The hope of happiness

by Meredith Nicholson

IV

He must talk to someone. His heart hungered for sympathy and kindness. If his father would only treat him as he would treat any other man; not as a weakling, a bothersome encumbrance! There was cruelty in the reflection that, envied as no doubt he was as the prospective heir to a fortune and the inheritor of an honored name, there was no friend to whom he could turn in his unhappiness. He passed Doctor Lindley, who was talking animatedly to two men on a corner. A man of God, a priest charged with the care of souls; but Shepherd felt no impulse to lay his troubles before the rector of St. Barnabas, much as he liked him. Lindley would probably rebuke him for rebelling against his father’s judgments. But there must be someone....

His heart leaped as he thought of Bruce Storrs. The young architect, hardly more than an acquaintance, had in their meetings impressed him by his good sense and manliness. He would see Storrs.

The elevator shot him up to Freeman’s office. Bruce, preparing to leave for the day, put out his hand cordially.

“Mr. Freeman’s gone; but won’t you sit and smoke?”

“No, thanks. Happened to be passing and thought I’d look in. Maybe you’ll join me in a little dash into the country. This has been an off day with me—everything messy. I suppose you’re never troubled that way?”

Bruce saw that something was amiss. Shepherd’s attempt to give an air of inadvertence to his call was badly simulated.

“That’s odd!” Bruce exclaimed. “I’m a little on edge myself! Just thinking of walking a few miles to pull myself together. What region shall we favor with our gloomy presences?”

“That is a question!” Shepherd ejaculated with a mirthless laugh; and then striking his hands together as he recalled where he had parked his car, he added: “Let’s drive to the river and do our walking out there. You won’t mind—sure I’m not making myself a nuisance?”

“Positive!” Bruce declared, though he smothered with some difficulty a wish that Shepherd Mills would keep away from him.

It was inconceivable that Shepherd had been drinking, but he was clearly laboring under some strong emotional excitement. In offering his cigarette case as they waited for the elevator, his hand shook. Bruce adopted a chaffing tone as they reached the street, making light of the desperate situation in which they found themselves.

“We’re two nice birds! All tuckered out by a few hours’ work. That’s what the indoor life brings us to. Henderson got off a good one about the new traffic rules—said they’ve got it fixed now so you can’t turn anywhere in this town till you get to the cemetery. Suppose the ancient Egyptians had a lot of trouble with their chariots—speed devils even in those days!”

Shepherd laughed a little wildly now and then at Bruce’s efforts at humor. But he said nothing. He drove the car with what for him was reckless speed. Bruce good-naturedly chided him, inquiring how he got his drag with the police department; but he was trying to adjust himself to a Shepherd Mills he hadn’t known before....

They crossed a bridge and Shepherd stopped the car at the roadside. “Let’s walk,” he said tensely. “I’ve got to talk—I’ve got to talk.”

“All right, we’ll walk and talk!” Bruce agreed in the tone of one indulging a child’s whims.

“I wanted to come to the river,” Shepherd muttered. “I like being where there’s water.”

“Many people don’t!” Bruce said, thinking his companion was joking.

“A river is kind; a river is friendly,” Shepherd added in the curious stifled voice of one who is thinking aloud. “Water always soothes me—quiets my nerves”—he threw his hand out. “It seems so free!”

It was now dark and the winter stars shone brightly over the half-frozen stream. Bruce remembered that somewhere in the neighborhood he had made his last stop before entering the city; overcome his last doubt and burned his mother’s letters that he had borne on his year-long pilgrimage. And he was here again by the river with the son of Franklin Mills!

Intent upon his own thoughts, he was hardly conscious that Shepherd had begun to speak, with a curious dogged eagerness, in a high strained voice that broke now and then in a sob. It was of his father that Shepherd was speaking—of Franklin Mills. He was a disappointment to his father; there was no sympathy between them. He had never wanted to go into business but had yielded in good spirit when his father opposed his studying medicine. At the battery plant he performed duties of no significance; the only joy he derived from the connection was in the friendship of the employees, and he was now to be disciplined for wanting to help them. His transfer to the trust company was only a punishment; in the new position he would merely repeat his experience in the factory—find himself of less importance than the office boy.

They paced back and forth at the roadside, hardly aware of occasional fast-flying cars whose headlights fell upon them for a moment and left them again to the stars. When the first passion of his bitter indignation had spent itself, Shepherd admitted his father’s generosity. There was no question of money; his father wished him to live as became the family dignity. Constance was fine; she was the finest woman alive, he declared with a quaver in his voice. But she too had her grievances; his father was never fair to Constance. Here Shepherd caught himself up sharply. It was the widening breach between himself and his father that tore his heart, and Constance had no part in that.

“I’m stupid; I don’t catch things quickly,” he went on wearily. “But I’ve tried to learn; I’ve done my best to please father. But it’s no good! I give it up!”

Bruce, astounded and dismayed by this long recital, was debating what counsel he could offer. He could not abandon Shepherd Mills in his dark hour. The boy—he seemed only that tonight, a miserable, tragic boy—had opened his heart with a child’s frankness. Bruce, remembering his own unhappy hours, resolved to help Shepherd Mills if he could.

