It was ten days later that a communication from the Laconia War Memorial Association gave warning that the stipulations for the contesting architects were being altered, and in another week Bruce received the supplemental data sent out to all the contestants. The amount to be expended had been increased by an unexpected addition to the private subscriptions.
In one of his first fits of homesickness Bruce had subscribed for the Laconia Examiner to keep in touch with affairs in his native town. The paper printed with a proud flourish the news of the augmentation of the fund. One hundred thousand dollars had been contributed through a New York trust company by “a citizen” whose identity for good and sufficient reasons was not to be disclosed. The trust company’s letter as quoted in the Examiner recited that the donation was from a “patriotic American who, recognizing the fine spirit in which Laconia had undertaken the memorial and the community’s desire that it should be an adequate testimony to the valor and sacrifice of American youth, considered it a high privilege to be permitted to assist.”
Mills! Though the Laconia newspaper was evidently wholly at sea as to the identity of the contributor, Bruce was satisfied that Mills was the unknown donor. And he resented it. The agreeable impression left by Mills the evening they discussed the plans was dispelled by this unwarranted interference. Bruce bitterly regretted having taken Mills into his confidence. Mills’s interest had pleased him, but he had never dreamed that the man might feel moved to add to the attractiveness of the contest by a secret contribution to the fund. He felt strongly moved to abandon the whole thing and but for the embarrassment of explaining himself to Freeman he would have done so. But the artist in him prevailed. Mills had greatly broadened the possibilities of the contest and in a few days Bruce fell to work with renewed enthusiasm.
He was living in Laconia again, so engrossed did he become in his work. He dined with Carroll now and then, enjoyed long evenings at the Freemans’ and kept touch with the Hendersons; but he refused so many invitations to the winter functions that Dale protested. He dropped into the Central States Trust Company now and then to observe Shep in his new rôle of vice-president. Shep was happier in the position than he had expected to be. Carroll was seeing to it that he had real work to do, work that was well within his powers. He had charge of the savings department and was pleased when his old friends among the employees of the battery plant looked him up and opened accounts. The friends of the Mills family, where they took note of Shep’s transfer at all, saw in it a promotion.
Bruce, specially importuned by telephone, went to one of Constance’s days at home, which drew a large attendance by reason of the promised presence of an English novelist whose recent severe criticism of American society and manners had made him the object of particular adoration to American women readers. Bud Henderson, who had carried a flask to the tea, went about protesting against the consideration shown the visitor. If, he said, an American writer criticized American women in any such fashion he would be lynched, but let an Englishman do it and women would steal the money out of their children’s banks to buy his books and lecture tickets. So spake Bud. If Bud had had two flasks he would have broken up the tea; restricted as he was, his protest against the Briton took the form of an utterly uncalled for attack upon the drama league delivered to an aunt of Maybelle’s who was president of the local society—a strong Volsteadian who thought Bud vulgar, which at times Bud, by any high social standard, indubitably was. However, if amid so many genuflections the eminent Briton was disturbed by Bud’s evil manners or criticisms, Bud possibly soothed his feelings by following him upstairs when the party was dispersing and demonstrating the manner in which American law is respected by drawing flasks from nine out of fifteen overcoats laid out on Constance’s guest room bed and pouring half a pint of excellent bourbon into the unresisting man of letters.
This function was only an interlude in the city’s rather arid social waste. The local society, Bruce found, was an affair of curiously close groupings. The women of the ancestral crowd were so wary of the women who had floated in on the tide of industrial expansion that one might have thought the newcomers were, in spite of their prosperity, afflicted with leprosy....
While Bruce might bury himself from the sight of others who had manifested a friendly interest in him, Helen Torrence was not so easily denied. She had no intention of going alone to the February play of the Dramatic Club. She telephoned Bruce to this effect and added that he must dine with her that evening and take her to the club. Bud had already sent him an admission card with a warning not to come if anything better offered, such as sitting up with a corpse—this being Bud’s manner of speaking of the organization whose politics he dominated and whose entertainments he would not have missed for a chance to dine with royalty.
