Duty was a large word in Franklin Mills’s lexicon. It pleased him to think that he met all his obligations as a parent and a citizen. In his own cogitations he was well satisfied with his handling of his son Shepherd. Shepherd had needed just the lesson he had given him in the matter of the sale of the Rogers Trust Company stock. Mills, not knowing that Bruce Storrs was responsible for Shepherd’s change of mind, was highly pleased that his son had expressed his entire satisfaction with his transfer from the battery plant to the new trust company.
The fact that Shepherd was now eager to begin his new work and evidently had forgotten all about the community house project increased Mills’s contentment with his own wisdom and his confidence in his ability to make things happen as he wanted them to happen. Shepherd was not so weak; he was merely foolish, and being foolish, it was lucky that he had a father capable of checking his silly tendencies. The world would soon be in a pretty mess if all the sons of rich men were to begin throwing their money to the birds. In the trust company Shepherd would learn to think in terms of money without the emotional disturbances caused by contact with the hands that produced it. Shepherd, Mills felt, would be all right now. Incidentally he had taught the young man not to attempt to play tricks on him—something which no one had ever tried with success.
The social promotion of the Hardens was proceeding smoothly, thanks to Connie’s cooperation. Mrs. Harden had been elected a member of the Orphan Asylum board, which in itself conferred a certain dignity. Leila and Connie had effected Millicent’s election to the Dramatic Club. These matters were accomplished without friction, as Mills liked to have things done. Someone discovered that Doctor Harden’s great-grandfather, back in the year of the big wind, had collected more bounties for wolf scalps than had ever been earned by any other settler in Jackson County, and the Doctor was thereupon admitted to fellowship in the Pioneer Society. The Hardens did not climb; they were pushed up the ladder, seemingly by unseen hands, somewhat to their own surprise and a little to their discomfiture.
The only cloud on Mills’s horizon was his apprehension as to Leila’s future. Mills was increasingly aware that she couldn’t be managed as he managed Shepherd. He had gone as far as he dared in letting Carroll know that he would be an acceptable son-in-law, and he had perhaps intimated a little too plainly to Leila the desirability of such an arrangement. Carroll visited the house frequently; but Leila snubbed him outrageously. When it pleased her to accept his attentions it was merely, Mills surmised, to allay suspicion as to her interest elsewhere. It was his duty to see that Leila married in keeping with her status as the daughter of the house of Mills.
In analyzing his duty with respect to Leila, it occurred to Mills that he might have been culpable in not laying more stress upon the merits of religion in the upbringing of Leila. She had gone to Sunday school in her earliest youth; but churchgoing was not to her taste. He was unable to remember when Leila had last attended church, but never voluntarily within his recollection. She needed, he decided, the sobering influence of religion. God, in Mills’s speculations, was on the side of order, law and respectability. The church frowned upon divorce; and Leila must be saved from the disgrace of marrying a divorced man. Leila needed religion, and the idea broadened in Mills’s mind until he saw that probably Constance and Shepherd, too, would be safer under the protecting arm of the church.
The Sunday following Christmas seemed to Mills a fitting time for renewing the family’s acquaintance with St. Barnabas. When he telephoned his invitation to Constance, carefully putting it in the form of a suggestion, he found his daughter-in-law wholly agreeable to the idea. She and Shepherd would be glad to breakfast with him and accompany him to divine worship. When he broached the matter to Leila she did not explode as he had expected. She took a cigarette from her mouth and expelled the smoke from her lungs.
“Sure, I’ll go with you, Dada,” she replied.
He had suggested nine as a conservative breakfast hour, but Constance and Shepherd were fifteen minutes late. Leila was considerably later, but appeared finally, after the maid had twice been dispatched to her room. Having danced late, she was still sleepy. At the table she insisted on scanning the society page of the morning newspaper. This annoyed Mills, particularly when in spreading out the sheet she upset her water glass, with resulting deplorable irrigation of the tablecloth and a splash upon Connie’s smart morning dress that might or might not prove permanently disfiguring. Mills hated a messy table. He also hated criticism of food. Leila’s complaint that the scalloped sweetbreads were too dry evoked the pertinent retort that if she hadn’t been late they wouldn’t have been spoiled.
“I guess that’ll hold me for a little while,” she said cheerfully. “I say, Dada, what do we get for going to church?”