Their stay by the river must not be prolonged; Shepherd was shivering with cold. Bruce had never before been so conscious of his own physical strength. He wished that he might confer it upon Shepherd—add to his stature, broaden the narrow shoulders that were so unequal to heavy burdens! It was, he felt, a critical hour in Shepherd Mills’s life; the wrong word might precipitate a complete break in his relations with his father. Franklin Mills, as Bruce’s imagination quickened under the mystical spell of the night, loomed beside them—a shadowy figure, keeping step with them on the dim bank where the wind mourned like an unhappy spirit through the sycamores.

“I had no right to bother you; you must think me a fool,” Shepherd concluded. “But it’s helped me, just to talk. I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t mind——”

“Of course I don’t mind!” Bruce replied, and laid his hand lightly on Shepherd’s shoulder. “I’m pleased that you thought of me; I want to help. Now, old man, we’re going to pull you right out of this! It’s disagreeable to fumble the ball as we all do occasionally. But this isn’t so terrible! That was a fine idea of yours to build a clubhouse for the workmen: but on the other hand there’s something to be said for your father’s reasons against it. And frankly, I think you made a mistake in selling your stock without speaking to him first. It wasn’t quite playing the game.”

“Yes; I can see that,” Shepherd assented faintly. “But you see I’d got my mind on it; and I wanted to make things happier for those people.”

“Of course you did! And it’s too bad your father doesn’t feel about it as you do. But he doesn’t; and it’s one of the hardest things we have to learn in this world, that we’ve got to accommodate ourselves very often to other people’s ideas. That’s life, old man!”

“I suppose you’re right; but I do nothing but blunder. I never put anything over.”

“Oh, yes, you do! You said a bit ago your father didn’t want you to marry the girl you were in love with; but you did! That scored for you. And about the clubhouse, it’s hard to give it up; but we passionate idealists have got to learn to wait! Your day will come to do a lot for humanity.”

“No! I’m done! I’m going away; I want a chance to live my own life. It’s hell, I tell you, never to be free; to be pushed into subordinate jobs I hate. By God, I won’t go into the trust company!”

The oath, probably the first he had ever uttered, cut sharply into the night. To Bruce it hinted of unsuspected depths of passion in Shepherd’s nature. The sense of his own responsibility deepened.

Shepherd, surprised and ashamed of his outburst, sought and clutched Bruce’s hand.

“Steady, boy!” said Bruce gently. “You’ll take the job and you’ll go into it with all the pep you can muster! It offers you a bigger chance than the thing you’ve been doing. All kinds of people carry their troubles to a trust company. Such institutions have a big benevolent side,—look after widows and orphans and all that sort of thing. If you want to serve humanity you couldn’t put yourself in a better place! I’m serious about that. And with Carroll there you’ll be treated with respect; you can raise the devil if anybody tries any foolishness! Why, your father’s promoting you—showing his confidence in a pretty fine way. He might better have told you of his plans earlier—I grant that—but he probably thought he’d save it for a surprise. It was pretty decent of him to sell you back your stock. A mean, grasping man would have kept it and swiped the profit. You’ve got to give him credit for trying to do the square thing by you.”

“It was a slap in the face; he meant to humiliate me!” cried Shepherd stubbornly.

“All right; assume he did! But don’t be humiliated!”

“You’d stand for it? You wouldn’t make a row?” demanded Shepherd quaveringly.

“No: decidedly no!”

“Well, I guess you’re right,” Shepherd replied after a moment’s silence. “It doesn’t seem so bad the way you put it. I’m sorry I’ve kept you so long. I’ll never forget this; you’ve been mighty kind.”

“I think I’ve been right,” said Bruce soberly.

He was thinking of Franklin Mills—his father and Shepherd’s. There was something grotesque in the idea that he was acting as a conciliator between Franklin Mills and this son who had so little of the Mills iron in his blood. The long story had given him still another impression of Mills. It was despicable, his trampling of Shepherd’s toys, his calm destruction of the boy’s dreams. But even so, Bruce felt that his advice had been sound. A complete break with his father would leave Shepherd helpless; and public opinion would be on the father’s side.

Shepherd struck a match and looked at his watch.

“It’s nearly seven!” he exclaimed. “Connie won’t know what’s become of me! I think she’s having a Dramatic Club rehearsal at the house tonight.”

“That’s good. We’ll stop at the first garage and you can telephone her. Tell her you’re having dinner with me at the club. And—may I say it?—never tell her of your bad hour today. That’s better kept to ourselves.”

“Of course!”

With head erect Shepherd walked to the car. His self-confidence was returning. Before they reached the club his spirits were soaring. He was even eager to begin his work with the trust company.

After a leisurely dinner he drove Bruce home. When he said good-night at the entrance to the apartment house he grasped both Bruce’s hands and clung to them.

“Nothing like this ever really happened to me before,” he said chokingly. “I’ve found a friend!”

They remained silent for a moment. Then Bruce looked smilingly into Shepherd’s gentle, grateful eyes and turned slowly into the house. The roar of Shepherd’s car as it started rose jubilantly in the quiet street.