As Bruce was driving past the Mills’s residence one evening several weeks later, Carroll hailed him. Mills, it appeared, had driven out with Carroll and the limousine waited at the curb to carry the secretary on home. Carroll asked Bruce whether he would go with him to a lecture at the art institute the following night; a famous painter was to speak and it promised to be an interesting occasion. Mills lingered while the young men arranged to meet at the club for dinner before the lecture, and Bruce was about to climb back into his car when Mills said detainingly:
“Storrs, won’t you have pity on me? Carroll’s just refused to dine with me. My daughter’s going out and there’s just myself. Do you think you could stand it?”
“The soil of the day is upon me!” said Bruce. “But——”
He very much wished to refuse, but the invitation was cordially given, and taken by surprise, he was without a valid excuse for declining.
“You don’t need to dress and you may leave the moment you’re bored,” said Mills amiably.
“Sorry, but I’ve got to run,” said Carroll. “I’ll send your car right back, Mr. Mills. Thank you. I envy you two your quiet evening!”
Mills led the way upstairs, opened the door of one of the bedrooms and turned on the lights.
“The room’s supposed to be in order—it’s my son’s old room. Ring if you don’t find what you want.”
Bruce closed the door and stared about him.
Shepherd’s old room! It was a commodious chamber, handsomely furnished. The bath was a luxurious affair. As he drew off his coat Bruce’s mind turned back to his little room in the old frame house in Laconia; the snowy window draperies his mother always provided, and the other little tributes of her love, fashioned by her own hands, that adorned the room in which he had dreamed the long, long dreams of youth. Through the dormer windows he had heard the first bird song in the spring, and on stormy nights in winter had sunk to sleep to the north wind’s hoarse shout through the elms and maples in the yard.
“My son’s room!” Franklin Mills had said carelessly as he turned away. The phrase still rang in Bruce’s ears. Mills could not know; he could not even suspect! No man would be callous enough to make such a remark if he believed he was uttering it to an unrecognized child of his own blood.
Bruce laved his face and brushed his hair and went down the hall to the library where Mills had taken him on the memorable night they met in the storm. The portrait which had so disturbed Mills still hung in its place. Bruce turned his back on it and took up the evening newspapers.
A maid appeared to say that Mr. Mills was answering a long-distance call, but would be free in a moment; and a little later the butler came in with a tray and began concocting a cocktail. While this was in preparation a low whistle from the door caused Bruce to glance round. Leila was peering at him, her head alone being visible.
“I thought you were a burglar!” she whispered.
Bruce pointed to the servant, who was solemnly manipulating the shaker, and beckoned her to enter.
“Briggs! You lied to me again!” she said severely as she swept into the room. “You told me there wasn’t a drop in the house!”
“It was the truth, Miss Leila, when I told you,” the man replied gravely. “A friend of Mr. Mills left this at the door this morning.”
“I don’t believe it! It was more likely a friend of mine. I say, little one, how do I look?”
“Queenly,” Bruce replied. “If you were more beautiful my eyes couldn’t bear it.”
“Cut it! Am I really all right?”
“I’d be ashamed if I didn’t know it!”
“Good boy! You have a taste!”
She was charming indeed in her evening gown, which he praised in ignorant terms that she might correct him. She remained standing, drawing on her gloves, and explaining that she was dining at the Tarletons and wasn’t highly edified at the prospect. Her going was a concession to her father. The Tarletons had a young guest whose grandfather had once been a business associate of her Grandfather Mills; hence she must sacrifice herself.
“Dad’s keen about the old family stuff. Just look at those grand old relics up there.” She indicated the line of family portraits with a disdainful gesture. “I come in and make faces at them when I feel naughty. I can’t tell my grandfathers apart, and don’t want to!”
“How lacking in piety!” said Bruce, who could have pointed out her Grandfather Mills! He bestowed a hasty glance at the portrait, satisfied that Leila at least would never detect her ancestor’s resemblance to himself. The servant, having sufficiently agitated the cocktails, withdrew. Leila, waiting till the door to the back stairs closed, began advancing with long steps and a rowdyish swagger toward the tray.
“Alone with a cocktail! And I’m going to a dry party! Hist!” She bent her head toward the door, her hand to her ear. “What’s the Colonel doing?” she asked.
“At the telephone; he’ll be here any minute.”
“Quick! Fill that glass—that’s the good sport!”
“Service for two only! You wouldn’t rob me!”
“Please—I don’t want my gloves to reek of gin—please!”
“You can’t touch that tray—you can’t touch that shaker! You’re hypnotized!” he declared solemnly.