Bruce, having reached the Torrence house, found Millicent there.
“You see what you get for being good!” cried Helen, noting the surprise and pleasure in Bruce’s face as he appeared in her drawing room.
“I thought you’d probably run when you saw me,” said Millicent. “You passed me at the post office door yesterday and looked straight over my head. I never felt so small in my life.”
“Post office?” Bruce repeated. “I haven’t been near the place for weeks!”
“That will do from you!” warned Helen. “We all thought you’d be a real addition to our sad social efforts here, but it’s evident you don’t like us. It’s very discouraging. You were at Connie’s, though, to hear her lion roar. I saw you across the room. Connie always gets the men! Your friend Bud insulted everybody there; I see him selling any more Plantagenets!”
“Bud’s patriotism leads him astray sometimes; that’s all. Any more scolding, Millicent?” Bruce asked. “Let me see—we had arrived at the stage of first names, hadn’t we?”
“Yes, Bruce! But after the long separation it might be as well to go back to the beginning. As for scolding, let’s consider that we’ve signed an armistice.”
“I don’t like the military lingo; it sounds as though there had been war between us.”
“Dear me!” Helen interposed mournfully. “You’re not going to spend the whole evening in preliminaries! Let’s go out to dinner.”
After they were seated Bruce was still rather more self-conscious than was comfortable. Nothing had happened; or more truthfully, nothing had happened except that he had been keeping away from Millicent because of Franklin Mills. She evidently was not displeased to see him again. He had not realized how greatly he had missed her till her voice touched chords that had vibrated at their first meeting. Her eyes had the same steady light and kindled responsively to any demand of mirth; her hair had the same glint of gold. He marveled anew at her poise and ease. Tonight her gown, of a delicate shade of crimson, seemed a subdued reflection of her bright coloring. He floundered badly in his attempts to bring some spirit to the conversation. It seemed stupid to ask Millicent about her music or inquire how her modeling was coming on or what she had been reading. He listened with forced attention while she and Helen compared notes on recent social affairs in which they had participated.
“Millie, you don’t really like going about—teas and that sort of thing,” said Helen. “I know you don’t. All you girls who have ideas are like that.”
“Ideas! Dearest Helen, are you as easily deceived as that! Sometimes there are things I’d rather do than go to parties! Does one really have to keep going to avoid seeming queer?”
“I go because I haven’t the brains to do anything else. I like wandering with the herd. It just thrills me to get into a big jam. And I suppose I show myself whenever I’m asked for fear I’ll be forgotten!”
“My sole test of a social function is whether they feed me standing or sitting,” said Bruce when appealed to. “I can bear anything but that hideous sensation that my plate is dripping.”
“That’s why men hate teas,” observed Helen. “It’s because of the silly refreshments no one wants and everybody must have or the hostess is broken-hearted.”
“That’s probably where jailers got the idea of forcible feeding,” Millicent suggested.
“At the Hendersons’,” Bruce added, “only the drinks are compulsory. Bud’s social symbol is the cocktail-shaker!”
“Everybody drinks too much;” said Helen, “except us. Bruce, help yourself to the sherry.”
“What is a perfect social occasion?” Bruce asked. “My own ideas are a little muddled, but you—Helen?”
“If you must know the truth—there is no such thing! However, you might ask Millicent; she’s an optimist.”
“A perfect time is sitting in the middle of the floor in my room cutting paper dolls,” Millicent answered. “I’m crazy about it. Leila says it’s the best thing I do.”
“Do you ever exhibit your creations?” asked Bruce solicitously.
“We’ve got her in a trap now,” exclaimed Helen. “Millie takes her paper dolls to the sick children in the hospitals. I know, because the children told me. I was at the City Hospital the other day and peeped into the children’s ward. Much excitement—a vast population of paper dolls dressed in the latest modes. The youngsters were so tickled! They said a beautiful lady had brought them—a most wonderful, beautiful lady. And she was going to come back with paper and scissors and show them just how they were made!”
