BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON

THE HOPE OF HAPPINESS
BEST LAID SCHEMES
THE MAN IN THE STREET
BLACKSHEEP! BLACKSHEEP!
LADY LARKSPUR
THE MADNESS OF MAY
THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

THE HOPE OF HAPPINESS

THE
HOPE OF HAPPINESS

BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1923

Copyright, 1923, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Copyright, 1923, by THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE CO.
Printed in the United States of America
Published October, 1923

TO
FRANK SCOTT COREY WICKS

“Only themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves,

As Souls only understand Souls.”

THE HOPE OF HAPPINESS

THE HOPE OF HAPPINESS

CHAPTER ONE

I

Bruce Storrs stood up tall and straight on a prostrate sycamore, the sunlight gleaming upon his lithe, vigorous body, and with a quick, assured lifting of the arms plunged into the cool depths of the river. He rose and swam with long, confident strokes the length of a pool formed by the curving banks and returned to the log, climbing up with the same ease and grace that marked his swimming. He dashed the water from his eyes and pressed his deeply-tanned hands over his shapely head. It was evident that he was the fortunate inheritor of clean blood in a perfectly fashioned body; that he had used himself well in his twenty-eight years and that he found satisfaction and pride in his health and strength. He surveyed the narrow valley through which the river idled and eddied before rushing into the broader channel beyond—surveyed it with something of the air of a discoverer who has found and appropriated to his own uses a new corner of the world.

It was a good place to be at the end of a day that was typical of late August in the corn belt, a day of intense dry heat with faint intimations on the horizon of the approach of autumn. With a contented sigh he sat down on the log, his feet drawn up, his shoulders bent, and aimlessly tore bits of bark from the log and tossed them into the water. Lulled by the lazy ripple, he yielded himself to reverie and his eyes filled with dreams as he stared unseeingly across the stream. Suddenly he raised his head resolutely as if his thoughts had returned to the world of the actual and he had reached a conclusion of high importance. He plunged again and now his short, rapid strokes threshed the water into foam. One might have thought that in the assertion of his physical strength he was testing and reassuring himself of his complete self-mastery.

Refreshed and invigorated, he clambered up the bank and sought a great beech by whose pillar-like trunk he had left his belongings, and proceeded to dress. From a flat canvas bag he produced a towel and a variety of toilet articles. He combed his thick curly hair, donned a flannel shirt and knotted a blue scarf under its soft collar. His shoes of brogan type bore the imprint of a metropolitan maker and his gray knickerbockers and jacket indicated a capable tailor.

He took from the bag a package of letters addressed in a woman’s hand to Bruce Storrs, and making himself comfortable with his back to the tree, he began to read. The letters had been subjected to many readings, as their worn appearance testified, but selecting the bulkiest, he perused it carefully, as though wishing to make sure that its phrases were firmly fixed in his memory.

“... Since my talk with you,” he read, “I have had less pain, but the improvement is only temporary—the doctors do not deceive me as to that. I may go quickly—any day, any hour. You heard my story the other night—generously, with a fine tolerance, as I knew you would. If I had not been so satisfied of your sense of justice and so sure of your love, I could never have told you. But from the hour I knew that my life was nearing its end I felt more and more that you must know. One or two things I’m afraid I didn’t make clear ... that I loved the man who is your father. Love alone could be my justification—without that I could never have lived through these years.

“The man you have called father never suspected the truth. He trusted me. It has been part of my punishment that through all these years I have had to endure the constant manifestations of his love and confidence. But for that one lapse in the second year of my marriage, I was absolutely faithful in all my obligations to him. And he was kind to you and proud of you. He did all for you that a father could, never dreaming that you were not his own. It was one of my sorrows that I couldn’t give him a child of his own. Things went badly with him in his last years, as you know, and what I leave to you—it will be about fifty thousand dollars—I inherited from my father, and it will help you find your place in the world.

