
The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable
forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-
free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that
the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation
standards.
For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
www.thatconstructionsite.com

Contents
Introduction ix
Acknowledgements xv
1 What is structural engineering? 1
2 Learn the language: a simple explanation of terms used by
structural engineers 10
3 How do structures (and parts of structures) behave? 13
4 Force, mass and weight 29
5 Loading – dead or alive 36
6 Equilibrium – a balanced approach 43
7 More about forces: resultants and components 49
8 Moments 60
9 Reactions 70
10 Different types of support – and what’s a pin? 77
11 A few words about stability 86
12 Introduction to the analysis of pin-jointed frames 100
13 Method of resolution at joints 105

viii Contents
14 Method of sections 126
15 Graphical method 134
16 Shear force and bending moments 145
17 This thing called stress 175
18 Direct (and shear) stress 181
19 Bending stress 191
20 Combined bending and axial stress 214
21 Structural materials: concrete, steel, timber and masonry 229
22 More on materials 242
23 How far can I span? 249
24 Calculating those loads 258
Appendices 269
Index 277

Introduction
When I was 16 I had a Saturday job as a shelf-stacker at a local supermar-
ket. One day, during a tea break, a co-worker asked me what I did the rest
of the week. I explained that I had just done O Levels and was going on to
do A Levels. I told him how many and in which subjects. He then asked
me about my career aspirations (not his exact words). I explained that I
wanted to become an engineer. His aghast response was: ‘What! With all
those qualifications?’
Engineers suffer from a lack of public perception of what their profes-
sion entails – many people think we spend our days in the suburbs, mend-
ing washing machines and televisions. Architects are more fortunate in
this respect – the public have a better grasp of their profession: ‘They de-
sign buildings, don’t they?’
Public perceptions aside, careers in both civil engineering and archi-
tecture can be extremely rewarding. There are few other careers where
individuals can be truly creative, often on a massive scale. The civil engi-
neering profession offers a variety of working environments and a large
number of specialisms within civil engineering. Civil engineers have op-
portunities to work all over the world, on projects large and small, and
could come into contact with a wide variety of people, from the lowest
worker on a construction site to government officials and heads of state.
At the start of the 21st century there is a huge demand for civil engi-
neers and many young people (and some not so young!) are realising that
this is a profession well worth entering.
Traditionally, students embarking on university courses in civil engi-
neering would have A Levels in subjects such as mathematics, physics and
chemistry. However, for a variety of reasons, many of today’s potential
students have A Levels (or similar) in non-numerate and non-scientific
subjects. Moreover, a sizeable number of ‘mature’ people are entering the
profession following a first career in something completely different. As
a university admissions tutor, I speak to such people every day. It is pos-

x Introduction
sible, depending on the specialism eventually chosen, to enjoy a successful
career in civil engineering without an in-depth mathematical knowledge.
However, it is extremely difficult to obtain a degree or HND in civil engi-
neering without some mathematical proficiency.
Turning to architects – these are creative people! Every building they
design has a structure, without which the building would not stand up.
Architects, like civil engineers, have to understand the mechanisms which
lead to successful structures.
This book is about Structures. Structures is a subject studied as part of
all civil engineering degree, HND and OND courses, as well as architec-
ture degree courses, and also on some degree courses in related subjects
(e.g. quantity surveying, building surveying, construction management
and architecture).
The purpose of this book
I have taught Structures to undergraduate civil engineers and architects
for the past 12 years. During that time I have noticed that many students
find the basic concept of structures difficult to grasp and apply.
This book aims to do the following:
• to explain structural concepts clearly, using analogies and examples to
illustrate the points;
• to express the mathematical aspects of the subject in a straightforward
manner that can be understood by mathematically weak students and
placed in context with the concepts involved;
• to maintain reader interest by incorporating into the text real-life ex-
amples and case histories to underline the relevance of the material
that the student is learning.
This book presumes no previous knowledge of structures on the part of
the reader. It does, however, presume that the reader has a good general
education and a mathematical ability up to at least GCSE standard.
The intended readership
This book is aimed at:
• National Certificate (ONC), National Diploma (OND), Higher Na-
tional Certificate (HNC), Higher National Diploma (HND) or first-
year degree (BSc, BEng or MEng) students on a civil engineering (or
similar) course, who will study a module called Structures, Structural
Mechanics, Mechanics or Structural Analysis;
• students on a BA degree course in Architecture.
The following will also find this book useful:
• students on courses in subjects related to civil engineering and archi-
tecture – e.g. Quantity Surveying, Building Surveying, Construction

Introduction xi
Management or Architectural Technology – who have to do a Struc-
tures module as part of their studies;
• those studying Technology at GCE A Level, GNVQ or AVCE;
• people working in the construction industry in any capacity.
The following will find the book a useful revision tool:
• a second (or subsequent) year student on a Civil Engineering or Archi-
tecture degree;
• a professional in the civil engineering or building industry, and prac-
tising architects.
A word about computers
Computer packages are available for every specialism and structural engi-
neering is no exception. Certainly, some of the problems in this book could
be solved more quickly using computer software. However, I do not men-
tion specific computer packages in this book and where I mention comput-
ers at all, it is in general terms. There are two reasons for this.
(1) The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with the basic prin-
ciples of structures. Whereas a computer is a useful tool for solving
specific problems, it is no substitute for a thorough grounding in the
basics of the subject.
(2) Computer software is being improved and updated all the time. The
most popular and up-to-date computer package for structural engi-
neering as I write these words may be dated (at best) or obsolete (at
worst) by the time you read this. If you are interested in the latest soft-
ware, look at specialist computer magazines or articles and advertise-
ments in the civil and structural engineering and architecture press,
or if you are a student, consult your lecturers.
I have set my students assignments where they have to solve a structural
problem by hand then check their results by analysing the same problem
using appropriate computer software. If the answers obtained by the two
approaches differ, it is always instructive to find out whether the error is
in the student’s hand calculations (most frequently the case) or in the com-
puter analysis (occurs less frequently, but does happen sometimes when
the student has input incorrect or incomplete data – the old ‘rubbish in,
rubbish out’!).
The website
You will find worked solutions to some of the problems in this book at a web-
site maintained by the publishers: www.blackwellpublishing.com/garrison.
In addition, all readers can contact me via the website – your suggestions,
comments and criticisms are welcome.

xii Introduction
An overview of this book
If you are a student studying a module called Structures, Structural Me-
chanics or similar, the chapter headings in this book will tie in – more or
less – with the lecture topics presented by your lecturer or tutor. I suggest
you read each chapter of this book soon after the relevant lecture or class
to reinforce your knowledge and skills in the topic concerned. I advise all
readers to have a pen and paper beside them to jot down notes as they go
through the book – particularly the numerical examples. In my experience,
this greatly aids understanding.
• Chapters 1–5 introduce the fundamental concepts, terms and language
of structures.
• Chapters 6–10 build on the basic concepts and show how they can be
used, mathematically, to solve simple structural problems.
• Chapter 11 deals with the very important concept of stability and
discusses how to ensure structures are stable – and recognise when
they’re not!
• Chapters 12–15 deal with the analysis of pin-jointed frames, a topic
that some students find difficult.
• Chapter 16 covers shear force and bending moment diagrams – an ex-
tremely important topic.
• Chapters 17–20 deal with stress in its various guises.
• Structural materials are dealt with more fully in other texts, but Chap-
ter 21 provides an introduction to this topic.
• Chapter 22 introduces structural design, which, again, is dealt with
more fully in other texts.
• Chapters 23 and 24 deal, respectively, with the conceptual design of
structures and the calculation of loads and will be of particular inter-
est to students of architecture.
How to use this book
It is not necessary for all readers to read this book from cover to cover.
However, the book has been designed to follow the subject matter in the
order usually adopted by teachers and lecturers teaching Structures to
students on degree and HND courses in Civil Engineering. If you are a
student on such a course, I suggest you read the book in stages in parallel
with your lectures.
• All readers should read Chapters 1–5 as these lay down the funda-
mentals of the subject.
• Civil engineering students should read all chapters in the book, with
the possible exception of Chapters 14 and 15 if these topics are not
taught on your course.
• Students of architecture should concentrate on Chapters 1–9 and 21–
24, but read certain other chapters as directed by your tutor.

Introduction xiii
Let’s keep it simple
James Dyson, the inventor of the dual cyclone vacuum cleaner that bears
his name, discusses one of its design features – the transparent plastic
cylinder within which the rubbish collects – in his autobiography:
‘A journalist who came to interview me once asked, “The area where
the dirt collects is transparent, thus parading all our detritus on the
outside, and turning the classic design inside out. Is this some post-
modernist nod to the architectural style pioneered by Richard Rodgers
at the Pompidou Centre, where the air-conditioning and escalators, the
very guts, are made into a self-referential design feature?”
‘“No,” I replied. “It’s so you can see when it’s full.”’
(From Against the Odds by James Dyson and Giles Coren (Texere
2001))
It is my aim to keep this book as simple, straightforward and jargon-
free as possible.
Worked solutions to the tutorial questions can be found at:
www.blackwellpublishing.com/garrison

Acknowledgements
This is my first book. My thanks go to the following people for helping to
ensure it won’t be my last:
• Katie Bartozzi, Amanda Brown, Andrew Brown, Fred Garrison, Jean
Garrison, Simon Garrison, Pete Gordon, Paul Hirst and Phil Yates.
• Richard Hare for his assistance with some of the diagrams.
• Julia Burden and Emma Moss of Blackwell Publishing.
• My wife Jenny – my greatest fan and my fondest critic.
• Nick Crinson, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the London Under-
ground inspired the analogy given in Chapter 7.
• Most importantly, Jim Adams, who was the inspiration for the whole
project.
And, to parrot that hackneyed catch-all used by all authors at this point,
my thanks go to all the others I haven’t mentioned, without whom, etc. etc.
– they know who they are!