“They’re such dear, patient little angels,” murmured Millicent. “You feel better about all humanity when you see how much courage there is in the world. It’s a pretty brave old world after all.”
“It’s the most amazing thing about life,” said Bruce, “that so many millions rise up every morning bent on doing their best. You’d think the whole human race would have given up the struggle long ago and jumped into the sea. But no! Poor boobs that we are, we go whistling right along. Frankly, I mean to hang on a couple of weeks longer. Silly old world—but—it has its good points.”
“Great applause!” exclaimed Helen, satisfied now that her little party was not to prove an utter failure. These were two interesting young people, she knew, and she was anxious to hear their views on matters about which she troubled herself more than most people suspected.
“I’ve wondered sometimes,” Millicent said, “what would happen if the world could be made altogether happy just once by a miracle of some kind, no heartache anywhere; no discomfort! How long would it last?”
“Only till some person among the millions wanted something another one had; that would start the old row over again,” Bruce answered.
“I see what you children mean,” said Helen seriously. “Selfishness is what makes the world unhappy!”
“Now—we’re getting in deep!” Bruce exclaimed. “Millicent always swims for the open water.”
“Millie ought to go about lecturing; telling people to be calm, to look more at the stars and less at their neighbors’ new automobiles. I believe that would do a lot of good,” said Helen.
“A splendid idea!” Bruce declared, laughing into Millicent’s eyes. “But what a sacrifice of herself! A wonderful exhibition of unselfishness, but——”
“I’d be stoned to death!”
“You’d be surer of martyrdom if you told them to love their neighbors as themselves,” said Helen. “Seriously now, that’s the hardest thing there is to do! Love my neighbor as myself! Me! Why, on one side my neighbor’s children snowball my windows; on the other side there’s a chimney that ruins me paying cleaner’s bills. Perhaps you’d speak to them for me, Millie?”
“See here!” exclaimed Millicent. “Where do you get this idea of using me as a missionary and policeman! I don’t feel any urge to reform the world! I’m awful busy tending to my own business.”
“Oh, all right,” said Bruce with a sigh of resignation. “Let the world go hang, then, if you won’t save it!”
Helen was dressing the salad, and Bruce was free to watch Millicent’s eyes as they filled with dreams. As at other times when some grave mood touched her, it seemed that she became another being, exploring some realm alien to common experience. He glanced at her hands, folded quietly on the edge of the table, and again at her dream-filled eyes. Hers was the repose of a nature schooled in serenity. The world might rage in fury about her, but amid the tempest her soul would remain unshaken....
Helen, to whom silence was always disturbing, looked up, but stifled an apology for the unconscionable time she was taking with the salad when she saw Millicent’s face, and Bruce’s intent, reverent gaze fixed upon the girl.
“Saving the world!” Millicent repeated deliberatingly. “I never quite like the idea. It rather suggests—doesn’t it?—that some new machinery or method must be devised for saving it. But the secret came into the world ever so long ago—it was the ideal of beauty. A Beautiful Being died that man might know the secret of happiness. It had to be that way or man would never have understood or remembered. It’s not His fault that his ideas have been so confused and obscured in the centuries that have passed since He came. It’s man’s fault. The very simplicity of His example has always bewildered man; it was too good to be true!”
“But, Millie,” said Helen with a little embarrassed laugh, “does the world really want to live as Jesus lived? Or would it admire people who did? Somebody said once that Christianity isn’t a failure because it’s never been tried. Will it ever be tried—does anyone care enough?”
“Dear me! What have I gotten into?” Millicent picked up her fork and glanced at them smilingly. “Bruce, don’t look so terribly solemn! Why, people are trying it every day, at least pecking at it a little. I’ve caught you at it lots of times! While we sit here, enjoying this quite wonderful salad, scores of people are doing things to make the world a better place to live in—safer, kinder and happier. I saw a child walk out of the hospital the other day who’d been carried in, a pitiful little cripple. It was a miracle; and if you’d seen the child’s delight and the look in the face of the doctor whose genius did the work, you’d have thought the secret of Jesus is making some headway!”