“Your father has no idea of your existence.... Ours was a midsummer madness, at a time when we were both young. I only knew him a little while, and I have never heard from him. My love for him never wholly died. Please, dear, don’t think harshly of me, but there have been times when I would have given my life for a sight of him. After all you are his—his as much as mine. You came to me from him—strangely dear and beautiful. In my mind you have always been his, and I loved you the dearer. I loved him, but I could not bring myself to leave the man you have called father for him. He was not the kind of man women run away with....

“When I’m gone I want you to put yourself near him—learn to know him, if that should be possible. I am trusting you. You would never, I know, do him an injury. Some day he may need you. Remember, he does not know—it may be he need never know. But oh, be kind to him....”

He stared at the words. Had it been one of those unaccountable affairs—he had heard of such—where a gently reared woman falls prey to a coarse-fibered man in every way her inferior? The man might be common, low, ignorant and cruel. Bruce had been proud of his ancestry. The Storrs were of old American stock, and his mother’s family, the Bruces, had been the foremost people in their county for nearly a century. He had taken a pardonable pride in his background.... That night when he had stumbled out of the house after hearing his mother’s confession he had felt the old friendly world recede. The letters, sealed and entrusted to the family physician for delivery at her death, merely repeated what she had told him.

In his constant rereadings he had hoped that one day he would find that he had misinterpreted the message. He might dismiss his mother’s story as the fabrication of a sick woman’s mind. But today he knew the folly of this; the disclosure took its place in his mind among the unalterable facts of his life. At first he had thought of destroying himself; but he was too sane and the hope of life was too strong for such a solution of his problem. And there had been offers—flattering ones—to go to New York and Boston. He convinced himself that his mother could not seriously have meant to limit the range of his opportunities by sending him to the city where his unknown father lived. But he was resolved not to shirk; he would do her bidding. There was a strain of superstition in him: he might invite misfortune by disregarding her plea; and moreover he had the pride and courage of youth. No one knew, no one need ever know! He had escaped from the feeling, at first poignant, that shame attached to him; that he must slink through life under the eyes of a scornful world. No; he had mastered that; his pride rallied; he felt equal to any demand fate might make upon him; he was resolved to set his goal high....

Life had been very pleasant in Laconia, the Ohio town where John Storrs had been a lawyer of average attainments—in no way brilliant, but highly respected for his probity and enjoying for years a fair practice. Bruce had cousins of his own age, cheery, wholesome contemporaries with whom he had chummed from childhood. The Storrs, like the Bruces, his mother’s people, were of a type familiar in Mid-western county seats, kindly, optimistic, well-to-do folk, not too contented or self-satisfied to be unaware of the stir and movement of the larger world.

The old house, built in the forties by John Storrs’s grandfather, had become suddenly to Bruce a strange and alien place that denied his right of occupancy. The elms in the yard seemed to mock him, whispering, “You don’t belong here!” and as quickly as possible he had closed the house, made excuses to his relatives, given a power of attorney to the president of the local bank, an old friend, to act for him in all matters, and announced that he’d look about a bit and take a vacation before settling down to his profession.

This was all past now and he had arrived, it seemed inevitably, at the threshold of the city where his father lived.

The beauty of the declining day stirred longings and aspirations, definite and clear, in his mind and heart. His debt to his mother was enormous. He remembered now her happiness at the first manifestation of his interest in form, color and harmony; her hand guiding his when he first began to draw; her delight in his first experiment with a box of colors, given him on one of his birthdays. Yes; he should be a painter; that came first; then his aptitude in modeling made it plain that sculpture was to be his true vocation. To be a creator of beautiful things!—here, she had urged, lay the surest hope of happiness.

Very precious were all these memories; they brought a wistful smile to his face. She had always seemed to him curiously innocent, with the innocence of light-hearted childhood. To think of her as carrying a stain through her life was abhorrent. Hers was the blithest, cheeriest spirit he had known. The things she had taught him to reverence were a testimony to her innate fineness; she had denied herself for him, jealously guarding her patrimony that it might pass to him intact. The manly part for him was to live in the light of the ideals she had set for him. Pity and love for one who had been so sensitive to beauty in all its forms touched him now; brought a sob to his throat. He found a comfort in the thought that her confession might be attributable to a hope that in his life her sin might be expiated....

