Awake early, Bruce donned a freshly-pressed gray suit and went down to breakfast. His immediate concern was to find employment, for in work, he knew, lay his hope of happiness and peace. He had thrust into his pocket letters from architects who had employed him in various cities commending him as an excellent draughtsman; and he bore a letter certifying to his good character and trustworthiness from the president of the bank in his native town. He was not pressed by immediate need. His travels had been inexpensive; in fact, he had a little more than earned his way; and he had not only the fifty thousand dollars his mother had left invested in securities, but he carried drafts for the accumulated income—something over a thousand dollars—to tide him over any possible difficulties in finding an opening that promised well for the future. He had finished his breakfast, and lingered at the table, deep in thought, when a young man who had just entered the dining-room paused beside him.
“Is it or is it not Bruce Storrs?” he demanded. “I spotted you from the door—didn’t think there could be another such head and shoulders.”
“Bud Henderson!”
Storrs was on his feet, wringing the hand of the young man, who was regarding him with a pleased grin.
“You good old Indian! I was just about to go out and ask the nearest cop where to find you! You’re the only man in town I know!”
“Thanks for the compliment. You might have warned me of your approach. I’ll sit right here and eat while you unfold yourself.”
Henderson was short, lean and dark, with a curiously immobile face. His lips smiled oddly without any accompanying expression of humor in his rather small brown eyes. Without inquiring what had brought Storrs to town, he began talking of their years together at Boston, where they had been fellow students at the Tech. He had a dry, humorous way of saying things, particularly when he talked of himself, which puzzled strangers but delighted his friends. He was treating Storrs quite as though there had been no break in their intercourse.
“Met some of our old Boston pals during the recent unpleasantness and heard of you occasionally on the other side,” he was saying. “Frankly, I’m not keen about war”—he was composedly eating a melon—“war is fatiguing. I hope the great nations will behave for the rest of my life, so I won’t be annoyed by having to go out and settle the row.”
“Here too, Bud; I got enough. I want to have a try at the arts of peace.”
“So say we all. By the way, are you married yet?”
“No.”
“That’s bad. Marriage is an honorable estate; I’m rather keen about it. I took me a wife as soon as I got back from France. Oh, Lord, no! None of the girls we knew around Boston. Couldn’t afford them, and besides it’s a mistake not to marry in your home town, and it’s also easier when you’re a bloomin’ pauper. I married into one of the strongest wholesale grocery houses in all these parts. I’ll drive you by the warehouse, an impressive pile—one of the biggest concerns west of Pittsburgh. Maybelle is the name of the lucky girl, and Maybelle is the only child of the Conrad of Conrad, Buxton and Pettibone. A wonderful girl—one of the really strong, powerful women of this great nation. She’s out of town at present, playing a golf tournament for the huckleberry association championship. That’s why I’m chasing downtown for breakfast—cook’s on a vacation. You’ll meet Maybelle; she’s a person, that girl! Married me out of pity; thinks I’m half-witted, and right, at that!”
“Of course you’d have to marry a girl who’d make allowance for your mental infirmities,” Bruce replied. “Getting on in your profession, I suppose?”
“Hell, no! I chucked that. There are too many really capable electrical experts, and after Maybelle’s father had tried me for six months in the grocery and I failed to show any talent for distributing the well-known Verbena Brand of canned stuff, he set me up in the automobile business. Shameful to relate, I really make money. I handle the Plantagenet—one of the worst cars on the market. You know it was a mistake—my feeling that I was called to be another Edison or Marconi. I was really cut out for the literary life—another sad case of mute, inglorious Milton. I exercise my talents now designing ‘ads’ and come-on letters as a lure to customers for the Plantagenet. Would you ride with kings? The Plantagenet is the car that takes you out and brings you back. That’s my latest slogan; you’ll find it glaring at you all over the landscape.”
“Oh, what a fall, my countryman!”
“Not at all. You know I always had a knack of making phrases. It’s a gift, my boy. I suppose you’re here to figure on a new state-house or perhaps a hospital for lame cats. I know nearly everybody in town, so if I can be of use to you, just warble.”
“My aim isn’t so high,” said Bruce, who remembered Henderson as somewhat eccentric but the kindest of souls. His manner of talking was no indication of his true character. Bruce’s heart warmed to Henderson; already the town seemed less strange, and he at once disclosed his intention of establishing himself in the city, though without in the least surprising the imperturbable Bud.