1
What is structural engineering?
Introduction
In this chapter you, the reader, are introduced to structures. We will dis-
cuss what a structure actually is. The professional concerned with struc-
tures is the structural engineer. We will look at the role of the structural
engineer in the context of other construction professionals. We will also
examine the structural requirements of a building and will review the var-
ious individual parts of a structure and the way they interrelate. Finally
you will receive some direction on how to use this book depending on the
course you are studying or the nature of your interest in structures.
Structures in the context of everyday life
There is a new confidence evident in major British cities. Redundant Vic-
torian industrial structures are being converted to luxury apartments.
Tired old 1960s shopping centres are being razed to the ground, and at-
tractive and contemporary replacements are appearing. Public housing
estates built over 40 years ago are being demolished and replaced with
more suitable housing. Social shifts are occurring: young professional
people are starting to live in city centres and new services such as cafés,
bars and restaurants are springing up to serve them. All these new uses
require new buildings or converted old buildings. Every building has
to have a structure. In some of these new buildings the structure will
be ‘extrovert’ – in other words the structural frame of the building will
be clearly visible to passers-by. In many others, the structure will be
concealed. But, whether seen or not, the structure is an essential part of
any building. Without it, there would be no building.

2 Basic Structures for Engineers and Architects
What is a structure?
The structure of a building (or other object) is the part which is respon-
sible for maintaining the shape of the building under the influence of the
forces, loads and other environmental factors to which it is subjected. It
is important that the structure as a whole (or any part of it) does not fall
down, break or deform to an unacceptable degree when subjected to such
forces or loads.
The study of structures involves the analysis of the forces and stresses
occurring within a structure and the design of suitable components to
cater for such forces and stresses.
As an analogy, consider the human body. Your body comprises a skel-
eton of 206 bones which constitutes the structure of your body. If any of
those bones were to break, or if any of the joints between those bones were
to disconnect or seize up, your injured body would ‘fail’ structurally (and
cause you a great deal of pain!).
Examples of structural components (or ‘members’, as structural engi-
neers call them) include:
• steel beams, columns, roof trusses and space frames;
• reinforced concrete beams, columns, slabs, retaining walls and foun-
dations;
• timber joists, columns, glulam beams and roof trusses;
• masonry walls and columns.
Figure 1.1 shows the Lower Manhattan skyline in New York, one of the
greatest concentrations of high-rise buildings in the world. Space limita-
Fig. 1.1 Lower Manhattan skyline, New York City.

What is structural engineering? 3
tions on the island meant building construction had to proceed upwards
rather than outwards, and the presence of solid rock made foundations for
these soaring structures feasible.
What is an engineer?
As I mentioned in the introduction, the general public are poorly informed
about what an engineer is and what he or she does. ‘Engineer’ is not the
correct word for the man (or woman) who comes round to repair your ail-
ing tumble drier or office photocopier – nor does it have much to do with
engines! In fact, the word ‘engineer’ comes from the French word ingénieur,
which refers to someone who uses his ingenuity to solve problems. An
engineer, therefore, is a problem-solver.
When we buy a product – for example, a bottle-opener, a bicycle or a
loaf of bread – we are really buying a solution to a problem. For instance,
you would buy a car not because you wish to have a tonne of metal parked
outside your house but rather because of the service it can offer you: a car
solves a transportation problem. You could probably think of numerous
other examples, such as:
• A can of baked beans solves a hunger problem.
• Scaffolding solves an access problem.
• Furniture polish solves a cleaning problem.
• A house or flat solves an accommodation problem.
• A university course solves an education problem.
A structural engineer solves the problem of ensuring that a building – or
other structure – is adequate (in terms of strength, stability, cost, etc.) for
its intended use. We shall expand on this later in the chapter. A structural
engineer does not usually work alone: he is part of a team of professionals,
as we shall see.
The structural engineer in the context of related professions
If I were to ask you to name some of the professionals involved in the de-
sign of buildings, the list you would come up with would probably include
the following:
• the architect;
• the structural engineer;
• the quantity surveyor.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. There are many other professionals
involved in building design (for example, building surveyors and project
managers) and many more trades and professions involved in the actual
construction of buildings, but for simplicity we will confine our discussion
to the three named above.
The architect is responsible for the design of a building with particular
regard to its appearance and environmental qualities such as light levels

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what can you expect? If I were to see a man cut in two by a bus on
the Avenue I shouldn’t feel anything at all except a little distaste.
There you have it. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“But the truth,” said Catherine, her eyes shining.
“Yes,” Stacey admitted. “There’s that to be said for it.”
Philip Blair tugged at his short blond moustache and stared at his
friend wistfully. “You don’t hurt me, Stacey,” he said at last. “And it’s
not true that you’re not fond of us. If it were true you wouldn’t have
been so honest. How do I know what they’ve done to you? You’re all
—seared over. Had to be, I suppose, or die. You’ll come back to us.
Now tell us about all the outside things. First with the English.”
“I was with them, first as an N. C. O., then as a lieutenant, up to
June, 1917. Then I transferred to our—”
“Hold on! Hold on! You got the D. S. O. How?”
“Yes, the D. S. O. On the Somme, at Bazentin-le-Grand, for going
out with ten men and cleaning up a machine-gun nest. I transferred
—”
“Damn it all!” said Phil, “is that the best you can do with it? How
did you do it?”
Stacey shook his head impatiently. “And then,” he went on, “as I
said, I transferred to the American army and was made a captain.
And I got the D. S. C. ‘for cool leadership and conspicuous bravery in
action.’ ”
A sudden change came over Stacey’s face. It woke, as it were, to
life—but to sinister life.
“I’ll tell you about that,” he said in a vibrant passionate voice. “I
got the D. S. C. for carrying out an order that was sheer murder, for
leading my company in a frontal attack against a perfectly worthless
position over ground rotten with machine-guns. Not half of my men
got off clear. A perfectly worthless position, I tell you, that we retired
from next day because it wasn’t possible to hold and wouldn’t have
done us any good if we could have held it.”
Well, there was capacity for emotion left in Stacey,—that was
clear. Any one’s first impression of him would have been wrong. The
question was—capacity for what emotion? A fierce chill intensity

glowed in, or perhaps behind, his face. It died down as swiftly as it
had kindled.
“What a—what a ghastly blunder!” Philip Blair murmured.
Catherine said nothing.
“That’s what war is,” Stacey replied. “One blunder after another.
The side which makes the most blunders loses. A trite thought, but
true.”
“Then the Germans made the most?”
“Oh, by far!”
“Strange! For a while they seemed invincible—machine-perfect.”
Stacey lit a fresh cigarette. “It was the legend they threw out.
They might have won perhaps if they hadn’t grown to believe in it
themselves,” he remarked, almost indifferently.
He laid his cigarette down suddenly and smiled. “Come!” he said,
with a hard cheerfulness, “I’ll tell you about something pleasant—the
reason I’m here only now, the reason I didn’t get my ‘majority,’ the
reason they packed me off to Italy after the Armistice, the one thing
I ‘did in the Great War’ that I’ll tell my son about. It was in the
Argonne, and I was in command of a battalion—had been for a long
time. We were in a fairly isolated position. You know what the
Argonne was—woods, lightly held as to numbers by the enemy,
careful, oh, so careful, machine-gun nests everywhere! We’d had
terrible losses but had plugged on through, little by little. Paused at
last. Sat still for about a week. Being bombarded in a desultory
fashion, but comfortable enough—comparatively. This was
November. Well, on November tenth, in the morning, I learned
something that I hadn’t any business to learn,—that the Armistice
was coming absolutely. On November tenth at four P.M. I received
orders to attack the position in front of us—sweet little hill, picture-
puzzle of machine-guns—at five A.M. the next morning, November
eleventh—November eleventh! Well, I didn’t do it.”
Stacey’s smile disappeared, and his face took on again that
intensity that seemed to reveal the presence within him of some
single dark absorbing passion.
“Think of it!” he said. “The cold-blooded futile murder in such
orders—given why? How should I know? Because Headquarters

didn’t care about going through the red tape of changing their
prearranged plans, I suppose. Anyhow,” he concluded, “I didn’t
obey. I stood out for once against the machine.”
“What did they do to you when they found out?” and: “Did the
soldiers under you know?” cried Phil and Catherine simultaneously.
“Can’t say as to my men. My lieutenants knew. They’d never
have split on me. But of course I was found out. There we still were,
you see, after the Armistice, which came that very day, in the same
position as before. My colonel, a decent fellow for a Regular Army
officer, did the least he could under the circumstances—relieved me
of my command and sent me as liaison officer to Italy, one being
called for about then. Whole thing very quiet. No fuss made. I
should think not! Wouldn’t I have loved a fuss? But the fact
remains,” he said, “that, having set out to ‘make the world a better
place to live in’ (wasn’t that the way my departure was explained?—
not at the time, of course; then we were to ‘keep our minds
neutral’—but posthumously, after three years) I return, having made
it a place, of no matter what sort, for a hundred young men or so
still to be alive in. They’d have been rotting in neat little graves but
for me. And that’s all. I got demobilized over there—eventually—in
Italy, and came back, a free man in spite of the uniform, on the
‘Dante.’ And here I am.”
He leaned back and lit still another cigarette.
“And do you know what people are going to say to you?” asked
Catherine in an odd voice. “They’re going to say: ‘Stacey, you smoke
too much.’ ”
Suddenly she buried her head in her hands and burst out
sobbing.
Both men started, and Philip half rose, then sat down again,
pulling his moustache and considering her helplessly. Stacey gazed
at her with a kind of grim sadness, as if from an immense distance.
“Forgive me!” she said at last, controlling herself and wiping her
eyes. “It—it isn’t because you’re bitter, Stacey,” she went on wearily
after a moment, choosing her words with difficulty, “and, oh, not at
all because you feel—burned out and unaffectionate. It’s—Phil, you
tell him. I can’t talk.”