He took up the letters and turned them over for the last time, his eyes caught and held now and then by some phrase. He held the sheets against his face for a moment, then slowly tore them into strips, added the worn envelopes and burned them. Not content with this, he trampled the charred fragments into the sandy turf.

II

The sun, a huge brazen ball, was low in the west when he set off along the river with confident, springy step. He stopped at a farmhouse and asked for supper. The evening meal was over, the farmer’s wife explained; but when he assured her that his needs were few and that he expected to pay for his entertainment, she produced a pitcher of milk and a plate of corn bread. She brought a bowl of yellow glaze crockery and he made himself comfortable on a bench by the kitchen door. He crumbled the bread into the creamy milk and ate with satisfaction.

Her husband appeared, and instantly prejudiced by Bruce’s knickerbockers, doggedly quizzed him as to the nature and direction of his journey. Bruce was a new species, not to be confused with the ordinary tramp who demands food at farmhouses, and suddenly contrite that the repast she was providing was so meager, the woman rose and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a huge piece of spice cake and a dish of sliced peaches. She was taken aback when he rose deferentially to accept the offering, but her tired face relaxed in a smile at his cordial expressions of gratitude. She joined her husband on the stoop, finding the handsome pilgrim’s visit a welcome break in the monotonous day. As he ate he answered their questions unhurriedly.

“I guess the war left a lot o’ you boys restless,” she suggested.

“Oh, it wasn’t the war that made a rover of me!” he replied with a smile. “It was this way with me. When I got home I found I had something to think out—something I had to get used to”—he frowned and became silent for a moment—“so I decided I could do it better by tramping. But I’ve settled things in my own mind pretty well now,” he ended, half to himself, and smiled, hardly aware of their presence.

“Yes?” The woman’s tone was almost eager. She was curious as to the real reason for his wanderings and what it was that he had settled. In the luminous afterglow her dull imagination quickened to a sense of something romantic in this stranger, and she was disappointed when he told of an experience as a laborer in a great steel mill, just to see what it was like, he said—of loitering along the Susquehanna, and of a more recent tramp through the Valley of Virginia.

“I reckon you don’t have to work?” the farmer asked, baffled in his attempts to account for a young man who strolled over the country so aimlessly, wearing what struck him as an outlandish garb.

“Oh, but I do! I’ve done considerable work as I’ve sauntered around. I’m an architect—or hope to be! I’ve earned my keep as I’ve traveled by getting jobs as a draughtsman.”

“Going to stop in the city?” the woman inquired. “I guess there’s lots of architects over there.”

“Yes,” Bruce replied, following the direction of her glance.

“You know folks there?” she persisted. “I guess it’s hard getting started if you ain’t got friends.”

“There’s a chap living there I knew in college; that’s all. But when you strike a strange town where you don’t know anyone the only thing to do is to buckle in and make them want to know you!”

“I guess you can do that,” she remarked with shy admiration.

The farmer shuffled his feet on the brick walk. For all he knew the young stranger might be a burglar. He resented his wife’s tone of friendliness and resolved to deny the request if the young man asked the privilege of sleeping in the barn; but the stranger not only failed to ask for lodging, but produced a dollar bill and insisted that the woman accept it. This transaction served instantly to dispel the farmer’s suspicions. He answered with unnecessary detail Bruce’s questions as to the shortest way to town, and walked with him to a lane that ran along the edge of a cornfield and afforded a short cut to the highway.

Bruce had expected to reach the city before nightfall, but already the twilight was deepening and the first stars glimmered in the pale sky. Now that he was near the end of his self-imposed wanderings, he experienced a sense of elation. The unhappy thoughts with which he had left his Ohio home a little more than a year earlier had gradually become dim in his memory. The letters he had burned at the riverside really marked in his consciousness a dispersion of doubts and questions that left his spirit free. His mother’s revelation had greatly shaken him; but she need never have told him; and it spoke for her courage and her faith in him that she had confessed the truth. They had been companions in an unusual sense. From his earliest youth she had interested him in the things that had been her delight—books, music, pictures. She was herself an accomplished musician, and strains of old melodies she had taught him recurred to him now, and as he swung along the country road he whistled them, happy for the first time in the awakening of old memories.