“And knowing the very charming young woman named Millicent who found that little crippled girl and took her to the hospital. I’d have thought a lot more things!”
“I never did it!” Millicent cried.
“She’s always up to such tricks!” Helen informed Bruce. “Paper dolls are only one item of Millie’s good works.”
“Be careful!” Millicent admonished. “I could tell some stories on you that might embarrass you terribly.” She turned to Bruce with a lifting of the brows that implied their hostess’s many shameless excursions in philanthropy.
“How grand it would be if we could all talk about serious things—life, religion and things like that—as Millie does,” remarked Helen. “Most people talk of religion as though it were something disgraceful.”
“Or they take the professional tone of the undertaker telling a late pallbearer where to sit,” Bruce added, “and the pallbearer is always deaf and insists on getting into the wrong place and sitting on someone’s hat.”
“How jolly! Anything to cheer up a funeral,” said Helen. “Go on, Millie, and talk some more. You’re a lot more comforting than Doctor Lindley.”
“The Doctor’s fine,” said Millicent spiritedly. “I don’t go to church because half of me is heathen, I suppose.” She paused as though a little startled by the confession. “There are things about churches—some of the hymns, the creed, the attempts to explain the Scriptures—that don’t need explaining—that rub me the wrong way. But it isn’t fair to criticize Doctor Lindley or any other minister who’s doing the best he can to help the world when the times are against him. No one has a harder job than a Christian minister of his training and traditions who really knows what’s the trouble with the world and the church but is in danger of being burned as a heretic if he says what he thinks.”
“People can’t believe any more, can they, what their grandfathers believed? It’s impossible—with science and everything,” suggested Helen vaguely.
“Why should they?” asked Millicent. “I liked to believe that God moves forward with the world. He has outgrown His own churches; it’s their misfortune that they don’t realize it. And Jesus, the Beautiful One, walks through the modern world weighted down with a heavier cross than the one he died on—bigotry, intolerance, hatred—what a cruel thing that men should hate one another in His name! I’ve wondered sometimes what Jesus must think of all the books that have been written to explain Him—mountains of books! Jesus is the only teacher the world ever had who got His whole story into one word—a universal word, an easy word to say, and the word that has inspired all the finest deeds of man. He rested His case on that, thinking that anything so simple would never be misunderstood. At the hospital one day I heard a mother say to her child, a pitiful little scrap who was doomed to die, ‘I love you so!’ and the wise, understanding little baby said, ‘Me know you do.’ I think that’s an answer to the charge that Christianity is passing out. It can’t, you see, because it’s founded on the one thing in the world that can never die.”
The room was very still. The maid, who had been arrested in the serving of the dinner by a gesture from Helen, furtively made the sign of the cross. The candle flames bent to some imperceptible stirring of the quiet air. Bruce experienced a sense of vastness, of the immeasurable horizons of Millicent’s God and a world through which the Beautiful One wandered still, symbolizing the ineffable word of His gospel that was not for one people, or one sect, not to be bound up into one creed, but written into the hearts of all men as their guide to happiness. It seemed to him that the girl’s words were part of some rite of purification that had cleansed and blessed the world.
“I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way,” said Bruce thoughtfully.
Helen was a wise woman and knew the perils of anticlimax. She turned and nodded to the maid.
“Please forgive me! I’ve been holding back the dinner!” Millicent exclaimed. “You must always stop me when I begin riding the clouds. Bruce, are you seeing Dale Freeman these days? Of course you are! Helen, we must study Dale more closely. She knows how to bring Bruce running!”
“I cheerfully yield to Dale in everything,” said Helen. “I must watch the time. They promise an unusually good show tonight—three one-act pieces and one of them by George Whitford; he and Connie are to act in it.”