“It’s because Catherine is tired,” said Phil simply. “With all that
you’ve been through, it would be too much to ask you to sympathize
with what she’s been through. But, infinitely less than your
experience, that’s been a lot, too. She always looked at things
squarely—more squarely than I. And what are you going to do when
the truth you’re seeking comes marching at you with great steps
from a long way off and shows itself a bleak brutal thing?”
Stacey gazed at his friend with intellectual sympathy at least.
Phil went on slowly. “We believed in the war, too. Perhaps not
quite so ardently as you, but we believed in it. It seemed, in the big
essentials, right against wrong. We were told—oh, you know all the
things we were told, the dreams we lived on!”
“I know,” said Stacey.
“All to end in this,—this bitter merciless peace, with all the seeds
of new wars in it!”
“Well,” asked Stacey, “when you saw the futile pettiness that
revealed itself in men, and the pomposity, and the selfishness, and
the greed”—he spat the word out—“did you expect anything better?”
“Not after a while, no,” Phil replied steadily. “At first I did. When I
saw the heroism. What happened to the war? A great wrong was
done. Hundreds of thousands of you went to war nobly to right it.
Belgium was invaded, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t remember,” said Stacey. “I suppose so. You touched the
truth when you said we ‘went to war.’ What did we go to? Suppose
one ant massacred another and you arranged an earthquake to
punish it. That’s what happened. You see, a time came,” he
continued slowly, an odd dazed look in his eyes,—“about 1916 it
began, I should think—when all the surface seemed to have been
stripped from life, one layer after another, until there was nothing
left showing but universal naked pain. Nothing mattered except this.
It was so much bigger than anything else. Belgium didn’t matter.
Prussian militarism was a word. Love and hate disappeared,
unimportant. Nothing was left but pain.”
Catherine drew a long breath. “And then?” she murmured.
“And then,” he returned, “you went on existing somehow,
impersonally, without any emotions—”

“Are you sure?” Phil broke in.
“And without one tattered shred of an illusion left. I made up a
story about it once—it must have been in 1916. Imagine a man who
has always lived in a house with a roof of beautiful stained glass,
and who revels in the soft colors that shine through. One day a
tremendous hail storm comes and shatters the glass to fragments
and lets the bleak white daylight pour in. Well, at first the man is
heart-broken. But, after a little, he thinks: ‘Anyway this is truth. This
is real light. I’ve been living falsely.’ So he bends down to the marble
floor to see what has done the damage, but all that he can find is a
little pool of dirty water.”
Philip and Catherine stared at Stacey.
The latter shook his head impatiently. “But that’s all past,” he said
coolly. “That was 1916. I give you my word that I don’t think about
myself at all any more. It’s an effort, trying to. I haven’t any
thoughts, and I don’t care a rap for any one, and there isn’t
anything I want to do, but I’m jolly well not going to do anything I
don’t want to do. So that’s that!”
Catherine rose. She seemed quite her calm self again. She even
smiled. And there was only a slight unsteadiness in her voice when
she spoke.
“Oh, no, it isn’t, Stacey!” she said. “You don’t want to stay to
dinner with us, but you’re going to, all the same.”
He laughed. “All right,” he assented.

CHAPTER II
“I wish,” thought Stacey nervously, when, on the afternoon of the
next day but one, his train, slowing down, was passing through the
suburbs of Vernon, “I wish that old things would either die outright
or else live.”
For there in the distance crept by, on its hill, the Endicott School,
where he had gone as a boy; here was a sudden glimpse of the
Drive, where he had often motored with Marian. And old emotions
stirred feebly within him like ghosts of their dead selves. He did not
want them; they annoyed him. They had nothing to do with Stacey
Carroll, 1919. They made him conscious of himself, that he had a
self.
They were worse than anything he felt at sight of the small
crowd which awaited him as the train swept into the station.
Amusement submerged all other feelings then.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, “the conquering hero!”—and plunged
down into the tumult.
There was his father, his face rigid with repressed emotion, his
hand shaking Stacey’s vigorously. And there were half a dozen of his
old friends standing back to let the family have free play. And here
was his sister, Julie, fatter than in 1914, laughing and crying and
kissing him and trying to talk all at once, while her pleasant-faced
husband, Jimmy Prout, smilingly held out a hand across her shoulder
and managed to grasp one of Stacey’s fingers.
Did they really care so much as all this for him? Stacey
wondered, with remorse at feeling so little himself. Or was it just the
dramatic moment?
Then all at once his coolness was swept away by a gust of
genuine emotion, the last he should have felt—anger and something
like horror. For Julie had bent over and lifted high her five-year-old
son, and the child had on a tiny khaki uniform and was saluting his
uncle solemnly, fingers stiffly touching his over-seas cap.
“For God’s sake, Julie!” cried Stacey, his face white.

The proud smile suddenly vanished from his sister’s face. She
stared at him in hurt surprise. “What’s the matter, Stacey?” she
stammered. “Don’t you like him? Don’t you like Junior?”
“Of course I like him!” he muttered. “It’s just the uniform. Don’t
put it on him, Julie.” He swung the boy up in his arms. “Don’t salute,
old fellow!” he said, sweeping off the little cap from the blond curls.
“Give us a kiss!”
“Oh, I thought you’d like it!” said Julie wretchedly. “I trained him
so carefully to salute.”
“It’s all right, old girl!” said Stacey, putting the child down. His
wave of emotion had disappeared. He was vaguely sorry to have
hurt his sister’s feelings.
Other people had crowded up. The station rang with greetings.
But, through the insistent pressure forward of Mr. Carroll, Senior,
who had hold of his son’s arm, Stacey presently found himself at the
waiting motor car, into which the train porter (thanks to Jimmy
Prout’s directions) had piled Stacey’s bags.
“Good-bye for now,” said Julie, giving her brother another kiss.
“We’re going to take Junior home, but we’ll be out at dad’s for
dinner.”
And Stacey was in the tonneau of his father’s car, with only his
father by his side. The car moved off.
Mr. Carroll drew a long breath. “Ouf!” he exclaimed. “So you’re
back at last, son!” he said, after a moment.
“Back at last. Deuce of a long time, isn’t it?”
Mr. Carroll nodded gravely. “Longer than any one can imagine.
I’ve missed you terribly, Stacey.”
The young man found himself wondering. Was it true? Was
affection a real and vivid thing? He, Stacey, had had his life, such as
it was, in these four years and a half. He had not missed his father,
save in a mild way now and then. Well, his father, too, had had his
own life. His days must have been taken up with business. He must
have dined out frequently in the evenings or have had people to
dinner. Had his thoughts truly clung to Stacey? Wasn’t it all half a
convention? Between a child, helpless, appealing, undeveloped, and

a father, protective, tender, apprehensive of a thousand infant
dangers,—there, indeed, was a poignant relationship! Afterward?
Not that Stacey was not fond of his father. He was fond of him
even now, but without pretence, decoration or melodrama. And,
though he pursued these idle thoughts in a cool detached way, he
was not quite cool, not quite detached. “You don’t look a day older,
dad,” he said.
“No? I ought to. I feel older—or did till just now.” Mr. Carroll
scrutinized his son’s face affectionately. “You look older, son,” he
continued, “older in a good sense—grown up, surer of yourself. It’s
made a man of you.”
Except for a faint sense of irony, this estimate produced no
impression at all on the young man. He was simply not interested in
the subject. However, his father pursued it pleasantly.
“Looking you over, five years ago, a business man would have
said: ‘Charming boy, young, fresh, eager, full of ideas, but something
of a dreamer.’ To-day he’d think: ‘There’s a strong man that I could
put at the head of a big company’.”
“Careful, sir!” said Stacey. “Remember that anything you say may
be used against you. I might take you up on that.”
A sudden gleam shone in Mr. Carroll’s eyes. “You mean that?” he
demanded.
His son laughed. “Don’t really know yet. Maybe.”
“Not going back into architecture? Not enough fight in it now,
eh? Want something more vigorous.”
“Well,” said Stacey, “I’m not going back into it, architecture, at
once, anyway. Want to look around a bit first. Can’t say that I really
know what my reasons are.”
His answer was strictly truthful. He did not know his reasons—
except that he literally couldn’t have drawn plans for so much as a
barn.
His father nodded, then, catching sight of a man who was
walking briskly along the sidewalk of the street down which the car
was gliding, told the chauffeur to stop, and, leaning out, called:
“Colin! Oh, Colin!”