“Welcome!” he exclaimed with his mouth full of toast. “You shall be our Michelangelo, our Sir Christopher Wren! I see, as in a dream,” he went on as he thrust his fork into a poached egg, “I see our fair city adorned with the noble fruits of the genius of Bruce Storrs, the prince of architects. You will require a fleet of Plantagenets to whirl you from one rising edifice to another. I might make you a special price on six cars—but this must be confidential.”
“I really want to get into a good office, and I’m not expecting to be taken right into the firm,” said Bruce, laughing. “It will take me a year or two to get acquainted, and then I’d like to set up for myself.”
“Certainly a worthy ambition, Bruce. It’s a good thing I’m here on the ground to give you the true dope on the people who count in this teeming village. The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and there’s danger of getting pinched between the old hard-boiled bunch and the birds of gayer plumage who flew in when no one was looking and insist on twittering sweetly on our tallest trees. Let me be your social booster; no one better fitted. I’m the only scion of one of our earliest and noblest families. My grandfather’s bank busted in seventy-three with a loud bang and I had an uncle who was indicted for embezzling public funds. He hid in Patagonia and died there in sinful splendor at a ripe old age. Talk about the aristocracy—I’m it! I derive a certain prestige among what you might call the paralytic group from the fact that my ancestors were mixed up in all the financial calamities that ever befell this town. But it’s the crowd that are the spenders—build the lordly palaces and treat the Eighteenth Amendment with the contempt it so richly deserves—that you want to train with. Your profession is cursed with specialization and I’d warn you against public work. Too much politics there for one of your fastidious nature. Our best man in domestic architecture is Freeman—he’s a Tech man, about seven years ahead of our class. He has a weakness for sun parlors with antique Italian fountains that are made for him special by a pottery right here in town. You’re sure to like Freeman; he’s a whist fiend, but otherwise he’s a decent chap. His wife and Maybelle are chums and we play around together a good deal.”
While listening to Henderson’s rambling talk Bruce had been turning over the pages of a memorandum book. He asked about several architects whose names he had noted. Henderson described them succinctly, praising or deriding them for reasons which struck Bruce as not necessarily final as to their merits.
“I don’t expect to land a job the first day,” said Bruce. “I may have to go through the list before I find what I want.”
“Oh, Freeman will take you on,” replied Henderson easily. “But he never does anything important without consulting his wife—one of his eccentricities. My own system is to go ahead and tell Maybelle afterward, being careful, of course, to conceal my mistakes.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” laughed Bruce. “I wish I could view the world as chipperly as you do.”
“My dear Bruce”—with his forefinger Henderson swept Storrs’s breakfast check to his own side of the table with a single gesture—“never try to view the whole world at one glance; it’s too damned big. All I see at present on this suffering, sinning planet is a Plantagenet runabout with Maybelle and me rolling through fields of asphodel. Everything else is superfluous. My fellow creatures simply don’t exist except as prospects for the Plantagenet.”
“Oh, rot! You’re the most unselfish biped I ever knew!”
“Superficially, yes; but it’s all on the surface. Let’s go out and plant our feet firmly upon the city.”
He led the way to his car and drove to the Plantagenet salesroom and garage. A young woman whom he introduced as Miss Ordway apparently ran the whole establishment. Henderson said that she did. He sat down at his desk and signed, without reading, a pile of letters which she had written the day before, talking to her meantime, not of business, but of a novel he had given her to read. Her attempts to interest him in the fact that one of the salesmen wanted his assistance in rounding up a certain difficult customer were provocative only of scornful comments, but when she handed him a memorandum of an appointment with the prospect at ten o’clock the next morning, he meekly thrust the paper into his pocket and said all right; he’d see what he could do. Miss Ordway was already busy with other matters; she seemed to make due allowance for her employer’s peculiarities.
“This girl’s mighty firm with me,” he said in a tone perfectly audible to Miss Ordway. “A cruel tyrant; but she really does get some work out of me.”
He sat on the edge of his desk as he talked over the extension telephone. Bruce inferred that he was speaking to Mrs. Freeman, and it was evident from his tone that Bud had not exaggerated in speaking of his intimacy with the architect and his wife.