“Connie ought to be a star,” Millicent remarked, “she gives a lot of time to theatricals.”
“There’s just a question whether Connie and George Whitford are not—well, getting up theatricals does make for intimacy!” said Helen. “I wish George had less money! An idle man—particularly a fascinating devil like George—is a dangerous playmate for a woman like Connie!”
“Oh, but Connie’s a dear!” exclaimed Millicent defensively. “Her position isn’t easy. A lot of the criticism you hear of her is unjust.”
“A lot of the criticism you hear of everybody is unjust,” Bruce ventured.
“Oh, we have a few people here who pass for respectable but start all the malicious gossip in town,” Helen observed. “They’re not all women, either! I suspect Mort Walters of spreading the story that Connie and George are having a big affair, and that Mr. Mills gave Connie a good combing about it before he went abroad!”
“Ridiculous!” murmured Millicent.
“Of course,” Helen went on. “We all know why Leila’s father dragged her away. But Connie ought really to have a care. It’s too bad Shep isn’t big enough to give Walters a thrashing. The trouble with Walters is that he tried to start a little affair with Connie himself and she turned him down cold. Pardon me, are we gossiping?”
“Of course not!” laughed Millicent.
“Just whetting our appetites for anything new that offers at the club,” said Bruce. “I’m glad I’m a new man in town; I can listen to all the scandal without being obliged to take sides.”
“Millie! You hate gossip,” said Helen, “so please talk about the saints so I won’t have a chance to chatter about the sinners.”
“Don’t worry,” said Bruce. “If there were no sinners the saints wouldn’t know how good they are!”
“We’d better quit on that,” said Helen. “It’s time to go!”
At the hall where the Dramatic Club’s entertainments were given they met Shepherd Mills, who confessed that he had been holding four seats in the hope that they’d have pity on him and not let him sit alone.
“I’ve hardly seen Connie for a week,” he said. “This thing of having a wife on the stage is certainly hard on the husband!”
The room was filled to capacity and there were many out of town guests, whom Shep named proudly as though their presence were attributable to the fact that Connie was on the program.
Whitford, in his ample leisure, had been putting new spirit into the club, and the first two of the one-act plays that constituted the bill disclosed new talent and were given with precision and finish. Chief interest, however, lay in the third item of the bill, a short poetic drama written by Whitford himself. The scene, revealed as the curtain rose, was of Whitford’s own designing—the battlements of a feudal castle, with a tower rising against a sweep of blue sky. The set transcended anything that the club had seen in its long history and was greeted with a quick outburst of applause. Whitford’s name passed over the room, it seemed, in a single admiring whisper. George was a genius; the town had never possessed anyone comparable to George Whitford, who distinguished himself alike in war and in the arts of peace and could afford to spend money with a free hand on amateur theatricals.
His piece, “The Beggar,” written in blank verse, was dated vaguely in the Middle Ages and the device was one of the oldest known to romance. A lord of high degree is experiencing the time-honored difficulty in persuading his daughter of the desirability of marriage with a noble young knight whose suit she has steadfastly scorned. The castle is threatened; the knight’s assistance is imperatively needed; and the arrival of messengers, the anxious concern of the servitors, induce at once an air of tensity.
In the fading afternoon light Constance Mills, as the princess, who has been wandering in the gardens, makes her entrance unconcernedly and greets her distracted lover with light-hearted indifference. She begins recounting a meeting with a beggar minstrel who has beguiled her with his music. She provokingly insists upon singing snatches of his songs to the irritated knight, who grows increasingly uneasy over the danger to the beleagured castle. As the princess exits the beggar appears and engages the knight in a colloquy, witty and good-humored on the vagrant’s part, but marked by the knight’s mounting anger. Whitford, handsome, jaunty, assured, even in his rags, with his shrewd retorts evokes continuous laughter.