It was Colin Jeffries, president of the smelting works, president
of the power plant, vice-president and dictator of the great linseed
oil mills, head of a dozen corporations, donor to the city of its art
gallery and public library, Vernon’s first citizen. A man of fifty-five,
vigorous, keen-eyed, clean-shaven but for a short dark moustache.
Not at all like Mr. Carroll in features. As like him as one pea to
another in expression.
“My son, Colin. Captain Carroll. You remember him. Just got
back. Wanted you to shake hands with him. D. S. C.—‘for cool
leadership and conspicuous bravery in action.’ ”
“I know,” said Mr. Jeffries, shaking Stacey’s hand warmly and
gazing straight into his eyes. “Glad to see you back, my boy. Very
genuinely glad. Congratulations aren’t much, but you have them. We
older men, who couldn’t go, aren’t going to forget what you young
men did.”
“Thanks,” said Stacey, considering him coolly. It occurred to him
that it was quite right of Mr. Jeffries to be grateful, since one thing
the young men had done was to make him considerably richer than
formerly. However, Stacey did not think this with any bitterness, or
accuse the millionaire of a self-interested patriotism or of anything
else. He was simply no longer—as he had once been—impressed by
the legend of the man. He merely scrutinized him coldly from
outside and reserved judgment.
“There’s another reason we’re glad to have you back,” Mr. Jeffries
was saying gravely. “You young men have saved the country from
one danger. We count on you to save it from another. You’ll find
probably that you’ve got to keep on saving it. Conditions are chaotic.
The country’s full of social unrest. You’ll see.” (Mr. Carroll nodded
assent emphatically.) “Malignant forces are at work secretly. It’s you
boys of the American Legion who will be the greatest factor for good
in the country’s life for the next generation. Rest? You won’t find
rest. Do you want it?”
“Not particularly, Mr. Jeffries,” Stacey replied calmly.
“Good! Good luck to you!”
“Fine man, Colin!” Mr. Carroll observed, as the car moved off
again. “A great citizen and a true friend. Not a stain on his

reputation.”
Stacey did not contradict the assertion, even inwardly. He merely
reserved judgment and was not especially interested in what the
result of it would be. The only positive comment he passed (to
himself) was that Mr. Jeffries talked rather like an orator on a
platform.
“Oh, by Jove!” exclaimed Mr. Carroll suddenly, “I completely
forgot! Selfish of me! Marian called me up and asked me to tell you
that she wouldn’t expect you to-night—said she realised the family
had first rights to you—but would look for you to-morrow afternoon,
three-thirty. Considerate of her, though hard on you perhaps. Nice
girl, Marian, very! Showed uncommon good sense in not coming to
the station.”
But Mr. Carroll would have been dismayed had he known the
effect his apologetic explanatory remarks produced upon his son.
They weighed Stacey down. For it is the extraordinary truth that not
once since Stacey descended from the train had the thought of
Marian crossed his mind, and that to have it recalled to him now was
burdensome.
However, he recovered quickly from the sudden feeling of
depression. For, being totally without any scheme of life, he lived
from day to day and met problems only as they arose. Marian was
to-morrow’s problem. He shook it off.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s right of her. Of course I want this
evening at home with you.”
But when finally they were at home Stacey and his father found
little to say to each other. Mr. Carroll was full of the nervous
restlessness of repressed affection, bustled about, made his son a
cocktail (which Stacey drank with relish), and finally threw himself
down in a chair and lit a cigar, though it was close to dinner time.
Stacey was more self-possessed, though he could not be entirely
self-possessed in this house where all the edges of things and
thoughts were blurred by memories out of childhood. He was able to
recognize clearly, with no more than a touch of sadness, that at
bottom he and his father had little in common. Stacey felt that he

ought to be expansive, communicative, but he simply could not be.
Besides, he had nothing to communicate.
Yet, if Stacey revealed no characteristic for which he may be
loved, he did reveal one for which he may be admired:—self-control.
For when his father asked him, almost shyly, about the action in
which he had won his American decoration, Stacey told the story of
it, quietly, artistically, handsomely, with even a smile on his lips, as
one might tell the story of Thermopylæ or Bunker Hill, while all the
time his eyes, that gazed off across his father’s shoulder, were
seeing the unendurable picture of the real thing. It was an
achievement.
When the tale was finished the older man drew a long breath.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed in a low voice, mingled admiration and envy
showing in his face. “To live through moments like those! Wonderful!
Moments you’ll never forget!”
But Stacey, who had risen and was leaning against the empty
fire-place, gave an odd sound like a strangled laugh. He crossed the
room to a tall window, flung it wide open, and surreptitiously wiped
a drop of perspiration from his forehead. Then he turned back.
“Make me another cocktail, dad,” he said. “Do! We couldn’t get
gin like that in Italy.”
It was a relief to Stacey when Julie and her husband arrived. For
he craved of his sister now precisely what had irked him in her
formerly—her apparent absence of any inner life and her absorbed
occupation with externals. If any one had protested that she
probably did have an inner life he would have assented cheerfully.
He simply did not want to know about it or about any one else’s.
The Prouts were a little late (Julie was always a little late) and Mr.
Carroll, who had been fidgeting with increasing exasperation,
greeted his daughter wrathfully.
“Confound it, Julie! Can’t you be on time for once in a way? Isn’t
it as easy to get here at seven as at seven-ten?”
“Well, now, daddy, it wasn’t my fault,” said Julie, her voice and
eyes full of hurt innocence, while her husband grinned. “I was all
ready and then at the very last moment—”

“Pshaw!” her father interrupted. “If only you wouldn’t always
have an excuse! Come on in! Everything will be cold, of course.”
And such things put Stacey in good humor. Indeed, among them
he enjoyed himself more than later when the first two courses had
been served and his father was ready for conversation.
“Poor Jimmy!” Julie was saying. “He was so unhappy not to get
across! After he’d gone through officers’ training camp they sent him
to Camp Grant and just kept him there the whole time. He was so
mad, weren’t you, Jimmy?”
“Well,” said her husband pleasantly, “it was a good deal of a bore
to go through all that training and then never have a chance to use
it.”
“Oh, it’ll come in handy for the next war,” Stacey observed.
“Oh, Stacey!” his sister cried, “you don’t think there’s going to be
another!”
Stacey laughed. “I was only trying to comfort you, Julie. Thought
from the way you spoke you’d like to give Jimmy a chance. Just
think of it!—there he’d be on a big white horse, waving his sword
and charging the enemy, with all his men following him and cheering
madly! Wouldn’t you like that?”
Jimmy grinned at his brother-in-law, but Julie shook her head
soberly, though perhaps she was only playing at being as ingenuous
as all that.
“No,” she said firmly, “I wouldn’t. Jimmy plays a good game of
golf, but he’s no use at all on a horse—never was. And I think it
would be nice enough—now—for him to have got across and have
had a medal, like you, Stacey dear, so that I could say: ‘I don’t think
you’ve met my husband, Mrs. Jones. You see, he’s been in France
for two years. Oh, yes, D. S. C., of course!’—but at the time I never
did want him to go, not for a minute.”
The two young men laughed again. Stacey considered his sister’s
point of view human, straightforward and sensible. Where was the
good, he wondered swiftly, in going through a lot of complicated
emotions, since, if you were honest, you always ended in just such
simplicity? It was a lot better to be simple in the first place and stay
so.

But Mr. Carroll, who was in the midst of a swallow of claret,
gulped suddenly, choked, and set his glass down with a bump.
“That,” he said angrily, “is about as silly and weak and unpatriotic as
anything I’ve ever heard even you say, Julie!”
“I can’t help it, dad,” Julie returned meekly. “It’s the way I really
feel.”
“Then you should keep still about it. Nice sort of part we should
have played in the war if every wife had taken that attitude!”
Stacey, who thought his sister was being badly scolded for no
reason at all, gave her a sly friendly smile, at which her face
brightened. She recovered so quickly, indeed, and her husband had
shown, throughout, such absence of any discomfort, that Stacey
concluded Julie must be inured to this sort of harshness. He tried to
remember whether his father had always been so sharp with her, but
couldn’t.
“Jimmy would have had his chance, no doubt,” Mr. Carroll
remarked, “if the war had lasted a few months longer, as it should
have.” He frowned. “I believe,” he went on solemnly, “that the
Armistice will prove to be the biggest disaster the world has ever
known.” And he looked about him fiercely.
The first time that Stacey had heard this sentiment expressed (at
tea, in Rome, at the house of an elderly American gentleman whom
every one cultivated because he mysteriously always had butter and
sugar), he had first felt genuine horror, and then immediately had
flown into a white ungovernable rage during which he said things
that had reduced the kindly old gentleman, who was used to having
every one pleasant, to a state of helpless trembling discomfort.
However, by now Stacey was growing used to the sentiment (it had
been mentioned, for instance, on the boat, and the smoking-room of
the Pullman car had rung with it). It no longer produced in him any
emotion save a weary scorn.
“I’d like to have seen the Huns get a taste of their own
medicine,” Mr. Carroll continued, his eyes gleaming beneath their
heavy white eyebrows. “Only a month or two more of the war and
they’d have seen their soil invaded, their towns in flames, and the