“Maybelle’s pushing the pill somewhere and won’t be back for a week. This being Friday, I’d like to be invited to your shanty for the week-end.... Ah! That’s nice of you. And may I bring a little friend?... Oh, a man, of course! And list, Dale, he’s an architect—a Tech grad and everything pretty, and I want Bill to take him on—see? Nice boy and perishing for a job. You fix it for me—that’s the girl!... Oh! my friend isn’t fussy; we’ll both sleep on the grass.... What? Yes; I’ll bring some poison; my pet bootlegger broke through the entanglements yesterday.”
“All set,” he remarked as he hung up the receiver. “Mighty nice girl, Dale.”
Miss Ordway intercepted him on his way out to ask what she should do about a claim for damages to a car belonging to a man named Smythe, which had been scratched in the garage. The owner threatened to sue, and Miss Ordway expressed the belief that the valued patron was not bluffing.
“We took the stand it wasn’t done in our shop and we can’t weaken,” said Henderson. “Also, we don’t want a row. Were my eyes deceiving me or have I seen Smythe looking longingly at that blue touring car in our front window? Yes? Well, suppose we send Briggs to call on him, carrying the olive branch. Tell him to roll home in the blue car and we’ll take his old junk and seven hundred berries cash on the counter.”
“I think we could get eight hundred on the deal.” Miss Ordway’s tones were crisp and businesslike.
“Sold! I despise Smythe, but it’s worth a thousand to have him riding in a Plantagenet. I’ll look in again at five.”
Henderson spent the morning exhibiting the city’s industries and wound up at the University Club for luncheon.
“Now I’ll show you where the big frogs of our little puddle live,” he said as they started off again.
In his racy description of the owners of the houses they passed, their ancestry, the skeletons in their closets, their wealth and how it was attained, Henderson shone effulgently. Bruce, marveling that one head could carry so much local history, was almost equally astonished by the sins and foibles of the citizens as Henderson pictured them.
“Great Scott! Are there no perfectly normal people in this town?” he demanded.
“A few, maybe,” Henderson replied, lifting his hand from the wheel to stroke his chin. “But they’re not what you’d call conspicuous.”
Pausing before a handsome colonial house, the presence of an elderly gentleman calmly perusing a newspaper on the veranda, inspired Henderson to a typical excursion in biography. The owner, thinking visitors impended, pattered down the steps and stared belligerently at the car.
“Note the carpet slippers,” remarked Henderson as the gentleman, satisfied that his privacy was not to be invaded, returned to his chair. “Here we have Bill Fielding, one of the most delightful old scoundrels in town. Observe his pants—sleeps in ’em to avoid the fatigue of disrobing. To keep off evil spirits he wears the first nickel he ever earned on a string around his neck. He’s the smoothest tax-dodger in America. His wife starved to death and his three children moved to California to get as far away from the old skunk as possible. Why does he live in a house like that? Bless your simple soul, he took it on a mortgage and camps in two rooms while he waits for a buyer.”
“I don’t believe I’d like him! If you’ve got many such birds I’d better try another town,” laughed Bruce as Henderson started the car.
“Oh, don’t worry! He’s the last of his school. Now we’re approaching a different proposition—one that baffles even my acute analytical powers.”
He drew up before a handsome Georgian house that stood lengthwise to the street in a broad lot in which a dozen towering forest trees had been preserved when the land was subdivided. There were no frivolous lines in this residence, Bruce noted, surveying it with a professional eye; it was beyond criticism in its fidelity to type. The many windows were protected by awnings of deep orange and the ledges were adorned with boxes of flowers. The general effect was one of perfect order and uniformity. Bruce, with his interest in houses as an expression of the character of their owners whetted by Henderson’s slangy lectures before other establishments, turned expectantly to his friend.
“Wind up the machine and put on the record! That’s a sound piece of architecture, anyhow, and I can see that you are dying to turn out the skeletons.”
“Painful as it is for me to confess it, the truth is that in this case I can only present a few bald facts and leave you to make your own deductions.” Henderson lighted a fresh cigarette and drew a deep draught of smoke into his lungs. “Franklin Mills,” he said, and crossed his legs. “Mills is around fifty, maybe a shade more. The first of the tribe settled here in 1820 and Frank is the fourth of the name. The family always had money and this bird’s father never lost a cent in his life. Now Frank’s rich—nothing spectacular, but recognized as a rich man. His pop left him well fixed and he’s piled up considerable mazuma on his own hook. Does this interest you?”