“Oh, tush!” With a quick movement she tried to grasp the shaker; but he caught her hand, held it a moment, then let it fall to her side while he smiled into her bright, eager eyes.
“In the name of all your ancestors I forbid you!” he said.
“You wouldn’t trust me with one?” she demanded, half defiant, half acquiescing.
“Not tonight, when you’re meeting old family friends and all that!”
“Pshaw!” She stamped her foot. “I can stop at half a dozen houses and get a drink——”
“But you won’t; really you won’t!”
“What’s it to you—why should you care?” she demanded, looking him straight in the eyes.
“Aren’t we friends?” he asked. “A friend wouldn’t give it to you. See! You don’t really want it at all—it was just an hallucination!”
“Oh, no!” she said, puckering her face and scowling her abhorrence of the idea while her eyes danced merrily. “I just dreamed I wanted it. Well, score one for you, old top! You’re even nicer than I thought you were!”
“Leila, haven’t you gone yet?” exclaimed Mills, appearing suddenly in the room.
“No, Dada! I was just kidding Bruce a little. Hope you have a nice dinner! Don’t be too solemn, and don’t scold your guest the way you do me. Yes, I’ve got my key and every little thing. Good-night. Come and see me sometime, Bruce.” She lifted her face for her father to kiss, paused in the doorway to shake her fist at Bruce and tripped down the hall singing.
“Do pardon me for keeping you waiting,” said Mills. “I had a New York call and the connection was bad. Let’s see what we have here——”
“Allow me, sir——”
As Bruce gave the drinks a supplemental shake Mills inspected the two glasses, ostensibly to satisfy himself that the housekeeping staff had properly cared for them, but really, Bruce surmised, to see whether Leila had been tippling.
When they went down to the dining-room Bruce found it less of an ordeal than he had expected to sit at Mills’s table. Mills was a social being; his courtesy was unfailing, and no doubt he was sincere in his expressions of gratitude to Bruce for sharing his meal.
The table was lighted by four tapers in tall candlesticks of English silver. The centerpiece was a low bowl of pink roses, the product of the Deer Trail conservatories. Mills, in spite of his austere preferences in other respects, deferred to changing fashions in the furnishing of his table, to which he gave the smart touch of a sophisticated woman. It was a way of amusing himself, and he enjoyed the praise of the women who dined with him for his taste, the discrimination he exercised in picking up novelties in exclusive New York shops. Even when alone he enjoyed the contemplation of precious silver and crystal, and the old English china in which he specialized. He invited Bruce’s attention, as one connoisseur to another, to the graceful lines and colors of the water glasses—a recent acquisition. The food was excellent, but doubtless no better than Mills ate every night, whether he dined alone or with Leila. The courses were served unhurriedly; Franklin Mills was not a man one could imagine bolting his food. Again Bruce found his dislike ebbing. The idea that the man was his father only fleetingly crossed his mind. If Mills suspected the relationship he was an incomparable actor....
“I’ve never warmed to the idea that America should be an asylum for the scum of creation; it’s my Anglo-Saxon conceit, I suppose. You have the look of the old American stock——”
“I suppose I’m a pretty fair American,” Bruce replied. “My home town is Laconia—settled by Revolutionary soldiers; they left their imprint. It’s a patriotic community.”
“Oh, yes; Laconia! Carroll was telling me that had been your home. He has some relatives there himself.”
“Yes, I know them,” Bruce said, meeting Mills’s gaze carelessly. “The fact is I know, or used to know, nearly everybody in the town.”
“Carroll may have told you that I had some acquaintance with the place myself. That was a long time ago. I went there to look after some business interests for my father. It was a part of my apprenticeship. I seem to recall people of your name; Storrs is not so common—?”
“My father was John Storrs—a lawyer,” said Bruce in the tone of one stating a fact unlikely to be of particular interest.
“Yes; John Storrs——” Mills repeated musingly. “I recall him very well—and his wife—your mother—of course. Delightful people. I’ve always remembered those months I spent there with a particular pleasure. For the small place Laconia was then, there was a good deal doing—dances and picnics. I remember your mother as the leading spirit in all the social affairs. Is she——”
“Father and mother are both gone. My mother died a little more than a year ago.”
“I’m very sorry,” Mills murmured sympathetically. “For years I had hoped to go back to renew old acquaintances, but Laconia is a little inaccessible from here and I never found it possible.”
Whether Mills had referred to his temporary residence in Laconia merely to show how unimportant and incidental it was in his life remained a question. But Bruce felt that if Mills could so lightly touch upon it, he himself was equal to gliding over it with like indifference. Mills asked with a smile whether Gardner’s Grove was still in existence, that having been a favorite picnic ground, an amateurish sort of country club where the Laconians used to have their dances. The oak trees there were the noblest he had ever seen. Bruce expressed regret that the grove was gone....