“You’ll get what you need from Doctor Lindley,” Mills replied, frowning at the butler, who was stupidly oblivious of the fact that the flame under the percolator was threatening a general conflagration. Shepherd, in trying to clap on the extinguisher, burned his fingers and emitted a shrill cry of pain. All things considered, the breakfast was hardly conducive to spiritual uplift.
It was ten minutes after eleven when the Millses reached St. Barnabas and the party went down the aisle pursued by an usher to the chanting of the Venite, exultemus Domino. The usher, caught off guard, was guiltily conscious of having a few minutes before filled the Mills pew with strangers in accordance with the rule that reserved seats for their owners only until the processional. Mills, his silk hat on his arm, had not foreseen such a predicament. He paused in perplexity beside the ancestral pew in which five strangers were devoutly reinforcing the chanting of the choir, happily unaware that they were trespassers upon the property of Franklin Mills.
The courteous usher lifted his hand to indicate his mastery of the situation and guided the Mills party in front of the chancel to seats in the south transept. This maneuver had the effect of publishing to the congregation the fact that Franklin Mills, his son, daughter-in-law and daughter, were today breaking an abstinence from divine worship which regular attendants knew to have been prolonged.
Constance, Leila and Shepherd knelt at once; Mills remained standing. A lady behind him thrust a prayer book into his hand. In trying to find his glasses he dropped the book, which Leila, much diverted, recovered as she rose. This was annoying and added to Mills’s discomfiture at being planted in the front seat of the transept where the whole congregation could observe him at leisure.
However, by the time the proper psalms for the day had been read he had recovered his composure and listened attentively to Doctor Lindley’s sonorous reading of the lessons. His seat enabled him to contemplate the Mills memorial window in the north transept, a fact which mitigated his discomfort at being deprived of the Mills pew.
Leila stifled a yawn as the rector introduced as the preacher for the day a missionary bishop who had spent many years in the Orient. Mills had always been impatient of missionary work among peoples who, as he viewed the matter, were entitled to live their lives and worship their gods without interference by meddlesome foreigners. But the discourse appealed strongly to his practical sense. He saw in the schools and hospitals established by the church in China a splendid advertisement of American good will and enterprise. Such philanthropies were calculated to broaden the market for American trade. When Doctor Lindley announced that the offerings for the day would go to the visitor to assist in the building of a new hospital in his far-away diocese, Mills found a hundred dollar bill to lay on the plate.…
As they drove to Shepherd’s for dinner he good-naturedly combated Constance’s assertion that Confucius was as great a teacher as Christ. Leila said she’d like to adopt a Chinese baby; the Chinese babies in the movies were always so cute. Shepherd’s philanthropic nature had been deeply impressed by the idea of reducing human suffering through foreign missions. He announced that he would send the bishop a check.
“Well, I claim it was a good sermon,” said Leila. “That funny old bird talked a hundred berries out of Dada.”
When they reached the table, Mills reproved Leila for asserting that she guessed she was a Buddhist. She confessed under direct examination that she knew nothing about Buddhism but thought it might be worth taking up sometime.
“Millie says there’s nothing in the Bible so wonderful as the world itself,” Leila continued. “Millie has marvelous ideas. Talk about miracles—she says the grass and the sunrise are miracles.”
“Millie is such a dear,” Constance murmured in a tone that implied a lack of enthusiasm for grass and sunrises.
“Millicent has a poetic nature,” Mills remarked, finding himself self-conscious at the mention of Millicent. Millicent’s belief in a Supreme Power that controls the circling planets and guides the destinies of man was interesting because Millicent held it and talked of it charmingly.
“Did you see that outlandish hat Mrs. Charlie Felton was sporting?” Leila demanded with cheerful irrelevance. “I’ll say it’s some hat! She ought to hire a blind woman to buy her clothes.”
“I didn’t see anything the matter with her hat,” remarked Shepherd.
“You wouldn’t, dear!” said Constance.
“Who’s Charlie Felton?” asked Mills. “It seemed to me I didn’t know a dozen people in church this morning.”
“Oh, the Feltons have lately moved here from Racine, Fond du Lac or St. Louis—one of those queer Illinois towns.”
“Those towns may be queer,” said her father gently. “But they are not in Illinois.”
“Oh, well, give them to Kansas, then,” said Leila, who was never disturbed by her errors in geography or any other department of knowledge. “You know,” she continued, glad the conversation had been successfully diverted from religion, “that Freddy Thomas was in college with Charlie Felton and Freddy says Mrs. Felton isn’t as bad as her hats.”