“You always interest me, Bud; please proceed.”
“Well, you might call Franklin Mills the original man who couldn’t lose. No active business now, but he controls a couple of banks and a trust company without figuring in the picture at all, and he set his son up in a storage battery plant and is a silent factor in a dozen other flourishing contributors to the smoke nuisance. Nice chap, by the way, Shep Mills; pleasant little cuss. Franklin Mills isn’t one of the up-from-the-office-boy type nor the familiar variety of feverish business man; velvet glove stuff. Do you follow me? Only human touch I’ve discovered in this house is the billiard room, and Mills is a shark at the sport. I’ve poked the ivories with him now and then just for the fun of watching him play. His style of playing is a sort of clue to his character—cool, deliberate, never misses. One thing, though, I’ve never been able to figure out: once in a while he makes a wild shot, unnecessarily and with malice aforethought, as though to spite himself. If you’d tell Franklin Mills he’d lost his last cent he wouldn’t blink an eye, but before you got out of the room he’d have thought up a scheme for making it all back.”
“A business genius,” commented Bruce, who had missed no word of Henderson’s sketch. “I can’t say your snapshot’s very alluring.”
“Oh, I may be wrong! If you’d ask anybody else about him you’d hear that he’s a leading citizen and a cultivated gentleman, which he is! While of our city’s back-number or paralytic group, he’s far from being ripe for the mortician. One sees him around socially now and then—on occasions when our real nobility shake the moth balls from their dress suits. And that’s characteristic; he has the pride, you might say, of his long connection with the town. If it’s necessary for somebody to bunk a distinguished visitor, Frank Mills opens his door—not that he’s keen to get his name in the village sheet, but he likes for the town to make a good impression—sort of ‘I am a citizen of no mean city,’ like St. Paul or whoever the bird was that said it first. I doubt if the visitors enjoy his entertainments, but they’re probably used to being bored by the gloomy rich.”
“There are other children, perhaps? A house like that rather suggests a big family,” Bruce remarked.
“The size only indicates Frank’s pride. He’s given only two hostages to fortune. There’s Leila, the daughter. There must have been a naughty little devil in some of the Mills or Shepherd tribe away back yonder, for that girl certainly is a lively little filly. Shep, who is named for his mother’s people, never browsed in the wild-oat fields, but Leila makes up for it. Bounced from seven boarding schools—holds the champeen record there. Her mother passed hence when Leila was about fourteen, and various aunts took a hand in bringing the kid up, but all they got for their trouble was nervous prostration. Frank’s crazy about her—old stuff of doting father bullied by adorable daughter.”
“I think I get the picture,” said Bruce soberly as his thoughts caught up and played upon this summary of the history of Franklin Mills.
Glancing back at the house as Henderson drove away, Bruce was aware of the irony of his very presence in the town, sent there by the whim of a dying woman to be prepared to aid a man who in no imaginable circumstances could ever require any help it might be in his power to give. His mother had said that she had kept some track of Mills’s life; she could never have realized that he was so secure from any possibility of need. As Bruce thought of it, Henderson had not limned an attractive portrait. Only Mills’s devotion to the daughter, whom Henderson had described in terms that did not conceal his own admiration for the girl, brightened the picture.
“What can such a man do with his time in a town like this?” asked Bruce meditatively. “No active business, you say. Shooting billiards and cutting coupons hardly makes an exciting day.”
“Well,” Henderson replied, “I’ve seen him on the golf links—usually alone or with the club professional. Frank’s not one of these ha-ha boys who get together after the game with a few good sports and sneak a bottle of unlawful Scotch from the locker. Travels a bit; several times a year he beats it somewhere with Leila. Shep’s wife bores him, I think; and Shep’s not exciting; too damned nice. From all I can see, Leila’s her pop’s single big bet. Some say he’s diffident; others hold that he’s merely a selfish proposition. He’s missed a number of chances to marry again—some of the most dashing widows in our tall corn cities have made a play for him; but he follows G. Washington’s advice and keeps clear of entangling alliances.”
“Interesting personality,” said Bruce carelessly. But Mills had fixed himself in his mind—he had even fashioned a physical embodiment for the traits Henderson had described. On the whole, Bruce’s dominant feeling was one of relief and satisfaction. Franklin Mills was as remote from him as though they were creatures of different planets, separated by vast abysses of time and space.