A renewed alarm calls the knight away, leaving the beggar thrumming his lute. The princess reappears to the dimming of lights and the twinkle in the blue background of the first tremulous star. The beggar, who of course is the enemy prince in disguise, springs forward as she slips out of her cloak and stands forth in a flowing robe in shimmering white. Her interchange with the beggar passes swiftly from surprise, indifference, scorn, to awakened interest and encouragement.
No theatre was ever stilled to an intenser silence. The audacity of it, the folly of it! The pictorial beauty of the scene, any merit it possessed as drama, were lost in the fact that George Whitford was making love to Constance Mills. No make-believe could have simulated the passion of his wooing in the lines that he had written for himself, and no response could have been informed with more tenderness and charm than Constance brought to her part.
Whitford was declaiming:
“My flower! My light, my life! I offer thee
Not jingling coin, nor lands, nor palaces,
But yonder stars, and the young moon of spring,
And rosy dawns and purple twilights long;
All singing streams, and their great lord the sea—
With these I’d thee endow.”
And Constance, slowly lifting her head, an enthralling picture of young trusting love, replied:
“I am a beggar in my heart!
My soul hath need of thee! Teach me thy ways,
And make me partner in thy wanderings,
And lead me to the silver springs of song,
I would be free as thou art, roam the world,
Away from clanging war, by murmuring streams,
Through green cool woodlands sweet with peace and love....
Wilt thou be faithful, wilt thou love me long?”
To her tremulous pleading he pledged his fealty and when he had taken her into his arms and kissed her they exited slowly. As they passed from sight his voice was heard singing as the curtain fell.
The entire cast paraded in response to the vociferous and long continued applause, and Whitford and Constance bowed their acknowledgments together and singly. Cries of “author” detained Whitford for a speech, in which he chaffed himself and promised that in appreciation of their forbearance in allowing him to present so unworthy a trifle, which derived its only value from the intelligence and talent of his associates, he would never again tax their patience.
As the lights went up Bruce, turning to his companions, saw that Shepherd was staring at the stage as though the players were still visible. Helen, too, noticed the tense look in Shep’s face, and touched him lightly on the arm. He came to with a start and looked about quickly, as if conscious that his deep preoccupation had been observed.
“It was perfectly marvelous, Shep! Connie was never so beautiful, and she did her part wonderfully!”
“Yes; Connie was fine! They were all splendid!” Shep stammered.
“I’ve seen her in plays before, but nothing to match tonight,” said Helen. “You’ll share her congratulations—it’s a big night for the family!”
They had all risen, and Millicent and Bruce added their congratulations—Shep smiling but still a little dazed, his eyes showing that he was thinking back—trying to remember, in the way of one who has passed through an ordeal too swiftly for the memory fully to record it.
“Constance was perfectly adorable!” said Millicent sincerely.
“Yes, yes!” Shep exclaimed. “I had no idea, really. She has acting talent, hasn’t she?”
The question was not perfunctory; he was eager for their assurance that they had been watching a clever piece of acting.
The room was being cleared for the dancing, and others near by were expressing their admiration for his wife. Helen seized a moment to whisper to Bruce:
“It rather knocked him. Be careful that he doesn’t run away. George ought to be shot—Heaven knows there’s been enough talk already!”
“The only trouble is that they were a little too good, that’s all,” said Bruce. “That oughtn’t to be a sin—when you remember what amateur shows usually are!”
“It’s not to laugh!” Helen replied. “Shep’s terribly sensitive! He’s not so stupid but he saw that George was enjoying himself making love to Connie.”
“Well, who wouldn’t enjoy it!” Bruce answered.
The dancing had begun when Constance appeared on the floor. She had achieved a triumph and it may have been that she was just a little frightened now that it was over. As she held court near the stage, smilingly receiving congratulations, she waved to Shep across the crowd.
“Was I so very bad?” she asked Bruce. “I was terribly nervous for fear I’d forget my lines.”
“But you didn’t! It was the most enthralling half hour I ever spent. I’m proud to know you!”
“Thank you, Bruce. Do something for me. These people bore me; tell Shep to come and dance with me. Yes—with you afterwards.”