Allies would have marched into Berlin. Now hear them talk! They
don’t know they’re beaten!”
“I dare say they suspected it when they handed over their fleet,”
said Stacey calmly.
“You don’t agree with me, son?” Mr. Carroll exclaimed.
Stacey shook his head. “It would have cost thousands of lives
more,” he remarked, helping himself to almonds.
“Not so many! Not so many!” his father insisted.
“Some,” said Stacey. “However,” he added in a dry voice, “to do
our leaders justice, I don’t think they gave that point undue
importance. The truth was we’d have had to pause pretty soon,
anyway. Our troops were fagged, our lines of communication were
impossibly long, and we’d shot off most of our ammunition. A pause
would have given the Germans a chance to fall back on a nice short
line all prepared for them, and it would have taken another
tremendous battle to break through again,—and there was winter
already upon us.”
Mr. Carroll had followed his son’s words attentively. “Well, of
course,” he said, “that’s different. I’m not a military man and I don’t
pretend to have become an expert strategist, like most of my friends
at the club. They’ll amuse you, Stacey. All the same, it’s an outrage
that the Germans should get off scot-free.”
And after this the subject of the war was dropped for a while.
Julie related personal gossip agreeably, and Jimmy Prout told an
amusing story about an eccentric client of his, and Stacey listened
with interest to both of them, but he observed that his father did not
listen. Mr. Carroll did pay his son-in-law a perfunctory semblance of
attention, but he made no pretence of even hearing what his
daughter said. And he cut short her account of a country club feud
with a sudden irrelevant remark accompanied by an impatient frown.
“We passed Colin Jeffries on the way home, Jimmy,” he said,
“and stopped to speak with him. He said a few words to Stacey
about the rottenness of conditions over here to-day, about what
we’ve all got to face.”
Jimmy’s good-humored countenance became sober. He nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s pretty fierce.”

But Mr. Carroll had turned again to his son. “The whole country’s
full of social unrest,” he went on angrily. “You’ve no idea, Stacey. All
the lazy worthless Have-Nots are up in arms against the Haves, and
our damned government pets them and plays right into their hands.
Not a bit of respect for the men who’ve made the country what it is.
You’ll see.”
“I’ve seen something of it abroad,” Stacey remarked. “What do
you expect? You have four years and a half of universal war
positively guaranteed to turn the world into heaven, and then it ends
with the world even less heavenly than before. Of course you get
unrest.”
He had spoken idly enough, without much thought as to what he
said, save that he exercised care not to plunge into the question
truly, but he was not really apathetic; he was curious about the
intensity of feeling his father displayed.
“No, but I’m talking about definite, concrete, unjustifiable
demonstrations of unrest,” Mr. Carroll continued, shaking off
generalities. “Here you have labor, the one real profiteer in the war,
getting more and more, more than it ever got, far more than its
share, yet always increasing its demands, always doing less work.
Why, it takes three men nowadays to get through a piece of work
that one man could do a few years ago. Bolshevism! Sheer
Bolshevism!”
Julie bravely ventured a remark. “You remember Harry Baird,
Stacey?” she said, with a little laugh. “He’s a contractor, you know.
Well, he says that nearly all his men drive up to work in their own
Fords.”
Stacey laughed, too, though he kept his eyes on his father’s face.
Mr. Carroll seemed to have relapsed into his former state of
indignant meditation.
“Now I ask you,” Julie concluded, “what more do they want?”
“Why,” Stacey observed lightly, “they probably want to drive up in
Packards. You see, if you’ve had power—that is to say, if you’ve had
money—for a long time, you don’t much care whether you ride
around in a Packard or a Ford—”
“Oh, I care!” Julie broke in. “A Ford is awfully jolty.”

“Yes, you care because one is more comfortable. What I mean to
say is that a Packard isn’t to you a belligerent symbol that you’re as
good as anybody else. I dare say it is to the laborer.”
But Mr. Carroll had emerged from his thoughts and was looking
at Stacey keenly. “Son,” he said soberly, “you’ve done your duty
heroically. You’ve gone through a tremendous ordeal and you’ve
gone through it without flinching. Don’t go back on what’s right now,
will you? Keep on going straight. Don’t let yourself get infected with
Bolshevism. You’re not, are you?”
Stacey considered his father thoughtfully and with a faint but
genuine sadness—almost the only touch of a soft emotion he had
felt since his arrival. For, though his remarks to Julie had been
careless and superficial, they had just grazed the outside of
something in which he really believed, as much as he believed in
anything. And it was precisely these remarks which had alarmed Mr.
Carroll. Stacey could not make his father out, and still less did he
make himself out, but, whatever his father was, and whatever he
himself was, it was clear that an impassable gulf lay between them.
They had nothing in common save affection and memories.
Therefore, when he answered his father, he did so as gently and
circumspectly as the truth (his one remaining god) would permit;
which was rare, since in general he was careless enough of others’
feelings.
“Why, no, dad,” he said slowly, smiling at his father, “I don’t
believe I’m tainted with Bolshevism. I know almost nothing about it
and don’t trust what I do know. Propaganda for, propaganda
against,—that’s all we’re getting; not facts. In so far as I can make
out the theory I don’t like it—too crushing for the individual. What
we want is more individualism than before the war, not less. But I
think it’s a mistake to hate a word, because hate reveals fear. One
ought not to be afraid of anything. Now you’ve probably got all kinds
of unrest over here, just as everywhere else. Some of it, I dare say,
is right, some wrong—mere abuse of power. Well, nobody ever yet
had power without abusing it. The teachers in your schools, the
professors in your colleges, the salaried clerks in your offices, are
restless, poor things! as well as the laborers in your factories and the

men who deliver your coal. What I’m trying to say is that these are
all different kinds of restlessness. Don’t go and lump them together
and give them a name and then shudder or get angry at it. You’re
drilling your enemies that way, handing them out a uniform, and
urging a lot of your friends to join them.”
“There’s a lot in what you say, Stacey,” said Jimmy Prout. “We’ve
enough enemies without adding to them unnecessarily. I’m all for
the school teachers myself.”
As for Mr. Carroll, he had sat silently gnawing at his gray
moustache during Stacey’s discourse, and he remained, now that it
was over, still appearing to reflect upon it. But at the sound of a
sharp pop behind him he started, shook his head as though to rid
himself of troubles, and watched the champagne being poured into
his glass.
“Good!” he cried, with a smile that softened his firm handsome
face, and rose to his feet. “Here’s to Stacey, D. S. O., D. S. C., and
my son! Thank God, he back’s home again, with his duty
accomplished!”

CHAPTER III
The evening, pleasant as it was, left Stacey with a feeling of
emptiness. When he had finally said good night to his father and
gone upstairs to his own study he wandered about it restlessly,
smoking cigarettes and staring blankly at one after another of the
objects with which he had once affectionately filled it. Everything
and every one, he said to himself, were just the same—or almost. It
was inconceivable. He had gone through something that had
destroyed every particle of his former self, and now he came back to
just what he had left. Not, he reflected, that he wanted his people
changed, certainly not in the way he was changed—whatever that
was. What the devil did he want?
Well, for one thing, he would rather like to be able to feel a little
more. Toward Phil and Catherine Blair, for example. He knew that he
had treated them badly. What sort of gratitude had he returned
them for their open-hearted welcome? He shrugged his shoulders.
He couldn’t help it. It was all he had felt.
Nevertheless, even though only intellectually, he was sorry. And
all at once he found something he could do about it, and felt
immediate relief. To do something had become his sole means of
relief in any situation. He sat down at the desk in his study and drew
out paper and ink.
Then he paused for a moment, reflecting. Of course he might be
mistaken about it. Phil might be prospering. He remembered that he
hadn’t even asked. But he shook his head. No, the signs were clear
enough. And, if he was mistaken, it would anyway do no harm to
write. He dashed off the brief letter at once, never pausing for the
best word or expression.
“Dear Phil: It has occurred to me that under present
building conditions you might be having rather a struggle of
it on your own in New York. I’m writing to know whether
you would consider coming out here for a time—or

permanently, if you can stand the place. I think I could find
you a job with my old firm. You’d be a great acquisition for
them, you’d bring a little more vulgarity into our—what’s
the word?—etiolated architecture, and you could live
through this difficult and expensive period without worrying
about how to make both ends meet. Of course I know what
your independence means to you, and I may be all wrong
in assuming that you would consider abandoning it
temporarily; but I figure that when the difficulty of
existence passes a certain mark it becomes absorbing to
the point of destroying most of one’s real life, and that this
mark is pretty sure to be passed by any young man trying
to be an architect on his own in New York City to-day.
“I’ll add a postscript to-morrow morning after I’ve seen
Parkins (the head of my firm).
“Good night.
“Yours,
“Stacey.”
Stacey glanced the letter through swiftly, folded and addressed it,
and laid it on the desk.
Then he went to bed and fell asleep at once.
Waking early the next morning he did not lie still through those
moments of delicious indolence in which most men indulge
themselves, but slipped out of bed immediately and into his cold
bath.
His body responded to the shock glowingly. It was magnificently
fit. The muscles of his back and abdomen rippled smoothly as he
rubbed himself with the rough towel. One would justly have admired
Stacey as a healthy handsome animal. And it may be that his
obstinate distaste for speculation, his barely conscious, undeliberate
desire to avoid thought, arose out of his animal instinct of self-
preservation, was but the deep determination not to allow his strong
sane body to be affected by his sick and twisted mind.
He took from the closet a pre-war suit of his, a soft gray, civilian
suit, and in regarding it felt a keener joy than he had felt in stepping