In spite of Henderson’s sweeping declaration that he needn’t waste time calling on architects, that Freeman would take care of him, Bruce spent the next morning visiting the offices of the architects on his list. Several of these were out of town; the others received him amiably; one of them promised him some work a little later, but was rather vague about it. When he returned to the hotel at noon he found Henderson waiting for him. He had nothing to do, he declared, but to keep Bruce amused. Everything was a little incidental with Henderson, but he seemed to get what he wanted without effort, even buyers for the Plantagenet. Bruce related the results of his visits to the offices of the architects and Henderson pursed his lips and emitted a cluck of disapproval.
“Next time mind your Uncle Dudley. Bill Freeman’s the bird for you. You just leave every little thing to me. Now what else is troubling you?”
“Well, I want a place to live; not too expensive, but a few of the minor comforts.”
Two hours later Bruce was signing the lease for a small bachelor apartment that Henderson had found for him with, apparently, no effort. He had also persuaded some friends of his who lived across the street to give the young architect breakfast and provide a colored woman to keep his place in order.
Henderson’s acquaintance with his fellow citizens appeared to be unlimited. He took Bruce to the State House to call on the Governor—brought that official from a conference from which he emerged good-naturedly to shake hands and hear a new story. From this interruption of affairs of state Henderson convoyed Bruce to a barber shop in the midst of an office building where there was a venerable negro workman who told a story about a mule which Henderson said was the funniest story in the world. The trimming of a prominent citizen’s hair was somewhat delayed by the telling of the yarn, but he, like everyone else, seemed to be tolerant of Henderson’s idiosyncrasies; and the aged barber’s story was unquestionably a masterpiece. Henderson began telephoning acquaintances who had offices in the building to come forthwith to meet an old college friend. When two men actually appeared—one an investment broker and the other a middle-aged lawyer—Henderson organized a quartette and proceeded to “get harmony.” Neighboring tenants assembled, attracted by the unwonted sounds, and Henderson introduced Bruce to them as a new man in town who was entitled to the highest consideration.
“This is a sociable sort of village,” he said as they left the shop. “I could see you made a hit with those fellows. You’re bound to get on, my son.”
At noon on Saturday Henderson drove Bruce to the Freemans’, where with the utmost serenity he exercised all the rights of proprietorship. The house, of the Dutch Colonial type, was on the river in a five-acre tract. A real estate operator had given Freeman the site with the stipulation that he build himself a home to establish a social and artistic standard for the neighborhood.
“Don’t be afraid of these people,” remarked Henderson reassuringly. “Take your cue from me and act as though you had a deed for the house in your pocket. Bill’s a dreamy sort of cuss, but Dale’s a human dynamo. She looks fierce, but responds to kind treatment.”
Bruce never knew when Henderson was serious, and when a diminutive young lady ran downstairs whistling he assumed that he was about to be introduced to the daughter of the house.
“Dale, this is old Bruce Storrs, one of the meanest men out of jail. I know you’ll hate each other; that’s why I brought him. At the first sign of any flirtation between you two I’ll run you both through the meat chopper and take a high dive into the adjacent stream.”
Mrs. Freeman was absurdly small and slight, and the short skirt of her simple linen dress and her bobbed hair exaggerated her diminutive stature. Having gathered from Henderson an idea that Mrs. Freeman was an assertive masculine person, Bruce was taken aback as the little woman smiled up at him and shook hands.
“It really isn’t my fault that I broke in,” he protested. “It was this awful Henderson person who told me you’d be heart-broken if I didn’t come.”
“I should have been! He’d have come alone and bored me to death. How is every little thing, Bud?”
“Soaring!” mumbled Henderson, who had chosen a book from the rack on the table and, sprawling on a couch, became immediately absorbed in it.
“That’s the way Bud shows his noble breeding,” remarked Mrs. Freeman, “but he is an easy guest to entertain. I suppose you’re used to him?”
“Oh, we lived together for a couple of years! Nothing he does astonishes me.”
“Then I needn’t apologize for him. Bud’s an acquired taste, but once you know him, he’s highly diverting.”
“When I began rooming with him in Boston I thought he wasn’t all there, but finally decided he was at least three-quarters sane.”