With the cool breeze blowing upon him from fields of tall ripening corn, there was no bitterness in his soul. He had beaten down the bitter thoughts that had assailed him in the early days of his journeying—the sense that a stigma attached to him, not the less hateful because he alone had knowledge of it; and the feeling that there was something fantastic in the idea that he should put himself where, in any need, he could serve the father he had never known.

This had now all the sanctity of a commission from the dead. Again he speculated as to what manner of man this could be who had awakened so deep a love in the heart of the good woman he knew his mother to have been—a love which she had carried in her heart to her last hours. In his long ponderings he had, he felt, come to understand her better than he ever had in her lifetime—her imaginative and romantic side, her swiftly changing moods, her innumerable small talents that had now a charm and a pathos in the retrospect. Age had never, to his eyes, laid hands upon her. Even through the last long illness she had retained the look and the spirit of youth.

Rounding a bend in the river, the flare of an amusement park apprised him that he was close upon the city—a city he had heretofore never visited and knew of only from his newspaper reading as a prosperous industrial center. Here, for the strangest reason in the world, he was to make his home, perhaps spend the remainder of his days! He crossed a stone bridge with a sense that the act marked an important transition in his life, and quickly passing through the park, boarded a trolley car and rode into town.

He had formed a very clear idea of what he meant to do, and arriving at the business center he went directly to the Hotel Fordham, to which he had expressed his trunk from Cincinnati.

III

He spent an hour unpacking and overhauling his belongings, wrote notes to his banker friend in Laconia and to the cousin there with whom he had maintained a correspondence since he first went away to school.

The pencil with which he idly scribbled on a sheet of hotel paper traced his name unconsciously. Bruce Storrs.

It was not his name; he had no honest right to it. He had speculated many times in his wanderings as to whether he shouldn’t change it, but this would lead to endless embarrassments. Now, with his thoughts crystalized by the knowledge that this other man who had been his mother’s lover was within reach, he experienced a strong sense of loyalty to the memory of the man he had called father. It would be a contemptible thing to abandon the name of one who had shown him so tender an affection and understood so perfectly his needs and aims.

Somewhere among the several hundred thousand people of the city about him was the man his mother had described. In the quiet room he experienced suddenly a feeling of loneliness. Usually in his wanderings he had stopped at cheap lodging houses, and the very comfort of his surroundings now added to his feeling of strangeness in having at last arrived at a goal which marked not merely the end of his physical wandering, but the termination of a struggle with his own spirit.

He sent down for the evening papers and found himself scanning carefully the local news, thinking that he might find some clue to the activities of Franklin Mills.

His attention was immediately caught by the caption, “Franklin Mills Sells Site of Old Homestead to Trust Company.” The name fell like a blow upon his consciousness. He seized the telephone book and hurriedly turned the pages.

Mills Franklin—r 5800 Jefferson Ave...King 1322

Mills Franklin—1821 First Ntl Bnk....Main 2222

He stared at the two lines till they were a blur before his eyes. There was but one man of the name in the directory; there could be no mistake as to his identity.

It was a disconcerting thought that by calling these numbers he might at any time hear Franklin Mills’s voice. The idea both fascinated and repelled him. What, after all, had he to do with Franklin Mills?

He turned to the newspaper and reread the report of the real estate transaction, then opened to the personal and society page, where he found this item:

Miss Leila Mills of Jefferson Avenue gave a luncheon yesterday at the Faraway Country Club for her house guest, Miss Helene Ridgeway of Cincinnati. The decorations were purple asters and pink roses.

Helene Ridgeway he knew; she had been the college chum of one of his Laconia cousins. He had not realized the strain he had undergone in the past year till he saw the familiar name. The nightmare pictures of his year-long speculations faded; whatever else Mills might be he was at least a reputable citizen, and this was something to be thankful for; and obviously he was not poor and helpless.

