II
The only cloud on Mills’s horizon was his apprehension as to Leila’s future. Mills was increasingly aware that she couldn’t be managed as he managed Shepherd. He had gone as far as he dared in letting Carroll know that he would be an acceptable son-in-law, and he had perhaps intimated a little too plainly to Leila the desirability of such an arrangement. Carroll visited the house frequently; but Leila snubbed him outrageously. When it pleased her to accept his attentions it was merely, Mills surmised, to allay suspicion as to her interest elsewhere. It was his duty to see that Leila married in keeping with her status as the daughter of the house of Mills.
In analyzing his duty with respect to Leila, it occurred to Mills that he might have been culpable in not laying more stress upon the merits of religion in the upbringing of Leila. She had gone to Sunday school in her earliest youth; but churchgoing was not to her taste. He was unable to remember when Leila had last attended church, but never voluntarily within his recollection. She needed, he decided, the sobering influence of religion. God, in Mills’s speculations, was on the side of order, law and respectability. The church frowned upon divorce; and Leila must be saved from the disgrace of marrying a divorced man. Leila needed religion, and the idea broadened in Mills’s mind until he saw that probably Constance and Shepherd, too, would be safer under the protecting arm of the church.
The Sunday following Christmas seemed to Mills a fitting time for renewing the family’s acquaintance with St. Barnabas. When he telephoned his invitation to Constance, carefully putting it in the form of a suggestion, he found his daughter-in-law wholly agreeable to the idea. She and Shepherd would be glad to breakfast with him and accompany him to divine worship. When he broached the matter to Leila she did not explode as he had expected. She took a cigarette from her mouth and expelled the smoke from her lungs.
“Sure, I’ll go with you, Dada,” she replied.
He had suggested nine as a conservative breakfast hour, but Constance and Shepherd were fifteen minutes late. Leila was considerably later, but appeared finally, after the maid had twice been dispatched to her room. Having danced late, she was still sleepy. At the table she insisted on scanning the society page of the morning newspaper. This annoyed Mills, particularly when in spreading out the sheet she upset her water glass, with resulting deplorable irrigation of the tablecloth and a splash upon Connie’s smart morning dress that might or might not prove permanently disfiguring. Mills hated a messy table. He also hated criticism of food. Leila’s complaint that the scalloped sweetbreads were too dry evoked the pertinent retort that if she hadn’t been late they wouldn’t have been spoiled.
“I guess that’ll hold me for a little while,” she said cheerfully. “I say, Dada, what do we get for going to church?”
“You’ll get what you need from Doctor Lindley,” Mills replied, frowning at the butler, who was stupidly oblivious of the fact that the flame under the percolator was threatening a general conflagration. Shepherd, in trying to clap on the extinguisher, burned his fingers and emitted a shrill cry of pain. All things considered, the breakfast was hardly conducive to spiritual uplift.
It was ten minutes after eleven when the Millses reached St. Barnabas and the party went down the aisle pursued by an usher to the chanting of the Venite, exultemus Domino. The usher, caught off guard, was guiltily conscious of having a few minutes before filled the Mills pew with strangers in accordance with the rule that reserved seats for their owners only until the processional. Mills, his silk hat on his arm, had not foreseen such a predicament. He paused in perplexity beside the ancestral pew in which five strangers were devoutly reinforcing the chanting of the choir, happily unaware that they were trespassers upon the property of Franklin Mills.
The courteous usher lifted his hand to indicate his mastery of the situation and guided the Mills party in front of the chancel to seats in the south transept. This maneuver had the effect of publishing to the congregation the fact that Franklin Mills, his son, daughter-in-law and daughter, were today breaking an abstinence from divine worship which regular attendants knew to have been prolonged.
Constance, Leila and Shepherd knelt at once; Mills remained standing. A lady behind him thrust a prayer book into his hand. In trying to find his glasses he dropped the book, which Leila, much diverted, recovered as she rose. This was annoying and added to Mills’s discomfiture at being planted in the front seat of the transept where the whole congregation could observe him at leisure.
However, by the time the proper psalms for the day had been read he had recovered his composure and listened attentively to Doctor Lindley’s sonorous reading of the lessons. His seat enabled him to contemplate the Mills memorial window in the north transept, a fact which mitigated his discomfort at being deprived of the Mills pew.
Leila stifled a yawn as the rector introduced as the preacher for the day a missionary bishop who had spent many years in the Orient. Mills had always been impatient of missionary work among peoples who, as he viewed the matter, were entitled to live their lives and worship their gods without interference by meddlesome foreigners. But the discourse appealed strongly to his practical sense. He saw in the schools and hospitals established by the church in China a splendid advertisement of American good will and enterprise. Such philanthropies were calculated to broaden the market for American trade. When Doctor Lindley announced that the offerings for the day would go to the visitor to assist in the building of a new hospital in his far-away diocese, Mills found a hundred dollar bill to lay on the plate....