In the fortnight following his encounter with Mills at the Hardens’, and the later meeting that same night in the storm, Bruce had thrown himself with fierce determination into his work. There must be no repetitions of such meetings; they added to his self-consciousness, made him ill at ease even when walking the streets in which at a turn of any corner he might run into Mills.
He had never known that he had a nerve in his body, but now he was aware of disturbing sensations, inability to concentrate on his work, even a tremor of the hands as he bent over his drawing-board. His abrupt change from the open road to an office in some measure accounted for this and he began going to a public golf links on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and against the coming of winter he had his name proposed for membership in an athletic club.
He avoided going anywhere that might bring him again in contact with the man he believed to be his father. Shepherd Mills he ran into at the University Club now and then, and he was not a little ashamed of himself for repelling the young man’s friendly overtures. Shepherd, evidently feeling that he must in some way explain his silence about the clubhouse, for which Bruce had made tentative sketches, spoke of the scheme one day as a matter he was obliged to defer for the present.
“It’s a little late in the season to begin; and father’s doubtful about it—thinks it might cause feeling among the men in other concerns. I hadn’t thought of that aspect of the matter——”
Shepherd paused and frowned as he waited for Bruce to offer some comment on the abandonment of the project. It was none of Bruce’s affair, but he surmised that the young man had been keenly disappointed by his father’s refusal.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter!” Bruce remarked as though it were merely a professional matter of no great importance. But as he left Shepherd he thought intently about the relations of the father and son. They were utterly irreconcilable natures. Having met Franklin Mills, sat at his fireside, noted with full understanding the man’s enjoyment of ease and luxury, it was not difficult to understand his lack of sympathy with Shepherd’s radical tendencies. Piecing together what he had heard about Mills from Henderson and Millicent Harden with his own estimate, Bruce was confident that whatever else Franklin Mills might be he was no altruist.
After he left Shepherd Bruce was sorry that he had been so brusque. He might at least have expressed his sympathy with the young man’s wish to do something to promote the happiness of his workmen. The vitality so evident in Franklin Mills’s vigorous figure, and his perfect poise, made Shepherd appear almost ridiculous in contrast.
Bruce noted that the other young men about the club did not treat Shepherd quite as one of themselves. When Shepherd sat at the big round table in the grill he would listen to the ironic give and take of the others with a pathetic eagerness to share in their good fellowship, but unable to make himself quite one of them. This might have been due, Bruce thought, to the anxiety of Shepherd’s contemporaries—young fellows he had grown up with—to show their indifference to the fact that he was the son of the richest man in town. Or they felt, perhaps, that Shepherd was not equal to his opportunities. Clearly, however, no one ever had occasion to refer to Shepherd Mills as the typical young scion of a wealthy family whose evil ways were bound to land him in the poorhouse or the gutter.
In other circumstances Bruce would have felt moved to make a friend of Shepherd, but the fact that they were of the same blood haunted him like a nightmare.
As the days went by, Bruce fell prey to a mood common to sensitive men in which he craved talk with a woman—a woman of understanding. It was Saturday and the office closed at noon. He would ask Millicent to share his freedom in a drive into the country; and without giving himself time to debate the matter, he made haste to call her on the telephone.
Her voice responded cheerily. Leila had just broken an engagement with her for golf and wouldn’t he play? When he explained that he wasn’t a member of a club and the best he could do for her would be to take her to a public course, she declared that he must be her guest. The point was too trivial for discussion; the sooner they started the better, and so two o’clock found them both with a good initial drive on the Faraway course.
“Long drives mean long talks,” she said. “We begin at least with the respect of our caddies. You’ll never guess what I was doing when you called up!”
“At the organ, or in the studio putting a nose on somebody?”
“Wrong! I was planting tulip bulbs. This was a day when I couldn’t have played a note or touched clay to save my life. Ever have such fits?”
“I certainly do,” replied Bruce.
Each time he saw her she was a little different—today he was finding her different indeed from the girl who had played for him, and yet not the girl of his adventure on the river or the Millicent he had met at the Country Club party. There was a charm in her variableness, perhaps because of her habitual sincerity and instinctive kindness. He waited for her to putt and rolled his own ball into the cup.
“Sometimes I see things black; and then again there does appear to be blue sky,” he said.
“Yes; but that’s not a serious symptom. If we didn’t have those little mental experiences we wouldn’t be interesting to ourselves!”
“Great Scott! Must we be interesting to ourselves?”
“Absolutely!”
“But when I’m down in the mouth I don’t care whether I’m interesting or not!”
“Nothing in it! Life’s full of things to do—you know that! I believe you’re just trying to psychoanalyze me!”
“I swear I’m not! I was in the depths this morning; that’s why I called you up!”
“Now——” She carefully measured a short approach and played it neatly. “Oh, you didn’t want to see me socially, so to speak; you just wanted someone to tell your troubles to! Is that a back-handed compliment?”
“Rather a confession—do you hate it?”
“No—I rather like that.”
With an artistic eye she watched him drive a long low ball with his brassie. His tall figure, the free play of arms and shoulders, his boyish smile when she praised the shot, contributed to a new impression of him. He appeared younger than the night he called on her, when she had thought him diffident, old-fashioned and stiffly formal.
As they walked over the turf with a misty drizzle wetting their faces fitfully it seemed to both that their acquaintance had just begun. When he asked if she didn’t want to quit she protested that she was dressed for any weather. It was unnecessary to accommodate himself to her in any way; she walked as rapidly as he; when she sliced her ball into the rough she bade him not follow her, and when she had gotten into the course again she ran to join him, as though eager not to break the thread of their talk. The thing she was doing at a given moment was, he judged, the one thing in the world that interested her. The wind rose presently and blew the mist away and there was promise of a clearing sky.