The Leila referred to must be Mills’s daughter, and the same blood ran in her veins as in his own. Bruce flung the paper away; touched his forehead, found it covered with perspiration. He paced the floor till he had quieted himself, paused at the window, finding relief in the lights and sounds of the street, the bells and whistles of trains at the railway station somewhere in the distance. The world surged round him, indifferent to his hopes and aims and fears. He must keep tight hold of himself....

His mother had urged him to think kindly of Franklin Mills; and yet, now that the man was within reach, a contempt that bordered upon hatred filled his heart. For his mother his love turned for the moment to pity. He recalled the look she had bent upon him at times when he and his putative father had talked happily together. John Storrs had lavished an unusual devotion upon his wife to the end of his life. The wrong done him seemed monstrous as Bruce thought of it, remembering Storrs’s pride in him, the sympathetic interest he had taken in his education, the emotion with which they had parted when Bruce went away to war. There was a vast pathos in all this—in the very ignorance of his wife’s infidelity that John Storrs had carried to his grave.

CHAPTER TWO

I

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.”

II

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.

III

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.”

IV

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.

CHAPTER THREE

I

Sunday evening the Freemans were called unexpectedly into town and Bruce and Henderson were left to amuse themselves. Henderson immediately lost himself in a book and Bruce, a little homesick for the old freedom of the road, set out for a walk. A footpath that followed the river invited him and he lounged along, his spirit responding to the beauty of the night, his mind intent upon the future. The cordiality of the Freemans and their circle had impressed him with the friendliness of the community. It would take time to establish himself in his profession, but he had confidence in his power to achieve; the lust for work was already strong in him. He was satisfied that he had done wisely in obeying his mother’s mandate; he would never have been happy if he had ignored it.

His meeting with Shepherd Mills had roused no resentment, revived no such morbid thoughts as had troubled him on the night of his arrival in town. Shepherd Mills was his half-brother; this, to be sure, was rather staggering; but his reaction to the meeting was void of bitterness. He speculated a good deal about young Mills. The gentleness and forbearance with which he suffered the raillery of his intimates, his anxiety to be accounted a good fellow, his serious interest in matters of real importance—in all these things there was something touching and appealing. It was difficult to correlate Shepherd with his wife, but perhaps their dissimilarities were only superficial. Bruce appraised Connie Mills as rather shallow, fond of admiration, given to harmless poses in which her friends evidently encouraged and indulged her. She practiced her little coquetries with an openness that was in itself a safeguard. As they left the Freemans, Shepherd and his wife had repeated their hope of seeing him again. It was bewildering, but it had come about so naturally that there seemed nothing extraordinary in the fact that he was already acquainted with members of Franklin Mills’s family....

Bruce paused now and then where the path drew in close to the river to look down at the moonlit water through the fringe of trees and shrubbery. A boy and girl floated by in a canoe, the girl singing as she thrummed a ukulele, and his eyes followed them a little wistfully. Farther on the dull put-put-put of a motor-boat broke the silence. The sound ceased abruptly, followed instantly by a colloquy between the occupants.

“Damn this fool thing!” ejaculated a feminine voice. “We’re stuck!”

“I had noticed it!” said another girl’s voice good naturedly. “But such is the life of the sailor. I wouldn’t just choose this for an all-night camp!”

“Don’t be so sweet about it, Millicent! I’d like to sink this boat.”

“It isn’t Polly’s fault. She’s already half-buried in the sand,” laughed the other.

Bruce scrambled down to the water’s edge and peered out upon the river. A small power boat had grounded on a sandbar in the middle of the stream. Its occupants were two young women in bathing suits. But for their voices he would have taken them for boys. One was tinkering with the engine while the other was trying to push off the boat with an oar which sank ineffectually in the sand. In their attempts to float their craft the young women had not seen Bruce, who, satisfied that they were in no danger, was rather amused by their plight. They were presumably from one of the near-by villas and their bathing suits implied familiarity with the water. The girl at the engine talked excitedly with an occasional profane outburst; her companion was disposed to accept the situation philosophically.