Mills was shrewd; and Bruce was aware that the finely formed head across the table housed a mind that carefully calculated all the chances of life even into the smallest details. He wondered whether he had borne himself as well as Mills in the ordeal. The advantage had been on Mills’s side; it was his house, his table. Possibly he had been waiting for some such opportunity as this to sound the son of Marian Storrs as to what he knew—hoped perhaps to surprise him into some disclosure of the fact if she had ever, in a moment of weakness or folly, spoken of him as other than a passing acquaintance.
“We’ll go down to the billiard room to smoke,” Mills remarked at the end of the dinner. “We’ll have our coffee there.”
Easy chairs and a davenport at one end of the billiard room invited to comfort. On the walls were mounted animal heads and photographs of famous horses.
“Leila doesn’t approve of these works of art,” said Mills, seeing Bruce inspecting them. “She thinks I ought to move them to the farm. They do look out of place here. Sit where you like.”
He half sprawled on the davenport as one who, having dined to his satisfaction and being consequently on good terms with the world, wishes to set an example of informality to a guest. Bruce wondered what Mills did on evenings he spent alone in the big house; tried to visualize the domestic scene in the years of Mrs. Mills’s life.
“You see Shepherd occasionally?” Mills asked when the coffee had been served. “The boy hasn’t quite found himself yet. Young men these days have more problems to solve than we faced when I was your age. Everything is more complicated—society, politics, everything. Maybe it only seems so. Shep’s got a lot of ideas that seem wild to me. Can’t imagine where he gets them. Social reforms and all that. I sometimes think I made a mistake in putting him into business. He might have been happier in one of the professions—had an idea once he wanted to be a doctor, but I discouraged it. A mistake, perhaps.”
Mills’s manner of speaking of Shepherd was touched with a certain remoteness. He appeared to invite Bruce’s comment, not in a spirit of sudden intimacy, but as if he were talking with a man of his own years who was capable of understanding his perplexities. It seemed to Bruce in those few minutes that he had known Franklin Mills a very long time. He was finding it difficult to conceal his embarrassment under equivocal murmurs. But he pulled himself together to say cordially:
“Shepherd is a fine fellow, Mr. Mills. You can’t blame him for his idealism. There’s a lot of it in the air.”
“He was not cut out for business,” Mills remarked. “Business is a battle these days, and Shep isn’t a fighter.”
“Must the game be played in that spirit?” asked Bruce with a smile.
“Yes, if you want to get anywhere,” Mills replied grimly. “Shall we do some billiards?”
Mills took his billiards seriously. It was, Bruce could see, a pastime much to his host’s taste; it exercised his faculties of quick calculation and deft execution. Mills explained that he had employed a professional to teach him. He handled the cue with remarkable dexterity; it was a pleasure to watch the ease and grace of his playing. Several times, after a long run, he made a wild shot, unnecessarily it seemed, and out of keeping with his habitual even play. Bud Henderson had spoken of this peculiarity. Bruce wondered whether it was due to fatigue or to the intrusion upon Mills’s thoughts of some business matter that had caused a temporary break in the unity of eye and hand. Or it might have been due to some decision that had been crystallizing in his subconsciousness and manifested itself in this odd way. Mills was too good a player to make a fluke intentionally, merely to favor a less skillful opponent. He accepted his ill fortune philosophically. He was not a man to grow fretful or attempt to explain his errors.
“We’re not so badly matched,” he remarked when they finished and he had won by a narrow margin. “You play a good game.”
“You got the best there was in me!” said Bruce. “I rarely do as well as that.”
“Let’s rest and have a drink.” Mills pressed a button. “I’m just tired enough to want to sit awhile.”
Bruce had expected to leave when the game was ended, but Mills gave him no opportunity. He reestablished himself on the davenport and began talking more desultorily than before. For a time, indeed, Bruce carried the burden of the conversation. Some remark he let fall about the South caused Mills to ask him whether he had traveled much in America.
“I’ve walked over a lot of it,” Bruce replied. “That was after I came back from the little splurge overseas. Gave myself a personally conducted tour, so to speak. Met lots of real tramps. I stopped to work occasionally—learned something that way.”
Mills was at once interested. He began asking questions as to the living conditions of the people encountered in this adventure and the frame of mind of the laborers Bruce had encountered.
“You found the experience broadening, of course. It’s a pity more of us can’t learn of life by direct contact with the people.”