off the steamer or in seeing Phil and Catherine or in drinking
champagne last evening—a keener joy, alas, than he felt when he
had donned the clothes; for they did not seem natural and easy to
his militarized body.
Then he went downstairs and out of doors into the well-kept
garden. It was still only seven o’clock and nobody was about—not
even his father, who was an early riser.
But Mr. Carroll did presently appear. “Well, you are changed,
Stacey!” he called jovially, as he drew near through the tall rose
bushes. “Seems to me I remember the time when for you to get
down to eight o’clock breakfast was—hello!” And he surveyed his son
critically. “Back in civilian clothes already, eh?” he observed
meditatively. “Well, that’s right, I suppose. You are a civilian again,
of course. And I don’t think much of these lads who go flaunting
their uniforms about for months after they’re out of the service,
determined to wring the last drop of credit from their performance of
duty. Still . . .” He paused. “Well,” he concluded cheerfully, “there’s
one thing. You can put on all the civilian clothes you like, but nobody
with half an eye would be deceived. You don’t look like a civilian.
You look like a soldier.”
“Damn it all!” said Stacey, exasperated, “I know I do.”
His father laughed. “Come on in to breakfast. Do you still eat that
idiotic excuse for a meal you used to—coffee and two bites of a
roll?”
“No,” said Stacey, “I eat bacon, eggs, fish—anything I get.”
“By Jove, you have improved!” Mr. Carroll exclaimed, with
another laugh.
After breakfast Stacey drove into town with his father, but left
him at the door of the Carroll Building and walked briskly along the
street until he came to the building in which Parkins and May, the
architects with whom he had worked before the war, had their
offices.
He was asked his business formally by the office-boy, new since
his time, but waved him aside and opened the door of Mr. Parkins’s
private room a little way.

“Yes?” said Mr. Parkins. “Oh, by the Lord! it’s Stacey Carroll!
Come in! Come in!” he cried, rising and holding out his hand.
Stacey was pleased at the welcome. There exists between people
who have worked hard together a camaraderie, approaching
affection, but pleasanter since it makes no demands on expression.
Stacey felt it for the men of his battalion; he had forgotten that he
felt it for any one else. The rediscovery was a small pleasant
surprise. He shook the architect’s hand cordially.
“Of course I saw by the paper this morning that you were back,”
Mr. Parkins was saying, “but I’m blessed if I expected you to get
around here to-day.”
“Thought I’d drop in,” said Stacey, collapsing lightly into a chair.
“How are you?” And he scrutinized the older man’s shrewd clean-
shaven face, which showed around the eyes little worried wrinkles,
brought there by the perpetual endeavor to reconcile clients’ ideas
with some modicum of architectural consistency.
“Pretty well! Pretty well!” Mr. Parkins replied. “These have been
lean years, as you know. No building to speak of. But we’ve got all
we can do again now and more too, even though the cost of
material and labor is so high you’d think it would be prohibitive. But
a good many people have made a good deal of money, and, after
all, houses have got to be built. There aren’t enough to go round.
We surely can use you, Stacey.”
“H’m!” said Stacey. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m out of the
running for a while. Not coming back.”
“You’re not! Oh, now, look here! May and I talked it over and
decided we’d offer you a junior partnership right off the bat, and
now you—what’s wrong?”
“You’re awfully kind,” said Stacey, “but honestly I can’t—and I
swear I don’t know why. I give you my word I couldn’t draw plans
for a—bill-board at present.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
“Sorry!” Stacey remarked. “But that’s the way it is.” He smiled
ironically. “All this returned-soldier-restlessness stuff, you know.”
Mr. Parkins considered him closely. “Now what have you gone
and done to yourself?” he observed at last. “You look like Stacey

Carroll, yet you don’t seem quite like him. I believe,” he added, with
a laugh, “I really believe I’m half afraid of you. You’re a—”
“Little changeling, yes,” said Stacey, bored. “Now listen, Mr.
Parkins,” he went on quickly. “There’s something I want to ask you
to do for me. It’ll be a favor to me and a good turn to yourself at the
same time.” And he stated Philip Blair’s case, without mentioning his
name.
“Well,” said Mr. Parkins thoughtfully, “it might be done, of course.
We’ll need a new man, since you’re not coming back for now—
confound you! But what we need is a good safe man. Is your friend
—what’s his name, by the way?”
“Philip Blair.”
Mr. Parkins uttered an exclamation. “Oh, I’ve seen his work!” he
said. “Happened on a perfect wonder of a library he did in a small
New York town. The villagers disliked it immensely. I asked about
him afterward. He’s the real thing; but the idea of your
recommending him to me as a safe man! It’s outrageous!”
“He’ll be as safe as you like,” Stacey insisted. “Five years of what
he’s been trying to do would have crushed the danger out of an
anarchist. Try him.”
“Well,” said Mr. Parkins, “I will. I’ll try him, because I think it’s a
shame a man like that should be so hard pressed, but I know I’m
making a mistake. You can write Blair that if he wants to come I’ll
give him twenty-five hundred a year on a year’s trial.”
An odd spasm contracted Stacey’s features, but passed at once.
“Oh, but I say,” he protested, in a dead emotionless voice, “you were
giving me four thousand before the war!”
Mr. Parkins shook his head. “I’ll make it three thousand, but not a
cent beyond,” he said firmly. “Philip Blair’s a genius. A genius isn’t
worth more than three thousand to me.”
Stacey laughed. “I like the implication,” he observed.
So he added a postscript to his letter and sent it off to Phil.
At three-thirty precisely Stacey was at Marian’s house. He knew
he had a problem to face, since it was unfortunately true that he had
no love left for Marian and did not desire to marry either her or any
one else. But he had no plan and he had not said to himself that he

would not marry her. He had not said anything at all to himself. He
merely went to her house as per schedule. All that he felt was a
sense of something burdensome—and just a little faint curiosity.
After all, he had loved this girl once upon a time. That was it. “Once
upon a time” exactly expressed it. It was the way you began fairy-
tales.
He was relieved, if so slender an emotion can be called relief,
that it was not Marian who opened the door of the house to him. He
had been a little afraid that Marian herself would welcome him with
an impetuous rush. But the door was opened by a maid—and not
even the one the Latimers had had in the old days, at which also
Stacey somehow felt relief.
He went into the drawing-room, hoping to find Mrs. Latimer
there; for, besides feeling that her presence would put off the
demand for emotional moments, he really did want to see her. But
she was not there. The room was empty.
He went over and stood with his back to the fire-place and
looked around him, an odd smile drawing at one corner of his
mouth. For again he was feeling the weak futile tug of old discarded
emotions. These vases and chairs and statuettes, the whole familiar
setting of the room, reminded him of what he had once felt in their
presence; which is the same as saying: what he had once been.
Stacey was like a boat floating on the water, almost solitary, almost
loose, but not quite; still attached by a frayed cord or two to his old
self.
But the portières at one end of the room were parted gently, and
Marian stood between them.
Stacey caught the soft sound and saw her at once. But, as he
gazed at her, he continued to smile the same smile.
Nevertheless, what he felt was mixed. He was straightforwardly
contemptuous of her melodramatic behavior, unexpectedly struck by
her fine beauty, and stirred uneasily by memories.
Well, that half pleasurable discomfort is all that most long-parted
lovers truly feel on meeting again, no matter how earnestly in letters
they may have lashed their old emotion to keep it awake. But, since,

even though changed, they are still they, the discomfort readily
grows again to love in the renewed proximity.
Not with Stacey. He was no longer Stacey Carroll, 1914. He was a
different person. His discomfort faded, flickered and went out—all in
the brief moment of silence.
“You certainly are beautiful, Marian,” he said appreciatively, but
without moving.
“Well,” she returned, with a ripple of laughter, “I’m glad you still
think so—and feel so sure of it.” She moved slowly forward a few
steps, toward him.
His mind was quite clear now and working swiftly. He thought
rapidly that five years ago this demeanor of Marian’s would have set
his heart to throbbing with delight. He would have likened Marian to
a shy, half tamed bird, fond yet afraid of being caught. What an idiot
he had been! To-day he coldly found her behavior absurdly affected.
All these little airs and graces! Fiddlesticks! But, far more strongly
than admiration of Marian’s beauty and cool scorn of her coquetry,
Stacey was feeling elation, because it was now obvious to him that
she did not love him, probably had never loved him. Frank love
would not accord with these mincing ways.
Yet with all this only a few seconds of silence elapsed.
Stacey crossed the room to a divan and threw himself down
easily into one corner of it. “Come on over here, Marian,” he said
comfortably.
She stood still and looked at him, half archly, half in a puzzled
way. “Stacey, you are—you are the most ardent lover!” she
exclaimed.
“And you!” he retorted calmly. “Let’s sit down and talk over our
passion.”
Marian flushed and gave something like a pettish stamp of her
small foot. “I won’t!” she cried.
“Then don’t!” he returned, with a laugh.
However, she seemed to think better of it, for she did come
slowly to the couch and perched herself on the end opposite Stacey.
She sat there gazing at him, one foot on the upholstery, elbow on
knee, her small pointed chin resting in her cupped hand.