“One thing’s certain; he’s mastered the art of not being bored, which is some accomplishment!” said Mrs. Freeman, as Henderson rose suddenly and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, whence proceeded presently a sound as of cracking ice.
Mrs. Freeman had something of Henderson’s air of taking things for granted, and she talked to Bruce quite as though he were an old friend. She spoke amusingly of the embarrassments of housekeeping in the new quarter; they were pioneers, she said, and as servants refused to bury themselves so far from the bright lights, she did most of her own housework, which was lots of fun when you had everything electric to play with. There was an old colored man who did chores and helped in the kitchen. She told several stories to illustrate his proneness to error and his ingenuity in excusing his mistakes.
“You’ve never lived here? Bud gave me that idea, but you never know when he’s telling the truth.”
“I never saw the town before, but I hope to stay.”
“It’s up to us to make you want to stay,” she said graciously.
She had settled herself in the largest chair in the room, sitting on one foot like a child. She smoked a cigarette as she talked, one arm thrown back of her head. She tactfully led Bruce to talk of himself and when he spoke of his year-long tramp her eyes narrowed as she gave him a more careful inspection.
“That sounds like a jolly lark. I want to know more about it, but we must wait for Bill. It’s the sort of thing he’d adore doing.”
Freeman appeared a moment later. He had been cleaning up after a morning’s work in the garden. He was thirty-five, short and burly, with a thick shock of unruly chestnut hair over which he passed his hand frequently, smoothing it only to ruffle it again. He greeted Bruce cordially and began talking of the Tech and men he assumed Bruce might have known there. He produced pipe and tobacco from the pockets of his white flannel trousers and smoked fitfully. Mrs. Freeman answered the telephone several times and reappeared to report the messages. One had to do with changes in a house already under construction. Freeman began explaining to his wife the impossibility of meeting the client’s wishes; the matter had been definitely settled before the letting of the contract and it would be expensive to alter the plans now. He appealed to Bruce for support; people might be sane about everything else in the world, but they became maddeningly unreasonable when they began building houses.
“Oh, you’d better fix it for them, Bill,” advised Mrs. Freeman quietly. “They pay the bills; and I’m not sure but you were wrong in holding out against them in the first place.”
“Oh, well, if you say so, Dale!” and Freeman resumed his talk.
Henderson reappeared wearing an apron and bearing a tray with a cocktail-shaker and four glasses.
“Don’t flinch, Bill,” he said; “it’s my gin. You pay for the oranges. I say, Dale, I told Tuck to peel some potatoes. And you wanted those chops for lunch, didn’t you? There’s nothing else in the icebox and I told Tuck to put ’em on.”
“He’ll probably ruin them,” said Mrs. Freeman. “Excuse me, Mr. Storrs, while I get some work out of Bud.”
It was some time before Bruce got accustomed to Freeman’s oddities. He was constantly moving about with a quick, catlike step; or, if he sat down, his hands were never quiet. But he talked well, proved himself a good listener, and expressed approval by slapping his knee when Bruce made some remark that squared with his own views. He was pleased in a frank, boyish way when Bruce praised some of his houses which Henderson had pointed out.
“Yes; clients didn’t bother me; I had my own way in those cases. I’ve got some plans under way now that I want to show you. Dale said you were thinking of starting in here. Well, I need some help right away. My assistant is leaving me—going to Seattle. Suppose you drop in Monday. We might be able to fix up something.”
There was tennis in the afternoon and in the evening visitors began to drop in—chiefly young married people of the Freemans’ circle. Some of these were of well-to-do families and others, Henderson explained to Bruce, were not rich but “right.” The talk was lively and pitched in that chaffing key which is possible only among people who are intimately acquainted. This was Dale Freeman’s salon, Henderson explained. Any Saturday or Sunday evening you were likely to meet people who had something worth while to offer.
He drew Bruce from one group to another, praising or abusing him with equal extravagance. He assured everyone that it was a great honor to meet a man destined, as he declared Bruce to be, to cut a big figure in the future of the town. He never backed a dead one, he reminded them. Bruce was the dearest friend he had in the world, and, he would ruefully add, probably the only one. It was for this reason that he had urged the young architect to establish himself in the city—a city that sorely needed men of Bruce’s splendid character and lofty ideals.
A number of the guests had gone when late in the evening the depleted company was reinforced by the arrival of Shepherd Mills and his wife.