“We can easily swim out, so don’t get so excited, Leila,” said the girl with the oar. “And do stop swearing; voices travel a long way over the water.”

“I don’t care who hears me,” said the other, though in a lower tone.

She gave the engine a spin, starting the motor, but the power was unequal to the task of freeing the boat. With an exclamation of disgust she turned off the switch and the futile threshing of the propeller ceased.

“Let’s swim ashore and send back for Polly,” said the girl addressed as Millicent.

“I see myself swimming out!” the other retorted. “I’m not going to leave Polly here for some pirate to steal.”

“Nobody’s going to steal her. This isn’t the ocean, you know.”

“Well, no fool boat’s going to get the best of me! Where’s that flask? I’m freezing!”

“You don’t need any more of that! Please give it to me!”

“I hope you are enjoying yourself,” said the other petulantly. “I don’t see any fun in this!”

“Hello, there!” called Bruce, waving his arms to attract their attention. “Can I be of help?”

Startled by his voice, they did not reply immediately, but he heard them conferring as to this unlooked-for hail from the bank.

“Oh, I’m perfectly harmless!” he cried reassuringly. “I was just passing and heard your engine. If there’s a boat near by I can pull you off, or I’ll swim out and lift your boat off if you say so.”

“Better get a boat,” said the voice he had identified with the name of Millicent. “There’s a boathouse just a little farther up, on your side. You’ll find a skiff and a canoe. We’ll be awfully glad to have your help. Thank you ever so much!”

“Don’t forget to come back,” cried Leila.

“Certainly not!” laughed Bruce and sprang up the bank.

He found the boathouse without trouble, chose the skiff as easier to manage, and rowed back. In the moonlight he saw Millicent standing up in the launch watching him, and as he approached she flashed an electric torch along the side of the boat that he might see the nature of their difficulty.

“Do you need food or medical attention?” he asked cheerfully as he skillfully maneuvered the skiff and grounded it on the sand.

“I think we’d better get out,” she said.

“No; stay right there till I see what I can do. I think I can push you off. All steady now!”

The launch moved a little at his first attempt to dislodge it and a second strong shove sent it into the channel.

“Now start your engine!” he commanded.

The girl in the middle of the boat muttered something he didn’t catch.

“Leila, can you start the engine?” demanded Millicent. “I think—I think I’ll have to row back,” she said when Leila made no response. “My friend isn’t feeling well.”

“I’ll tow you—that’s easy,” said Bruce, noting that her companion apparently was no longer interested in the proceedings. “Please throw me your rope!”

He caught the rope and fastened it to the stern of the skiff and called out that he was ready.

“Please land us where you found the boat,” said Millicent. She settled herself in the stern of the launch and took the tiller. No word was spoken till they reached the boathouse.

“That’s all you can do,” said Millicent, who had drawn on a long bath wrapper and stepped out. “And thank you very, very much; I’m sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”

This was clearly a dismissal, but he loosened the rope and tied up the skiff. He waited, holding the launch, while Millicent tried to persuade Leila to disembark.

“Perhaps——” began Bruce, and hesitated. It seemed unfair to leave the girl alone with the problem of getting her friend ashore. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, Leila was intoxicated.

“Now, Leila!” cried Millicent exasperatedly. “You’re making yourself ridiculous, besides keeping this gentleman waiting. It’s not a bit nice of you!”

“Jus’ restin’ lil bit,” said Leila indifferently. “I’m jus’ restin’ and I’m not goin’ to leave Polly. I should shay not!”

And in assertion of her independence she began to whistle. She seemed greatly amused that her attempts to whistle were unsuccessful.

Millicent turned to Bruce. “If I could get her out of the boat I could put her in our car and take her home.”

“Surely!” he said and bent over quickly and lifted the girl from the launch, set her on her feet and steadied her. Millicent fumbled in the launch, found a bath wrapper and flung it about Leila’s shoulders. She guided her friend toward the long, low boathouse and turned a switch.