Stacey, still smiling, considered her. “You’re perfect like that,” he
said sincerely. “Some Greek sculptor of the Fourth Century—no, the
Third—ought to have carved you.”
“Stacey, don’t you love me any longer?” she asked softly.
“Do you love me?”
She started up. “You’re horrid!” she cried furiously. “Each time
that I ask you a question you ask me one in return. I’ve waited for
you—nearly five years—and this afternoon I looked forward to your
coming and sent everybody out of the house, and then when you
come you look at me as though I were an objet d’art and laugh at
me—laugh coldly at me!”
“Not at you, Marian,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t laugh at you. I
find I don’t know you at all. Come! Forgive me for being rude. Let’s
talk everything over soberly.”
She sat down again and looked at him hostilely. “I see now why
you didn’t write oftener,” she said haughtily. “I thought it was
because you were too busy. Fancy!”
“No, you don’t see,” he replied, “and it’s difficult for me to
explain, because I don’t understand very well myself. Also the
subject’s distasteful to me. But I owe it to you to try to explain.”
“I think you do,” she said icily.
He nodded, unimpressed by her tone. “It’s like this,” he went on,
with an effort. “You’ve got to see me straight. And if I’m brutal, why,
so much the better for you. I’m not only not the laurel-crowned
knight of your flattering princess’s fancy. I’m not even the person I
really was before I went away. Every bit of sweetness and light has
been burned out of me. I don’t get delicate soft sensations out of
anything any more. The overtones that you love don’t exist for me.
Nothing has any glamour. All I can see in life is a mess of bare
conflicting facts, stark naked.”
Stacey had forgotten Marian. His eyes glowed and there was a
stern beauty in his face. Yet he was only leaning abhorrently over
the upper edge of the well. He missed almost everything of
importance.
While he spoke, the girl’s features had lost their expression of
chill aloofness. Her lips were parted now, and she gazed at him as

though fascinated.
“And if I tell you that I don’t love you,” he concluded fiercely, “I
can honestly swear that it’s just that I don’t—can’t—love any one or
anything. My saying so shouldn’t hurt anything but your pride,
because you don’t love me, either.”
She leaned toward him ever so little. “How do you know I don’t
love you?” she demanded softly.
“Because you create a setting, play a game, surround our
meeting with little tricks,” he returned, quite unmoved by her
coaxing grace.
She gazed at him intently, her breath coming and going rapidly.
“Then you don’t—you truly don’t—even want to kiss me?” she asked.
He returned her gaze. Her coquetry did not stir him; her beauty
did. “Yes,” he said somberly, “of course I do! But not because I find
you shy and alluring. I don’t. Just because you’re beautiful and
desire’s a fact.”
He seized her small wrists and drew her toward him slowly. She
struggled fiercely at first, but then, when her face was close to his,
yielded suddenly and returned his kiss.
“Now don’t you love me, Stacey?” she murmured.
“No!” he cried, releasing her. “Nor you me!”
She rose and smoothed her hair.
“You look precisely like a Tanagra,” he said admiringly.
“If you say anything more of that sort,” she burst out, “I shall
hate you!”
“You’ll do that, anyway,” he replied.
She gazed at him strangely, an expression of cruelty in her fine
mouth. “Ames Price has been imploring me—for two years now—to
marry him,” she said slowly. “I think I’ll do it. Would you mind,
Stacey?”
He winced. “Mind? Of course I’d mind! Animal jealousy, too, is a
fact—nasty fact like all the rest of them! But go ahead and marry
him if you’ll be happy with him.”
Her eyes shone for a moment with triumph. Then she laughed
musically. “What a weird afternoon!” she observed, and pressed a
bell in the wall. “Come! Let’s have tea. You’re quite Byronic, Stacey!”

Well, she was a sentimentalist, no doubt, but she was no fool,
Stacey admitted to himself. Come to think of it, he was being Byronic
in his intense antagonistic desire to stand alone, freed from all ties.

CHAPTER IV
Mr. Latimer was talking, although it was early afternoon and
therefore not his best hour.
“The supreme importance of the arts,” he said, “is poise. There is
no poise in life itself. Life is mere tumult and shouting. And since
there is no poise there is no meaning. The arts hover above the
hurly-burly, dipping down into it a little for delicate nourishment, but
no more of it than a cloud, which sucks its constituent vapor from
the earth, is of the earth. In the country of the arts there is quiet.
That is to say,” he added drily, “there was. The arts at the moment
have ceased to exist, and with them has vanished all that we
possessed of value.”
“No doubt,” Stacey assented politely.
But the beautifully enunciated phrases really gave him a feeling
of contempt for Mr. Latimer. And he wondered how he could ever
have admired this polished esthete. His glance wandered to Marian
(the only other person in the room, her mother being out
somewhere) who was curled up in a large chair on the other side of
her father. Stacey considered the girl’s face attentively. She stirred
him by her beauty, especially when seen thus, motionless, carved;
yet left him, when everything was summed up, feeling actively
hostile.
Mr. Latimer had taken a small vase from the mantelshelf and was
toying with it abstractedly.
“Leisure,” he remarked, “is anathema to Americans. Yet leisure is
all there is of importance. It is what all men strive to attain through
labor, but, having attained, are incapable of supporting. It is too
noble for their tawdry energetic minds, and they hasten to fill it up
with meaningless movement. They even, I am told, go to witness
what they call ‘photo-plays,’ where, though themselves sitting still,
they can enjoy a vicarious restlessness and be saved from the
leisure they dread. How false an understanding of life, or, rather,

what complete lack of any understanding! The goal of life itself is,
after all, just the eternal leisure of the grave.”
“An admirable epigram,” said Stacey, with no hint of expression in
his face. “I cannot make out whether it belongs spiritually in the
eighteenth century or in the nineties of the last century.”
“In any case it does not belong in the twentieth,” Mr. Latimer
returned, a touch of irascibility in his voice. “Nor do I.” He set the
vase down almost with a bump. “I must go,” he said. “I have an
appointment, and here in America every one is always on time.” And
he left them.
Marian uncurled herself gracefully. “Papa is cross,” she observed,
with a laugh. “It is only three o’clock, you see. He does not approve
of early afternoon. Let’s go to the library, Stacey. I don’t like this
room.” And she danced off up the stairs, he following.
She half knelt on a window-seat in the library and gazed out, her
mood seeming to change suddenly from hard to soft.
“The clouds drift and drift,” she said dreamily. “And sometimes
they’re majestic and white with purple shadows, as now, and
sometimes they’re black and terrible, and sometimes mere little pale
ghosts of clouds. But they’re always clouds. They haven’t anything
to do with real majesty or terror or ghosts. (Can one say ‘real
ghosts,’ Stacey?) Only clouds. They just drift and drift. I think I’d like
to be a cloud.”
“Why shouldn’t you want to?” he observed callously, “It’s your
father’s theory all over again.”
She whirled around, her face mischievous. “Oh, how funny you
are, Stacey! You won’t care for me any more. You’ll damn anything I
do or say. You’re an enemy, out and out,—oh, yes, you are! Yet
you’d be glad enough to kiss me this very minute.”
“Yes,” he admitted angrily.
“But you’re not going to,” she said, with haughtiness. “Not now
or ever.” She smiled. “Ames Price is coming to see me to-night. Shall
I let him kiss me? It would make him so happy. I think it’s my duty
to. Come! Let’s sit down and talk of duty, Stacey.”
And so she kept it up, as full of witchery as Circe, dazzling in the
bright rapid flash of her moods, swift and lovely as a swallow, soft at

one moment and clouded,—brilliant and gemlike the next.
Yet, through it all, Stacey, though he talked freely enough, was
cold, distant and bored. He was like a man idly watching a sorceress
draw circles and pentagons in the sand and murmur incantations. No
spirits responded. No enchantment ensued. It was merely laborious
lines and words, silly child’s play. The only thing that interested him
—a little—in the performance was the question of whether or not it
was deliberate.
Stacey had continued to go daily to see Marian. He remained
unmoved by almost everything in her that had formerly delighted
him. There was no longer any magic, any mystery. Yet he desired to
be near her. Something she did give him. But as to what it was he
did not inquire.
It was a strange relationship, but it is possible that Marian found
it piquant. She seemed fascinated by Stacey, now that he was
indifferent to her.
At last the girl sank lightly down upon an ottoman near the
young man’s feet and gazed up at him, as on that day years before
when he had come to tell her he was going to the war.
“You’re the oddest person, Stacey!” she said, her eyes shining.
“Just like a great rock—a handsome rock. Why do you come to see
me? You don’t need to, you know. You’ve broken our engagement—
and my heart,” she continued elfishly. “I shall tell every one that you
have. It will be in the newspapers. ‘Returned Hero Breaks Girl’s
Heart!’ ”
This was better. There was something cool and hard in this that
appealed to Stacey, wakened a sense of surface comradeship in him.
“H’m!” he remarked, smiling. “Your heart seems to be doing
pretty well—if you’ve got one. Have you got one, Marian?”
“That’s a horrid habit you’ve acquired, Stacey,” she said gaily, “of
never answering a question, but always asking another. I asked you
why you came to see me. Well, since you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you.
You come to see me just as you’d go to see the Parthenon.”
The smile faded from his face. By Jove, she was right! (Stacey
Carroll, 1914, had been intelligently introspective; Stacey Carroll,
1919, could always be surprised if some one told him truth about