Mills frowned. Shepherd laughed at this more joyously than the remark deserved and stammeringly tried to cover up the allusion to Thomas. It was sheer impudence for Leila to introduce into the Sunday table talk a name that could only irritate her father; but before Shepherd could make himself articulate Mills looked up from his salad.
“Freddy? I didn’t know you were so intimate with anyone of that name.”
This was not, of course, strictly true. Leila always referred to Thomas as Freddy; she found a mischievous delight in doing so before her father. Since she became aware of her father’s increasing displeasure at Thomas’s attentions and knew that the young man’s visits at the house were a source of irritation, she had been meeting Thomas at the homes of one or another of her friends whose discretion could be relied on, or at the public library or the Art Institute—it was a joke that Leila should have availed herself of these institutions for any purpose! Constance in giving her an admonitory prod under the table inadvertently brushed her father-in-law’s shin.
“I meant Mr. Frederick Thomas, Dada,” Leila replied, her gentle tone in itself a species of impudence.
“I hope you are about done with that fellow,” said Mills, frowning.
“Sure, Dada, I’m about through with him,” she replied with intentional equivocation.
“I should think you would be! I don’t like the idea of your name being associated with his!”
“Well, it isn’t, is it?”
Mills disliked being talked back to. His annoyance was increased by the fact that he had been unable to learn anything detrimental to Thomas beyond the fact that the man had been divorced. The decree of divorce, he had learned in Chicago, was granted to Thomas though his wife had brought the suit. While not rich, Thomas was well-to-do, and when it came to the question of age, Arthur Carroll was a trifle older. But Leila should marry Carroll. Carroll was ideally qualified to enter the family by reason of his familiarity with its history and traditional conservatism. He knew and respected the Franklin Mills habit of mind, and this in itself was an asset. Mills had no intention of being thwarted in his purpose to possess Carroll as a son-in-law....
Gloom settled over the table. Mills, deeply preoccupied, ate his dessert in silence. Leila presented a much more serious and pressing problem than foreign missions. Constance strove vainly to dispel the cloud. Leila alone seemed untroubled; she repeated a story that Bud Henderson had told her which was hardly an appropriate addendum for a missionary sermon. Her father rebuked her sternly. If there was anything that roused his ire it was a risqué story.
“One might think,” he said severely, “that you were brought up in a slum from the way you talk. The heathen are not all in China!”
“Well, it is a funny story,” Leila persisted. “I told it to Doctor Harden and he almost died laffin’. Doc certainly knows a joke. You’re not angry—not really, terribly angry at your ’ittle baby girl, is ’ou, Dada?”
“I most certainly am!” he retorted grimly. A moment later he added: “Well, let’s go to Deer Trail for supper. Connie, you and Shep are free for the evening, I hope?”
“We’ll be glad to go, of course,” Constance replied amiably.
The Sunday evening suppers at Deer Trail were usually discontinued after Christmas, and Leila was taken aback by the announcement. Her father had not, she noted, shown his usual courtesy in asking her if she cared to go. She correctly surmised that the proposed flight into the country was intended as a disciplinary measure for her benefit. She had promised to meet Thomas at the Burtons’ at eight o’clock, and he could hardly have hit upon anything better calculated to awaken resentment in her young breast. She began to consider the hazards of attempting to communicate with Thomas to explain her inability to keep the appointment. As there were to be no guests, the evening at Deer Trail promised to be an insufferably dull experience and she must dodge it if possible.
“Oh, don’t let’s do that!” she said. “It’s too cold, Dada. And the house is always drafty in the winter!”
“Drafty!” Her father stared at her blandly. The country house was steam-heated and this was the first time he had ever heard that it was drafty. The suggestion of drafts was altogether unfortunate. “Had you any engagement for this evening?” he asked.
“Oh, I promised Mrs. Torrence I’d go there for supper—she’s having some people in to do some music. It’s just an informal company, but I hate dropping out.”
Constance perceptibly shuddered.
“When did she give this invitation?” asked Mills, with the utmost urbanity.
“Oh, I met her downtown yesterday. It’s no great matter, Dada. If you’re making a point of it, I’ll be glad to go to the farm!”
“Mrs. Torrence must be a quick traveler,” her father replied, entirely at ease. “I met her myself yesterday morning. She was just leaving for Louisville and didn’t expect to be back until Tuesday.”