Whether it was kindness or contrition that prompted this request did not matter. It sufficed that Connie gave her first dance to Shep and that they glided over the floor with every appearance of blissful happiness. Whitford was passing about, paying particular attention to the mothers of debutantes, quite as unconcernedly as though he had not given the club its greatest thrill....
As this was Millicent’s first appearance since her election to the club, her sponsors were taking care that she met such of the members as had not previously been within her social range. Franklin Mills’s efforts to establish the Hardens had not been unavailing. Bruce, watching her as she danced with a succession of partners, heard an elderly army officer asking the name of the golden-haired girl who carried herself so superbly.
Bruce was waiting for his next dance with her and not greatly interested in what went on about him, when Dale Freeman accosted him.
“Just look at the girl! Seeing her dancing just like any other perfectly healthy young being, you’d never think she had so many wonderful things in her head and heart. Millie’s one of those people who think with their hearts as well as their brains. When you find that combination, sonny, you’ve got something!”
“Um—yes,” he assented glumly.
Dale looked up at him and laughed. “I’ll begin to suspect you’re in love with her now if you act like this!”
“The suspicion does me honor!” he replied.
“Oh, I’m not going to push you! I did have some idea of helping you, but I see it’s no use.”
“Really, none,” he answered soberly. And for a moment the old unhappiness clutched him....
At one o’clock he left the hall with Helen and Millicent.
“I suppose the tongues will wag for a while,” Helen sighed wearily. “But you’ve got to hand it to Constance and George! They certainly put on a good show!”
At the Harden’s Bruce took Millicent’s key and unlocked the door.
“I’ve enjoyed this; it’s been fine,” she said and put out her hand.
“It was a pretty full evening,” he replied. “But there’s a part of it I’ve stored away as better than the plays—even better than my dances with you!”
“I know!” she said. “Helen’s salad!”
“Oh, better even than that! The talk at the table—your talk! I must thank you for that!”
“Oh, please forget! I believe I’d rather you’d remember our last dance!”
She laughed light-heartedly and the door closed.
“They’ve done it now!” exclaimed Helen as the car rolled on. “Why will people be such fools! To think they had to go and let the whole town into the secret!”
“Cease worrying! If they’d really cared anything for each other they couldn’t have done it.”
“George would—it was just the dare-devil sort of thing that George Whitford would do!”
“Well, you’re not troubled about me any more!” he laughed. “A little while ago you thought Connie had designs on me! Has it got to be someone?”
“That’s exactly it! It’s got to be someone with Connie!”
But when he had left her and was driving on to his apartment it was of Millicent he thought, not of Constance and Whitford. It was astonishing how much freer he felt now that the Atlantic rolled between him and Franklin Mills.
Bruce, deeply engrossed in his work, was nevertheless aware that the performance of “The Beggar” had stimulated gossip about Constance Mills and Whitford. Helen Torrence continued to fret about it; Bud Henderson insisted on keeping Bruce apprised of it; Maybelle deplored and Dale Freeman pretended to ignore. The provincial mind must have exercise, and Bruce was both amused and disgusted as he found that the joint appearance of Constance and Whitford in Whitford’s one-act play had caused no little perturbation in minds that lacked nobler occupation or were incapable of any very serious thought about anything.
It had become a joke at the University Club that Bruce, who was looked upon as an industrious young man, gave so much time to Shepherd Mills. There was a doglike fidelity in Shep’s devotion that would have been amusing if it hadn’t been pathetic. Bud Henderson said that Shep trotted around after Bruce like a lame fox terrier that had attached itself to an Airedale for protection.
Shep, inspired perhaps by Bruce’s example, or to have an excuse for meeting him, had taken up handball. As the winter wore on this brought them together once or twice a week at the Athletic Club. One afternoon in March they had played their game and had their shower and were in the locker room dressing.