“Shep and the Shepherdess!” Henderson cheerfully announced as he ushered them in.
Mrs. Mills extended her hand with a gracious smile as Bruce was presented. She was tall and fair and moved with a lazy sort of grace. She spoke in a low, murmurous tone little broken by inflections. Bruce noted that she was dressed rather more smartly than the other women present. It seemed to him that the atmosphere of the room changed perceptibly on her appearance; or it might have been merely that everyone paused a minute to inspect her or to hear what she had to say. Bruce surmised from the self-conscious look in her handsome gray eyes as she crossed the room that she enjoyed being the center of attention.
“Shep just would spend the day motoring to some queer place,” she was saying, “where a lot of people were killed by the Indians ages ago. Most depressing! Ruined the day for me! He’s going to set up a monument or something to mark the painful affair.”
Shepherd Mills greeted Bruce in the quick, eager fashion of a diffident person anxious to appear cordial but not sure that his good intentions will be understood, and suggested that they sit down. He was not so tall as his wife; his face was long and rather delicate. His slight reddish mustache seemed out of place on his lip; it did not quite succeed in giving him a masculine air. His speech was marked by odd, abrupt pauses, as though he were trying to hide a stammer; or it might have been that he was merely waiting to note the effect of what he was saying upon the hearer. He drew out a case and offered Bruce a cigarette, lighted one himself, smoking as though it were part of a required social routine to which he conformed perforce but did not relish particularly.
There was to be a tennis tournament at the country club the coming week and he mentioned this tentatively and was embarrassed to find that Bruce knew nothing about it.
“Oh, I’m always forgetting that everyone doesn’t live here!” he laughed apologetically. “A little weakness of the provincial mind! I suppose we’re horribly provincial out here. Do we strike you that way, Mr. Storrs?”
One might have surmised from his tone that he was used to having his serious questions ignored or answered flippantly, but hoped that the stranger would meet him on his own ground.
“Oh, there isn’t any such thing as provincialism any more, is there?” asked Bruce amiably. “I haven’t sniffed anything of the sort in your city: you seem very metropolitan. The fact is, I’m a good deal of a hick myself!”
Mills laughed with more fervor than the remark justified. Evidently satisfied of the intelligence and good nature of the Freemans’ guest, he began to discuss the effect upon industry of a pending coal strike.
His hand went frequently to his mustache as he talked and the leg that he swung over his knee waggled nervously. He plunged into a discussion of labor, mentioning foreign market conditions and citing figures from trade journals showing the losses to both capital and labor caused by the frequent disturbances in the industrial world. He expressed opinions tentatively, a little apologetically, and withdrew them quickly when they were questioned. Bruce, having tramped through one of the coal fields where a strike was in progress, described the conditions as he had observed them. Mills expressed the greatest interest; the frown deepened on his face as he listened.
“That’s bad; things shouldn’t be that way,” he said. “The truth of the matter is that we haven’t mastered the handling of business. It’s stupendous; we’ve outgrown the old methods. We forget the vast territory we have to handle and the numbers of men it’s necessary to keep in touch with. When my Grandfather Mills set up as a manufacturer here he had fifty men working for him, and he knew them all—knew their families, circumstances, everything. Now I have six hundred in my battery plant and don’t know fifty of them! But I’d like to know them all; I feel that it’s my duty to know them.”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently when Henderson’s sharp little laugh at the other end of the room broke in discordantly upon Bruce’s sympathetic reply to this.
“Bud, how silly you are!” they heard Mrs. Mills saying. “But I don’t know what we’d do without you. You do cheer things up a bit now and then!”
Mrs. Freeman effected a redistribution of the guests that brought Mrs. Mills and Bruce together.
“Shep, you mustn’t monopolize Mr. Storrs. Give Connie a chance. Mr. Storrs is an ideal subject for you, Connie. Take him out on the terrace and put him through all your degrees.” And then to Bruce: “Mrs. Mills is not only our leading vamp but a terrible highbrow—reads all the queer stuff!”
Shepherd Mills was not wholly successful in concealing his displeasure in thus being deprived of Bruce’s company. And noting this, Bruce put out his hand, saying:
“That’s a deep subject; we shall have to tackle it again. Please don’t forget that we’ve left it in the air and give me another chance.”