“How funny!” Leila ejaculated, though she had little confidence in her ability to give a humorous aspect to her plight. She bent her head in the laugh of self-derision which she had frequently employed in easing her way out of similar predicaments with her father. This time it merely provoked an ironic smile.
Mills, from the extension telephone in the living room, called Deer Trail to give warning of the approach of four guests for supper; there was no possible escape from this excursion. Thomas filled Leila’s thoughts. He had been insisting that they be married before the projected trip to Bermuda. The time was short and she was uncertain whether to take the step now or postpone it in the hope of winning her father’s consent in the intimate association of their travels.
Today Mills’s cigar seemed to be of interminable length. As he smoked he talked in the leisurely fashion he enjoyed after a satisfactory meal, and Constance never made the mistake of giving him poor food. He had caught Leila in a lie—a stupid, foolish lie; but no one would have guessed that it had impressed him disagreeably or opened a new train of suspicions in his mind. Constance was admiring his perfect self-restraint; Franklin Mills, no matter what else he might or might not be, was a thoroughbred.
“If you don’t have to stop at home, Leila, we can start from here,” he said—“at three o’clock.”
“Yes, Dada. I’m all set!” she replied.
Constance and Shepherd left the room and Leila was prepared for a sharp reprimand, but her father merely asked whether she had everything necessary for the Bermuda trip. He had his steamer reservation and they would go to New York a few days ahead of the sailing date to see the new plays and she could pick up any little things she needed.
“Arthur’s going East at the same time. We have some business errands in New York,” he continued in a matter of course tone.
She was aware that he had mentioned Carroll with special intention, and it added nothing to her peace of mind.
“That’s fine, Dada,” she said, reaching for a fresh cigarette. “Arthur can take me to some of the new dancing places. Arthur’s a good little hopper.”
She felt moved to try to gloss over her blunder in pretending to have an engagement that evening with Helen Torrence, but her intuitions warned her that the time was not fortunate for the practice of her familiar cajoleries upon her father. She realized that she had outgrown her knack of laughing herself out of her troubles; and she had never before been trapped so neatly. Like Shepherd, she felt that in dealing with her father she never knew what was in his mind until he laid his cards on the table—laid them down with the serenity of one who knows thoroughly the value of his hand.
She was deeply in love with Thomas and craved sympathy and help; but she felt quite as Shepherd always did, her father’s remoteness and the closing of the common avenues of communication between human beings. He had always indulged her, shown kindness even when he scolded and protested against her conduct; but she felt that his heart was as inaccessible as a safety box behind massive steel doors. On the drive to Deer Trail she took little part in the talk, to which Shepherd and Constance tried, with indifferent success, to impart a light and cheery tone. When they reached the country house, which derived a fresh picturesqueness from the snowy fields about it, Mills left them, driving on to the stables for a look at his horses.
“Well, that was some break!” exclaimed Constance the moment they were within doors. “Everybody in town knows Helen is away. You ought to have known it yourself! I never knew you to do anything so clumsy as that!”
“Oh, shoot! I didn’t want to come out here today. It’s a bore; nobody here and nothing to do. And I object to being punished like a child!”
“You needn’t have lied to your father; that was inexcusable,” said Constance. “If you’ve got to do such a thing, please don’t do it when I’m around!”
“See here, sis,” began Shepherd with a prolonged sibilant stutter, “let’s be frank about this! You know this thing of meeting Fred Thomas at other people’s houses is no good. You’ve got to stop it! Father would be terribly cut up if he found you out. You may be sure he suspects something now, after that foolish break about going to Helen Torrence’s.”
“Well, I haven’t said I was going to meet anyone, have I?” Leila demanded defiantly.
“You don’t have to. There are other people just as clever as you are,” Constance retorted, jerking off her gloves.
“I can’t imagine what you see in Thomas,” Shepherd persisted.
“I don’t care if you don’t. It’s my business what I see in him.” Leila nervously lighted a cigarette. “Freddy’s a fine fellow; father doesn’t know a thing against him!”
“If you marry him you’ll break father’s heart,” Shepherd declared solemnly.
“His heart!” repeated Leila with fine contempt. “You needn’t think he’s going to treat me as he treats you. I won’t stand for it! How about that clubhouse you wanted to build—how about this sudden idea of taking you out of the battery business and sticking you into the trust company? You didn’t want to change, did you? He didn’t ask you if you wanted to move, did he? I’ll say he didn’t! That’s dada all over—he doesn’t ask you; he tells you! And I’m not a child to be sent to bed whenever his majesty gets peevish.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Constance with a despairing sigh. “You’re going to make trouble for all of us if you don’t drop Freddy!”
