Читать книгу The Lonely Warrior онлайн

56 страница из 69

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.