Under Mills’s questioning the whole thing seemed to Bruce more interesting than he had previously thought it. The real reason for his long tramp—the fact that he had taken to the road to adjust himself to his mother’s confession that he was the son of a man of whom he had never heard—would probably have given Mills a distinct shock.
“I wish I could have done that myself!” Mills kept saying.
Bruce was sorry that he had stumbled into the thing. Mills was sincerely curious; it was something of an event to hear first-hand of such an experience. His questions were well put and required careful answers. Bruce found himself anxious to appear well in Mills’s eyes. But Mills was leading toward something. He was commenting now on the opportunities open to young men of ability in the business world, with Bruce’s experiences as a text.
“A professional man is circumscribed. There’s a limit to his earning power. Most men in the professions haven’t the knack of making money. They’re usually unwise in the investments they make of their savings.”
“But they have the joy of their work,” Bruce replied quickly. “We can’t measure their success just by their income.”
“Oh, I grant you that! But many of the doors of prosperity and happiness are denied them.”
“But others are open! Think of the sense of service a physician must feel in helping and saving. And even a puttering architect who can’t create masterpieces has the fun of doing his small jobs well. He lives the life he wants to live. There are painters and musicians who know they can never reach the high places; but they live the life! They starve and are happy!”
Bruce bent forward eagerly, the enthusiasm bright in his eyes. He had not before addressed Mills with so much assurance. The man was a materialist; his standards were fixed in dollars. It was because he reckoned life in false terms that Shepherd was afraid of him.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me! I realize the diversity of talents that are handed out to us poor mortals. But if you were tempted to become a painter, say, and you knew you would never be better than second-rate, and at the same time you were pretty sure you could succeed in some business and live comfortably—travel, push into the big world currents and be a man of mark—what would you do?”
“Your question isn’t fair, because it’s not in the design of things for us to see very far ahead. But I’ll answer! If I had a real urge to paint I’d go to it and take my chance.”
“That’s a fine spirit, Storrs; and I believe you mean it. But——”
Mills rose and, thrusting his hands into his trousers’ pockets, walked across the room, his head bent, and then swung round, took the cigar from his lips and regarded the ash fixedly.
“Now,” he said, “don’t think me ungracious”—he smiled benignantly—“but I’m going to test you. I happen right now to know of several openings in financial and industrial concerns for just such a young man as you. They are places calling for clear judgment and executive talent such as I’d say you possess. The chances of getting on and up would be good, even if you had no capital. Would you care to consider these places?”
The smile had faded from his face; he waited gravely, with a scarcely perceptible eagerness in his eyes, for the answer.
“I think not, sir. No, Mr. Mills, I’m quite sure of it.” And then, thinking that his rejection of the offer was too abrupt and not sufficiently appreciative, Bruce added: “You see, I’m going to make a strong effort to get close to the top in my profession. I may fall off the ladder, but—I’ll catch somewhere! I have a little money—enough to tide me over bad times—and I know I’d be sorry if I quit right at the start. It’s kind of you to make the suggestion. I assure you I’m grateful—it’s certainly very kind of you!”
“Oh, I’m wholly selfish in suggesting it! In my various interests we have trouble finding young men of the best sort. I know nothing of your circumstances, of course; but I thought maybe a promising business opening would appeal to you. On the whole”—Mills was still standing, regarding Bruce fixedly as though trying to accommodate himself to some newly discovered quality in his guest—“I like to see a young man with confidence in his own powers. Yours is the spirit that wins. I hope you won’t take it amiss that I broached the matter. You have your engaging personality to blame for that!”
“I’m glad to know it isn’t a liability!” said Bruce; and this ended the discussion.
He left the house with his mind in confusion as to the meaning of Mills’s offer. He drove about for an hour, pondering it, reviewing the whole evening from the first mention of Laconia to the suggestion, with its plausible inadvertence, that business openings might be found for him. Mills was hardly the man to make such a proposition to a comparative stranger without reason. The very manner in which he had approached the subject was significant. Mills knew! If he didn’t know, at least his suspicions were strongly aroused. Either his conscience was troubling him and he wished to quiet it by a display of generosity, or he was anxious to establish an obligation that would reduce to the minimum the chance that any demand might be made upon him. Bruce was glad to be in a position to refuse Mills’s help; his mother’s care and self-denial had made it unnecessary for him to abase himself by accepting Mills’s bounty.
He wished he knew some way of making Mills understand that he was in no danger; that any fears of exposure he might entertain were groundless. His pride rose strong in him as he reviewed his hours spent with Mills. He had not acquitted himself badly; he had forced Mills to respect him, and this was a point worth establishing. When finally he fell asleep it was with satisfaction,—a comforting sense of his independence and complete self-mastery.