“You tell me not to make trouble!”
Leila’s eyes flashed her scorn of the idea and something more. Her words had the effect of bringing a deep flush to Constance’s face. Constance walked to the fire and sat down. There was no counting on Leila’s discretion; and if she eloped with Thomas the town would hum with talk about the whole Mills family.
“Now, Leila,” began Shepherd, who had not noticed his wife’s perturbation or understood the nature of the spiteful little stab that caused it. “You’d better try to square yourself with father.”
“I see myself trying! You two make me tired! Please don’t talk to me any more!”
She waited until Constance and Shepherd had found reading matter and were settled before the fireplace, and then with the remark that she wanted to fix her hair, went upstairs; and after closing a door noisily to allay suspicions, went cautiously down the back stairs to the telephone in the butler’s pantry. Satisfying herself by a glance through the window that her father was still at the stables, she called Thomas’s number and explained her inability to go to the Burtons’ where they had planned to meet. Happy to hear his voice, she talked quite as freely as though speaking to him face to face, and his replies over the wire soothed and comforted her....
“No, dear; there’d only be a row if you asked father now. You’ll have to take my word for that, Freddy.”
“I’m not so sure of that—if he knows you love me!”
“Of course I love you, Freddy!”
“Then let us be married and end all this bother. You’re of age; there’s nothing to prevent us. I’d a lot rather have it out with your father now. I know I can convince him that I’m respectable and able to take care of you. I’ve got the record of the divorce case; there’s nothing in it I’m ashamed of.”
“That’s all right enough; but the very mention of it would make him furious. We’ve talked of this a hundred times, Freddy, and I’m not going to let you make that mistake. We’re going to wait a little longer!”
“You won’t go back on me?”
“Never, Freddy!”
“You might meet someone on the trip you’d like better. I’m going to be terribly nervous about you!”
“Then you don’t trust me! If you don’t trust me you don’t love me!”
“Don’t be so foolish. I’m mad about you. And I’m sick of all this sneaking round for a chance to see you!”
“Be sensible, dear; it’s just as hard for me as it is for you. And people are talking!”
In her absorption she had forgotten the importance of secrecy and the danger of being overheard. The swing doors had creaked several times, but she had attributed this to suction from an open window in the kitchen. Constance and Shepherd would wonder at her absence; the talk must not be prolonged.
“I’ve got to go!” she added hurriedly.
“Say you care—that you’re not just putting me off——”
“I love you, Freddy! Please be patient. Remember, I love you with all my heart! Yes, always!”
As she hung up the receiver she turned round to face her father. He had entered the house through the kitchen and might or might not have heard part of her dialogue with Thomas. But she was instantly aware that her last words, in the tense, lover-like tone in which she had spoken them, were enough to convict her.
“Hello, Dada! How’s the live stock?” she asked with poorly feigned carelessness as she hung the receiver on the hook.
Mills, his overcoat flung over his arm, his hat pushed back from his forehead, eyed her with a cold stare.
“Why are you telephoning here?” he demanded.
“No reasons. I didn’t want to disturb Connie and Shep. They’re reading in the living-room.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, I’m sure!”
“I thought so myself,” she replied, and took a step toward the dining-room door. He flung out his arm arrestingly.
“Just a moment, please!”
“Oh, hours—if you want them!”
“I overheard some of your speeches. To whom were you speaking—tell me the truth!”
“Don’t be so fierce about it! And do take off your hat! You look so funny with your hat stuck on the back of your head that way!”
“Never mind my hat! It will be much better for you not to trifle with me. Who was on the other end of that telephone?”
“What if I don’t tell you?” she demanded.
“I want an answer to my question! You told me one falsehood today; I don’t want to hear another!”
“Well, you won’t! I was talking to Mr. Frederick V. Thomas!”
“I thought as much. Now I’ve told you as plainly as I know how that you’ve got to drop that fellow. He’s a scoundrel to force his attentions on you. I haven’t wanted to bring matters to an issue with you about him. I’ve been patient with you—let him come to the house and go about with you. But you’ve not played fair with me. When I told you I didn’t like his coming to the house so much you began meeting him when you thought I wouldn’t know it—that’s a fact, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Dada—only a few times, though.”