“You’ve brought the sun back!” he exclaimed. “Something told me you had influence with the weather.”
“I haven’t invoked any of my gods today; so it’s just happened.”
“Your gods! You speak as though you had a list!”
“Good gracious! You promised me once not to pick me up and make me explain myself.”
“Then I apologize. I can see that it isn’t fair to make a goddess explain her own divinity.”
“Oh-o-o-o,” she mocked him. “You get zero for that!”
She was walking along with her hands thrust into the pockets of her sweater, the brim of her small sport hat turned up above her face.
“But seriously,” she went on, “out of doors is the best place to think of God. The churches make religion seem so complicated. We can’t believe in a God we can’t imagine. Where there’s sky and grass it’s all so much simpler. The only God I can feel is a spirit hovering all about, watching and loving us—the God of the Blue Horizons. I can’t think of Him as a being whose name must be whispered as children whisper of terrifying things in the dark.”
“The God of the Blue Horizons?” He repeated the phrase slowly. “Yes; the world has had its day of fear—anything that lifts our eyes to the blue sky is good—really gives us, I suppose, a sense of the reality of God....”
They had encountered few other players, but a foursome was now approaching them where the lines of the course paralleled.
“Constance Mills and George Whitford; I don’t know the others,” said Millicent.
Mrs. Mills waved her hand and started toward them, looking very fit in a smart sport suit. Idly twirling her driver, she had hardly the air of a zealous golfer.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t we the brave ones? Scotch blood! Not afraid of a little moisture. Mr. Storrs! I know now why you’ve never been to see me—you’re better occupied. It’s dreadful to be an old married woman. You see what happens, Millicent! I warn you solemnly against marriage. Yes, George—I’m coming. Nice to meet you, even by chance, Mr. Storrs. By-by, Millie.”
“You’ve displeased her ladyship,” Millicent remarked. “You ought to go to see her.”
“I haven’t felt strongly moved,” Bruce replied.
“She doesn’t like being ignored. Of course nobody does, but Mrs. Mills demands to be amused.”
“Is she being amused now?” Bruce asked.
“I wish Leila could have heard that!”
“Doesn’t Leila like her sister-in-law?”
“Yes, of course she does, but Constance is called the most beautiful and the best dressed woman in town and the admiration she gets goes to her head a little bit. George Whitford seems to admire her tremendously. Leila has a sense of humor that sees right through Constance’s poses.”
“Doesn’t Leila pose just a little herself?”
“You might say that she does. Just now she’s affecting the fast young person pose; but I think she’s about through with it. She’s really the finest girl alive, but she kids herself with the idea that she’s an awful devil. Her whole crowd are affected by the same bug.”
“I rather guessed that,” said Bruce. “Let me see—was that five for you?”
When they reached the clubhouse Millicent proposed that they go home for the tea which alone could fittingly conclude the afternoon. The moment they entered the Harden hall she lifted her arms dramatically.
“Jumbles!” she cried in a mockery of delight. “Mother has been making jumbles! Come straight to the kitchen!”
In the kitchen they found Mrs. Harden, her ample figure enveloped in a gingham apron of bright yellow checks that seemed to fill the immaculate white kitchen with color. Bruce was a little dismayed by his sudden precipitation into the culinary department of the establishment. Millicent began piling a plate with warm jumbles; a maid appeared and began getting the tea things ready. Mrs. Harden, her face aglow from its recent proximity to the gas range, explained to Bruce that it was the cook’s afternoon out and at such times she always liked to cook something just to keep her hand in. She was proud of the kitchen with its white-tiled walls and flooring and glittering utensils. The library and the organ belonged to Millie, she said, but Doctor Harden had given her free swing to satisfy her own craving for an up-to-date kitchen.
Bruce’s heart warmed under these revelations of the domestic sanctuary. Mrs. Harden’s motherliness seemed to embrace the world and her humor and sturdy common sense were strongly evident. She regaled Bruce with a story of a combat she had lately enjoyed with a plumber. She warned him that if he would succeed as an architect he must be firm with plumbers.
Alone in the living-room with their tea, Millicent and Bruce continued to find much to discuss. She was gay and serious by turns, made him talk of himself, and finding that this evidently was distasteful to him, she led the way back to impersonal things again.
“Why go when there will be dinner here pretty soon?” she asked when he rose.
“Because I want to come back sometime! I want some more jumbles! It’s been a great afternoon for me. I do like the atmosphere of this house—kitchen and everything. And the outdoors was fine—and you——”
“I hoped you’d remember I was part of the scenery!”
“I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to—and I don’t! Do you suppose we could do it all over again—sometime when you’re not terribly busy?”
“Oh, I’ll try to bear another afternoon with you!”
“Or we might do a theater or a movie?”
“Even that is possible.”
He didn’t know that she was exerting herself to send him away cheerful. When he said soberly, his hand on the door, “You don’t know how much you’ve helped me,” she held up her finger warningly.
“Not so serious! Always cheerful!—that’s the watchword!”
“All right! You may have to say that pretty often.”
Her light laugh, charged with friendliness, followed him down the steps. She had made him forget himself, lifted him several times to heights he had never known before. He was sorry that he had not asked her further about the faith to which she had confessed, her God of the Blue Horizons. The young women he had known were not given to such utterances,—certainly not while playing very creditable golf! Her phrase added majesty to the universe, made the invisible God intelligible and credible. He felt that he could never again look at the heavens without recalling that phrase of hers. It wakened in him the sense of a need that he had never known before. It was as if she had interpreted some baffling passage in a mysterious book and clarified it. He must see her again; yes, very often he must see her.
But on his way home a dark thought crossed his mind: “What would Millicent say if she knew?”