himself. Also annoyed, generally. But not this time.) Yes, that was it,
he supposed. The bodily fact of Marian wakened his atrophied sense
of beauty—but differently than in the old days, austerely save for the
touch of desire.
“Now when you can see things as straight as that why do you go
in so for everything rococo?” he demanded harshly. “Why do you
embroider and sentimentalize?”
She gazed at him, her mouth compressed, her eyes brilliant with
anger—which was certainly justified. Then her expression changed
and she shrugged her shoulders, gracefully.
“So you see,” she said calmly, “you were just asking a silly
careless question a moment ago. You don’t care whether I have a
heart or not.” She smiled again. “What an odd pair we are!” she
went on. “Poor me! Not engaged any longer! Deserted after all these
years! You must be sure not to tell papa until you’ve given me time
to get engaged to some one else—Ames Price, I think you said I
might marry. Papa would be too awfully angry.”
“Why?” Stacey asked. “Is he so anxious to be rid of you?”
But at this Marian only laughed without replying.
Stacey had of course seen Mr. and Mrs. Latimer more than once
by this time. His old admiration for Marian’s father had gone, like so
many other things. He found Mr. Latimer a cultivated futile
gentleman with an interest in baubles and a talent for intelligent
monologue. The only thing about him that awakened any interest in
Stacey was a kind of irascibility that Stacey did not remember as
formerly characteristic of him. Mr. Latimer was really sharp at times,
in a suave polished way, with his daughter and his wife.
But Mrs. Latimer, though she had certainly aged, had clearly not
done so because of such trifles; for she bore her husband’s
occasional pettish outbursts with a pleasant detached tolerance.
They might have been the outbursts of characters in a book she was
reading, for all the effect they appeared to have on her.
She had welcomed Stacey with quiet happiness, and he had felt
at once a comfort in her presence which he felt in that of no one
else. Yet she had said nothing of importance to him, had talked of

externals even the time or two that they had found themselves alone
together for a few minutes.
He left the Latimer house rather early on the afternoon of this
unsatisfactory interview with Marian. Something about Marian
antagonized him strongly, even now that he was surely free; so that
the impulse he felt to seek her society repeatedly in this way
revealed a bond of some inexplicable sort and irked him.
He walked swiftly north till he came to the handsome park the
entrance to which lay at no great distance from the Latimer home.
And, plunging into the green shady paths, he felt a sudden relief. To
cut loose from it all—all streets! all men! To be free! There was no
joy for him in the full-leafed June beauty of the trees or in the bird
songs among them,—no call to comradeship. Quite otherwise. It was
solely as release that he instinctively welcomed them.
Striding aimlessly onward in this mood, Stacey suddenly heard
his name called and swung about quickly to see Mrs. Latimer sitting
on a bench at the edge of the path he followed and waving a green
parasol at him.
“I couldn’t help calling to you,” she said pleasantly, “though I
oughtn’t to. You look so splendidly alone, as though you didn’t want
to see any one.”
“Oh, but yes,” he returned, “I’m glad to see you! No one else;
but you!” And he sat down on her bench.
“Now what old woman could help having her head turned by
that?” she exclaimed, with a smile.
He scrutinized her face. Yes, she had grown older, he thought,
but not ignominiously; in some way that made age seem of value.
Even in regard to her Stacey was not curious as to what experiences
of body or soul lay beneath the changes her face showed; but he
accepted what she was, as a gracious fact.
“Where have you come from, Stacey?” she asked.
“From your house,” he replied, with an acid smile.
“Oh,” she observed, “so that’s why you were marching along with
the air of being so glad to be alone! Have you broken—I mean, have
you and Marian broken off your engagement?”
“Yes,” said Stacey coolly, “I believe so.”

After this they were silent for a while.
“Oh,” he observed suddenly, as an afterthought, but really with
some little touch of human sentiment, “I hope you won’t feel hurt! I
should be sorry to hurt you.”
“I?” Mrs. Latimer exclaimed. “Gracious, no! I’m immensely
relieved. I wouldn’t have had you and Marian marry for anything in
the world.”
Stacey did not know whether she was being a vixenish mother-
in-law or an unnatural mother, but he found her remark amusing
taken either way, and laughed. She laughed with him, but more
gaily.
“Oh,” he added after a moment, “I forgot! Marian says we must
be sure not to let Mr. Latimer know at present.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Latimer, as though it were too
elementary a truth to deserve mention. “Marian’s much more
intelligent than you ever gave her credit for being,” she added, an
instant later.
“Yes, I know that,” Stacey admitted freely, even though he did
not see the present application of the remark, or, indeed, why both
Marian and her mother deemed it essential that Mr. Latimer should
not learn that the engagement was off.
“Naturally,” said Mrs. Latimer thoughtfully, poking holes in the
gravel with the tip of her parasol, “I could see that things were not
the same as once. Well, that was to be expected. I shouldn’t have
been at all surprised to have you show a kind of—of fond
indifference to Marian. But what I don’t understand—there’s so
much I don’t understand about you, Stacey—is the positive hostility
I’ve felt sometimes in the looks you gave her. It was as though you
hated her. Why? Poor Marian! She’s just the same as always. Is that
itself—her sameness—the reason?”
“No,” Stacey muttered, “of course not! I don’t know why.”
“Can’t you—find out why?” she asked gently.
Stacey reflected, painfully and with resentment at the need.
Finally he drew his hand across his forehead and looked at Mrs.
Latimer. An odd fanatical intensity glowed in his face.

“I don’t know,” he said, speaking thickly and with difficulty. “I
hadn’t thought. But perhaps it’s—because Marian’s perfection is so—
dependent on wealth. I see Marian,” he went on, his words suddenly
pouring out, “as a flower that you get by fairly watering the ground
with money. Put her by herself in the panting sweating world and
what would she be? Her grace is money! Her ease—money. All her
charm—money! Everything in her except her chiselled Greek beauty
is money! I hate money!” And he fell into tumultuous silence.
“So that was it,” Mrs. Latimer said in a tired voice. “Poor Stacey!
Confidence for confidence,” she added abruptly, after a pause. “Have
you ever wondered why we gave up Italy and came here to live?”
“Often,” he answered, surprised. “I used to fancy it was your
decision—your feeling that Marian ought to know America.”
She smiled oddly. “My decision! It would make no difference
where Marian lived. She would never at any point touch the real
world. No, it was not my decision. You see, our income, which was
considered a tidy little competence at the time Mr. Latimer inherited
it, remained stationary while the cost of everything grew and grew.
America was expensive, but in it Marian could marry money—money,
Stacey! And, of course,” she added, with a kind of bravado, “you
were a splendid parti!”
Stacey felt sickened by the revelation. Oddly enough, five years
past, when he had been incorrigibly romantic, it would not have
disgusted him a tenth as much as now when he was stripped clean
of illusions.
“I see,” he remarked. “So to-day, with the present cost of living,
Marian simply must marry. What an economic waste to have thrown
away these five years in waiting for me! Why do you tell me this,
Mrs. Latimer?”
“Only because it’s a relief to tell somebody,” she replied, “and
because you said what you did about money, and because I wanted
to show you that one might feel as you did, with even more reason,
and still live and be tolerably happy.”
He shook his head.
“Very well, then,” she concluded desperately, “because truth is
truth, and if I ever connived at anything against you I want to tell

you of it.”
Stacey smiled. “You’re much more girlish than your daughter,” he
said.
They were silent for a long while.
Then: “Did you have an awful, awful time, Stacey?” she asked
softly.
He started. “Where? In France? Oh, yes, of course,” he replied, in
a matter-of-fact voice.
“I thought of you so often,” she went on. “It must be dreadful to
be an idealist and then see all your ideals go—violently—one by one
—”
“Violently, yes,” he interrupted coolly. “Not one by one.”
“Crushed to death by facts—not average facts, all the horrible
evil facts herded together and organized until they must have
seemed normal!”
“Oh,” he said, “facts are facts! They aren’t either evil or good.
And you’re much too polite in saying that I was an idealist.
‘Sentimentalist’ is the right word. Can’t say that the method
employed to remove my illusions was particularly gentle, but I’m
grateful enough for the removal.”
There was a look of pain on Mrs. Latimer’s face. “No! No!” she
cried. “It isn’t fair! There’s good disillusionment and bad! It’s good to
have false prettiness, false sentiment—whatever is false—scrubbed
off, but it isn’t good, it isn’t fair to a man, to see only pain and death
and agony and mud for four years and be made to feel that that’s all
there is of true. It isn’t fair! It isn’t!”
Stacey’s face was pale but calm and touched with a distant
haughty scorn of all things. “Oh, it wasn’t only that!” he said in a
chill voice. “I doubt if that was even the profoundest lesson in
disillusionment. That was the lesson of pain and brutality and
ugliness and fatigue—incredible fatigue. It even had gleams of relief
—flashes of lightning in chaos. Men showed themselves beasts, but
with a capacity for enduring more suffering than you’d have thought
possible. There was funk, of course,—individual cowardice and rank,
bestial, mass terror, just as there was mass cruelty. But there was
amazing heroism, too. And the men did carry on in spite of

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Basic Structures for Engineers and Architects 1st Edition Philip Garrison

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