“I can manage now,” she said, gravely surveying Bruce in the glare of light. “I’m so sorry to have troubled you.”

She was tall and fair with markedly handsome brown eyes and a great wealth of fine-spun golden hair that escaped from her bathing cap and tumbled down upon her shoulders. Her dignity was in nowise diminished by her garb. She betrayed no agitation. Bruce felt that she was paying him the compliment of assuming that she was dealing with a gentleman who, having performed a service, would go his way and forget the whole affair. She drew her arm about the now passive Leila, who was much shorter—quite small, indeed, in comparison.

“Our car’s here and we’ll get dressed and drive back into town. Thank you so much and—good-night!”

“I was glad to help you;—good-night!”

The door closed upon them. Bruce made the launch fast to the landing and resumed his walk.

II

When he returned to the Freemans, Henderson flung aside his book and complained of Bruce’s prolonged absence. “I had begun to think you’d got yourself kidnapped. Go ahead and talk,” he said, yawning and stretching himself.

“Well, I’ve had a mild adventure,” said Bruce, lighting a cigarette; and he described his meeting with the two young women.

“Not so bad!” remarked Henderson placidly. “Such little adventures never happen to me. The incident would make good first page stuff for a newspaper; society girls shipwrecked. You ought to have taken the flask as a souvenir. Leila is an obstreperous little kid; she really ought to behave herself. Right the first time. Leila Mills, of course; I think I mentioned her the other day. Her friend is Millicent Harden. Guess I omitted Millicent in my review of our citizens. Quite a remarkable person. She plays the rôle of big sister to Leila; they’re neighbors on Jefferson Avenue. That’s just a boathouse on the Styx that Mills built for Leila’s delectation. She pulls a cocktail tea there occasionally. Millicent’s pop made a fortune out of an asthma cure—the joy of all cut-rate druggists. Not viewed with approval by medical societies. Socially the senior Hardens are outside the breastworks, but Millicent is asked to very large functions, where nobody knows who’s there. They live in that whopping big house just north of the Mills place, and old Doc Harden gives Millicent everything she wants. Hence a grand organ, and the girl is a regular Cecelia at the keys. Really plays. Strong artistic bent. We can’t account for people like the Hardens having such a daughter. There’s a Celtic streak in the girl, I surmise—that odd sort of poetic strain that’s so beguiling in the Irish. She models quite wonderfully, they tell me. Well, well! So you were our little hero on the spot!”

“But Leila?” said Bruce seriously. “You don’t quite expect to find the daughter of a prominent citizen tipsy on a river, and rather profane at that.”

“Oh, thunder!” exclaimed Henderson easily. “Leila’s all right. You needn’t worry about her. She’s merely passing through a phase and will probably emerge safely. Leila’s hardly up to your standard, but Millicent is a girl you’ll like. I ought to have told Dale to ask Millicent here. Dale’s a broad-minded woman and doesn’t mind it at all that old Harden’s rolled up a million by being smart enough to scamper just a nose length ahead of the Federal grand jury carrying his rotten dope in triumph.”

“Miss Mills, I suppose, is an acceptable member of the Freemans’ group?” Bruce inquired.

“Acceptable enough, but this is all too tame for Leila. Curious sort of friendship—Leila and Millicent. Socially Millicent is, in a manner of speaking, between the devil and the deep sea. She’s just a little too superior to train with the girls of the Longview Country Club set and the asthma cure keeps her from being chummy with the Faraway gang. But I’ll say that Leila’s lucky to have a friend like Millicent.”

“Um—yes,” Bruce assented. “I’m beginning to see that your social life here has a real flavor.”

“Well, it’s not all just plain vanilla,” Bud agreed with a yawn.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Henderson made his wife’s return an excuse for giving a party at the Faraway Country Club. Mrs. Henderson had brought home a trophy from the golf tournament and her prowess must be celebrated. She was a tall blonde with a hearty, off-hand manner, and given to plain, direct speech. She treated Bud as though he were a younger brother, to be humored to a certain point and then reminded a little tartly of the limitations of her tolerance.