“May I ask what you mean by that? That a girl brought up as you have been, with every advantage and indulgence, should be so basely ungrateful as to meet a man I disapprove of—meet him in ways that show you know you’re doing a wrong thing—is beyond my understanding. It’s contemptible; it’s close upon the unpardonable!”
“Then why don’t you act decently about it?” She lifted her head and met his gaze unwaveringly. “If you didn’t hear what I said I’ll tell you! I told him I love him; I’ve promised to marry him.”
“Well, you won’t marry him!” he exclaimed, his voice quavering in his effort to restrain his anger. “A man who’s left a wife somewhere and plays upon the sympathy of a credulous young girl like you is a contemptible hound!”
“All right, then! He’s a contemptible hound!”
Her insolence, her refusal to cower before him, increased his anger. His time-tried formula for meeting emergencies by superior strategy—the method that worked so well with his son—was of no use to him here. He had lost a point in letting her see that for once in his life his temper had got the better of him. He had been too tolerant of her faults; the bills for his indulgence were coming in now—a large sheaf of them. She must be handled with care—with very great caution, indeed; thus far in his life he had got what he wanted, and it was not for a girl whom he saw only as a spoiled child to circumvent him.
But he realized at this moment that Leila was no longer a child. She was not only a woman, but a woman it would be folly to attempt to drive or frighten. He was alarmed by the composure with which she waited for the further disclosure of his purposes, standing with her back against the service shelf, eyeing him half hostilely, half, he feared, with a hope that he would carry the matter further and open his guard for a thrust he was not prepared to parry. He was afraid of her, but she must not know that he was afraid.
He took off his hat and let it swing at arm’s length as he considered how to escape with dignity from the corner into which she had forced him. Sentiment is a natural refuge of the average man when other resources fail. He smiled benevolently, and with a quick lifting of the head remarked:
“This isn’t the way for us to talk to each other. We’ve always been the best of friends; nothing’s going to change that. I trust your good sense—I trust”—here his voice sank under the weight of emotion—“I trust your love for me—your love for your dear mother’s memory—to do nothing to grieve me, nothing that would hurt her.”
“Yes, Dada,” she said absently, not sure how far she could trust his mood. Then she walked up to him and drew her hand across his cheek and gave his tie a twitch. He drew his arm about her and kissed her forehead.
“Let this be between ourselves,” he said. “I’ll go around and come in the front way.”
She went up the back stairs and reappeared in the living-room, whistling. Constance and Shepherd were still reading before the fire where she had left them.
After supper—served at the dining-room table tonight—Leila was unwontedly silent, and the attempts of Constance and Shepherd to be gay were sadly deficient in spontaneity. Mills’s Sunday, which had begun with high hopes, had been bitterly disappointing. Though outwardly tranquil and unbending a little more than usual, his mind was elsewhere.
The happy life manifestly was not to be won merely by going to church. At the back of his mind, with all his agnosticism, he had entertained a superstitious belief that in Christianity there was some secret of happiness revealed to those who placed themselves receptively close to the throne of grace. This was evidently a mistake; or at least it was clear from the day’s experience that the boon was less easy of attainment than he had believed.
He recalled what the rector of St. Barnabas had said to him the morning he had gone in to inspect the Mills window—that walls do not make the church, that the true edifice is within man’s own breast. Lindley shouldn’t say things like that, to perplex the hearer, baffle him, create a disagreeable uneasiness! This hint of a God whose tabernacle is in every man’s heart was displeasing. Mills didn’t like the idea of carrying God around with him. To grant any such premise would be to open the way for doubts as to his omnipotence in his own world; and Franklin Mills was not ready for that. He groped for a deity who wouldn’t be a nuisance, like a disagreeable guest in the house, upsetting the whole establishment! God should be a convenience, subject to call like a doctor or a lawyer. But how could a man reach Lindley’s God, who wasn’t in the church at all, but within man himself?
In his pondering he came back to his own family. He didn’t know Shepherd; he didn’t know Leila. And this was all wrong. He knew Millicent Harden better than he knew either of his children.
He had friends who were good pals with their children, and he wondered how they managed it. Maybe it was the spirit of the age that was the trouble. It was a common habit to fix responsibility for all the disturbing moral and social phenomena of the time on the receding World War, or the greed for gain, or the diminished zeal for religion. This brought him again to God; uncomfortable—the reflection that thought in all its circling and tangential excursions does somehow land at that mysterious door.... Leila must be dealt with. She was much too facile in dissimulation. He was confident that no other Mills had ever been like that.
