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.