Two other men came in a few minutes later and, concealed by the lockers, began talking in low tones. Their voices rose until they were audible over half the room. Bruce began to hear names—first Whitford’s, then unmistakably Constance Mills was referred to. Shep raised his head as he caught his wife’s name. One of the voices was unmistakably that of Morton Walters, a young man with an unpleasant reputation as a gossip. Bruce dropped a shoe to warn the men that they were not alone in the room. But Walters continued, and in a moment a harsh laugh preluded the remark:
“Well, George takes his pleasure where he finds it. But if I were Shep Mills I certainly wouldn’t stand for it!”
Shep jumped up and started for the aisle, but Bruce stepped in front of him and walked round to where Walters and a friend Bruce didn’t know were standing before their lockers.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Walters, but may I remind you that this is a gentleman’s club?”
“Well, no; you may not!” Walters retorted hotly. He advanced toward Bruce, his eyes blazing wrathfully.
The men, half clothed, eyed each other for a moment.
“We don’t speak of women in this club as you’ve been doing,” said Bruce. “I’m merely asking you to be a little more careful.”
“Oh, you’re criticizing my manners, are you?” flared Walters.
“Yes; that’s what I’m doing. They’re offensive. My opinion of you is that you’re a contemptible blackguard!”
“Then that for your opinion!”
Walters sprang forward and dealt Bruce a ringing slap in the face. Instantly both had their fists up. Walters’s companion grasped him by the arm, begging him to be quiet, but he flung him off and moved toward Bruce aggressively.
They sparred for a moment warily; then Walters landed a blow on Bruce’s shoulder.
“So you’re Mrs. Mills’s champion, are you?” he sneered.
Intent upon the effect of his words, he dropped his guard. With lightning swiftness Bruce feinted, slapped his adversary squarely across the mouth and followed with a cracking blow on the jaw that sent him toppling over the bench. His fall made considerable noise, and the superintendent of the club came running in to learn the cause of the disturbance. Walters, quickly on his feet, was now struggling to shake off his friend. Several other men coming in stopped in the aisle and began chaffing Walters, thinking that he and Bruce were engaged in a playful scuffle. Walters, furious that his friend wouldn’t release him, began cursing loudly.
“Gentlemen, this won’t do!” the superintendent admonished. “We can’t have this here!”
“Mr. Walters,” said Bruce when Walters had been forced to sit down, “if you take my advice you’ll be much more careful of your speech. If you want my address you’ll find it in the office!”
He went back to Shep, who sat huddled on the bench by his locker, his face in his hands. He got up at once and they finished dressing in silence. Walters made no further sign, though he could be heard blustering to his companion while the superintendent hovered about to preserve the peace.
Shep’s limousine was waiting—he made a point of delivering Bruce wherever he might be going after their meetings at the club—and he got into it and sat silent until his house was reached. He hadn’t uttered a word; the life seemed to have gone out of him.
Bruce walked with him to the door and said “Good night, Shep,” as though nothing had happened. Shep rallied sufficiently to repeat the good-night, choking and stammering upon it. Bruce returned to the machine and bade the chauffeur take him home.
He did no work that night. Viewed from any angle, the episode was disagreeable. Walters would continue to talk—no doubt with increased viciousness. Bruce wasn’t sorry he had struck him, but as he thought it over he found that the only satisfaction he derived from the episode was a sense that it was for Shep that he had taken Walters to task. Poor Shep! Bruce wished that he did not so constantly think of Shep in commiserative phrases....
Bud Henderson, who was in the club when the row occurred, informed Bruce that the men who had been in the locker room were good fellows and that the story was not likely to spread. It was a pity, though, in Bud’s view, that the thing had to be smothered, for Walters had been entitled to a licking for some time and the occurrence would make Bruce the most popular man in town.
“If the poor boob had known how you used to train with that middle-weight champ in Boston during our bright college years he wouldn’t have slapped you! I’ll bet his jaw’s sore!”
Bruce was not consoled. He wished the world would behave itself; and in particular he wished that he was not so constantly, so inevitably, as it seemed, put into the position of aiding and defending the house of Mills.