When Bruce arrived at the club he found his hostess and Mrs. Freeman receiving the guests in the hall and directing them to a dark end of the veranda where Bud was holding forth with a cocktail-shaker. Obedient to their hint, he stumbled over the veranda chairs until he came upon a group of young people gathered about Bud, who was energetically compounding drinks as he told a story. Bruce knew the story; it was the oldest of Bud’s yarns, and his interest wavered to become fixed immediately upon a girl beside him who was giving Bud her complete attention. Even in the dim light of the veranda there was no mistaking her: she was the Millicent Harden he had rescued from the sand bar. At the conclusion of the story she joined in the general laugh and turned round to find Bruce regarding her intently.

“I beg your pardon,” he said and bowed gravely.

“Oh, you needn’t!” she replied quickly.

He lifted his head to find her inspecting him with an amused smile.

“I might find someone to introduce us—Mr. Henderson, perhaps,” he said. “My name—if the matter is important—is Bruce Storrs.”

“Possibly we might complete the introduction unassisted—my name is Millicent Harden!”

“How delightful! Shall we dance?”

After the dance he suggested that they step out for a breath of air. They found seats and she said immediately:

“Of course I remember you; I’d be ashamed if I didn’t. I’m glad of this chance to thank you. I know Leila—Miss Mills—will want to thank you, too. We must have seemed very silly that night on the river.”

“Such a thing might happen to anyone; why not forget it?”

“Let me thank you again,” she said seriously. “You were ever so kind.”

“The incident is closed,” he remarked with finality. “Am I keeping you from a partner? They’re dancing again. We might sit this out if I’m not depriving you——”

“You’re not. It’s warm inside and this is a relief. We might even wander down the lawn and look for elves and dryads and nymphs. Those big trees and the stars set the stage for such encounters.”

“It’s rather nice to believe in fairies and such things. At times I’m a believer; then I lose my faith.”

“We all forget our fairies sometimes,” she answered gravely.

He had failed to note at their meeting on the river the loveliness of her voice. He found himself waiting for the recurrence of certain tones that had a curious musical resonance. He was struck by a certain gravity in her that was expressed for fleeting moments in both voice and eyes. Even with the newest dance music floating out to them and the light and laughter within, he was aware of an indefinable quality in the girl that seemed somehow to translate her to remote and shadowy times. Her profile—clean-cut without sharpness—and her manner of wearing her abundant hair—carried back loosely to a knot low on her head—strengthened his impression of her as being a little foreign to the place and hour. She spoke with quiet enthusiasm of the outdoor sports that interested her—riding she enjoyed most of all. Henderson had intimated that her social life was restricted, but she bore herself more like a young woman of the world than any other girl he remembered.

“Maybelle Henderson will scold me for hiding you away,” she said. “But I just can’t dance whenever the band plays. It’s got to be an inspiration!”

“Then I thank you again for one perfect dance! I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate what you were giving me.”

“Oh, I danced with you to hide my embarrassment!” she laughed.

Half an hour passed and they had touched and dismissed many subjects when she rose and caught the hand of a girl who was passing.

“Miss Mills, Mr. Storrs. It’s quite fitting that you should meet Mr. Storrs.”

“Fitting?” asked the girl, breathless from her dance.

“We’ve all met before—on the river—most shockingly! You might just say thank you to Mr. Storrs.”

“Oh, this is not——” Leila drew back and inspected Bruce with a direct, candid gaze.

“Miss Harden is mistaken; this is the first time we ever met,” declared Bruce.

“Isn’t he nice!” Leila exclaimed. “From what Millie said I knew you would be like this.” And then: “Oh, lots of people are bragging about you and promising to introduce me! Here comes Tommy Barnes; he has this dance. Oh, Millie! if you get a chance you might say a kind word to papa. He’s probably terribly bored by this time.”

“Leila’s a dear child! I’m sure you’ll like her,” said Millicent as the girl fluttered away. “Oh, I adore this piece! Will you dance with me?”

As they finished the dance Mrs. Henderson intercepted them.