“My husband really wants so much to save the human race,” remarked Mrs. Mills as she stepped out on the tiled flooring of a broad terrace where there were rugs and comfortable places to sit. There was moonlight and the great phalanx of stars marched across the clear heavens; below flowed the river. She seated herself on a couch, suffered him to adjust a pillow at her back and indicated that he was to sit beside her.
“I’m really done up by our all-day motor trip, but my husband insisted on dropping in here. The Freemans are a great resource to all of us. You’re always likely to find someone new and interesting here. Dale Freeman has a genius for picking up just the right sort of people and she’s generous about letting her friends know them. Are you and the Freemans old friends?”
“Oh, not at all! Bud Henderson’s my only friend here. He vouched for me to the Freemans.”
“Oh, Bud! He’s such a delightful rascal. You don’t mind my calling him that? I shouldn’t if I weren’t so fond of him. He’s absolutely necessary to our social existence. We’d stagnate without him.”
“Bud was always a master hand at stirring things up. His methods are a little peculiar at times, but he does get results.”
“There’s no question but that he’s a warm admirer of yours.”
“That’s because he’s forgotten about me! He hadn’t seen me for five years.”
“I think possibly I can understand that one wouldn’t exactly forget you, Mr. Storrs.”
She let the words fall carelessly, as though to minimize their daring in case they were not wholly acceptable to her auditor. The point was not lost upon him. He was not without his experience in the gentle art of flirtation, and her technic was familiar. There was always, however, the possibility of variations in the ancient game, and he hoped that Mrs. Shepherd Mills was blessed with originality.
“There’s a good deal of me to forget; I’m six feet two!”
“Well, of course I wasn’t referring altogether to your size,” she said with her murmurous little laugh. “I adore big men, and I suppose that’s why I married a small one. Isn’t’ it deliciously funny how contrary we are when it comes to the important affairs of our lives! I suppose it’s just because we’re poor, weak humans. We haven’t the courage of our prejudices.”
“I’d never thought of that,” Bruce replied. “But it is an interesting idea. I suppose we’re none of us free agents. It’s not in the great design of things that we shall walk a chalk line. If we all did, it would probably be a very stupid world.”
“I’m glad you feel that way about it. For a long time half the world tried to make conformists of the other half; nowadays not more than a third are trying to keep the rest on the chalk line—and that third’s skidding! People think me dreadfully heretical about everything. But—I’m not, really! Tell me you don’t think me terribly wild and untamed.”
“I think,” said Bruce, feeling that here was a cue he mustn’t miss, “I think you are very charming. If it’s your ideas that make you so, I certainly refuse to quarrel with them.”
“How beautifully you came up on that! Something tells me that I’m not going to be disappointed in you. I have a vague sort of idea that we’re going to understand each other.”
“You do me great honor! It will be a grief to me if we don’t.”
“It’s odd how instantly we recognize the signals when someone really worth while swims into our ken,” she said pensively. “Dear old Nature looks after that! Bud intimated that you’re to be one of us; throw in your lot with those of us who struggle along in this rather nice, comfortable town. If you enjoy grandeur in social things, you’ll not find much here to interest you; but if just nice little companies and a few friends are enough, you can probably keep amused.”
“If the Freemans’ friends are specimens and there’s much of this sort of thing”—he waved his hand toward the company within—“I certainly shall have nothing to complain of.”
“We must see you at our house. I haven’t quite Dale’s knack of attracting people”—she paused a moment upon this note of humility—“but I try to bring a few worth while people together. I’ve educated a few men to drop in for tea on Thursdays with usually a few of my pals among the young matrons and a girl or two. If you feel moved——”
“I hope you’re not trifling with me,” said Bruce, “for I shall certainly come.”
“Then that’s all settled. Don’t pay any attention to what Bud says about me. To hear him talk you might think me a man-eater. My husband’s the dearest thing! He doesn’t mind at all my having men in for tea. He comes himself now and then when his business doesn’t interfere. Dear Shep! He’s a slave to business, and he’s always at work on some philanthropic scheme. I just talk about helping the world; but he, poor dear, really tries to do something.”
Henderson appeared presently with a dark hint that Shepherd was peeved by their long absence and that the company was breaking up.
“Connie never plays all her cards the first time, Bruce; you must give her another chance.”
“Oh, Mr. Storrs has promised me a thousand chances!” said Mrs. Mills.