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.