When they reached home he followed Leila into her room. He took the cigarette she offered him and sat down in the low rocking chair she pulled out for him—a befrilled feminine contrivance little to his taste. Utterly at a loss as to how he could most effectively reprimand her for her attempted deception and give her to understand that he would never countenance a marriage with Thomas, he was relieved when she took the initiative.
“I was naughty, Dada!” she said. “But Freddy was going over to the Burtons’ tonight and I had told him I’d be there—that’s all. I wasn’t just crazy about going to the farm.”
She held a match for him, extinguished it with a flourish, and after lighting her own cigarette dropped down on the chaise longue with a weary little sigh. If she had remained standing or had sat down properly in a chair, his rôle as the stern, aggrieved parent would have been simpler. Leila was so confoundedly difficult, so completely what he wished she was not!
“About this Thomas——” he began.
“Oh, pshaw! Don’t you bother a little tiny bit about him. I’m just teasing him along.”
“I must say your talk over the telephone sounded pretty serious to me!”
“Oh, bunk! All the girls talk to men that way these days—it doesn’t mean anything!”
“What’s that? You say the words you used don’t mean anything?”
“Not a thing, Dada. If you’d tell a man you didn’t love him he’d be sure to think you did!”
“A dangerous idea, I should think.”
“Oh, no! Everything’s different from what it was when you were young!”
“Yes; I’ve noticed that!” he replied drily. “But seriously, Leila, this meeting a man—a man we know little about—at other people’s houses won’t do! You ought to have more self-respect and dignity than that!”
“You’re making too much of it, Dada! It’s happened only two or three times. I thought you were sore about Freddy’s coming here so much, and I have met him other places—always perfectly proper places!”
“I should hope so!” he exclaimed with his first display of spirit. “But you can’t afford to go about with him. You’ve got to remember the community has a right to expect the best of you. You should think of your dear mother even if you don’t care for me!”
“Now, Dada!” She leveled her arm at him, the smoking cigarette in her slim fingers. “Don’t be silly; you know I adore you; I’ve always been perfectly crazy about you!”
She spoke in much the same tone she would have used in approving of a new suit of clothes he had submitted for inspection.
“Now, I have your promise——” he said, sitting up alertly in his chair.
“Promise, Dada?” she inquired, her thoughts far afield. “Oh, about Freddy! Well, if you’ll be happier I promise you now never to marry him. Frankly—frankly—I’m not going to marry anybody right away. When I get ready I’ll probably marry Arthur if some widow doesn’t snatch him first. But please don’t crowd me, Dada! If there is anything I hate it’s being crowded!”
“Nobody’s crowding you!” he said, feeling that she was once more eluding him.
“Then don’t push!” she laughed.
“Let’s not have any more nonsense,” he said. “I think you do a lot of things just to annoy me. It isn’t fair!”
“Why, Dada!” she exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I thought you liked being kidded. I kid all your old friends and it tickles ’em to death.”
“Go to bed!” he retorted, laughing in spite of himself.
She mussed his hair before kissing him good-night, but even as he turned away he could see that her thoughts were elsewhere.
Behind his own door, as he thought it over, the interview was about as unsatisfactory as an interview could be. She had kept it in her own hands, left him no opening for the eloquent appeal he had planned or the severe scolding she deserved. He wished he dared go back and put his arms about her and tell her how deeply he loved her. But he lacked the courage; she wouldn’t understand it. It was the cruelest of ironies that he dare not knock at his child’s door to tell her how precious she was to him.
That was the trouble—he didn’t know how to make her understand! As he paced the floor, he wondered whether anyone in all the world had ever loved him! Yes, there was Marian Storrs; and, again, the woman who had been his wife. Beyond question each had, in her own way, loved him; but both were gathered into the great company of the dead. That question, as to whether anyone had ever loved him, reversed itself: in the whole course of his life had he, Franklin Mills, ever unselfishly loved anyone? This was the most disagreeable question that had forced itself upon Franklin Mills’s attention in a long time. As he tried to go to sleep it took countless forms in the dark, till the room danced with interrogation marks.
He turned on the lights and got up. After moving about restlessly for a time he found himself staring at his reflection in the panel mirror in the bathroom door. It seemed to him that the shadow in the glass was not himself but the phantom of a man he had never known.