VI
The happy life manifestly was not to be won merely by going to church. At the back of his mind, with all his agnosticism, he had entertained a superstitious belief that in Christianity there was some secret of happiness revealed to those who placed themselves receptively close to the throne of grace. This was evidently a mistake; or at least it was clear from the day’s experience that the boon was less easy of attainment than he had believed.
He recalled what the rector of St. Barnabas had said to him the morning he had gone in to inspect the Mills window—that walls do not make the church, that the true edifice is within man’s own breast. Lindley shouldn’t say things like that, to perplex the hearer, baffle him, create a disagreeable uneasiness! This hint of a God whose tabernacle is in every man’s heart was displeasing. Mills didn’t like the idea of carrying God around with him. To grant any such premise would be to open the way for doubts as to his omnipotence in his own world; and Franklin Mills was not ready for that. He groped for a deity who wouldn’t be a nuisance, like a disagreeable guest in the house, upsetting the whole establishment! God should be a convenience, subject to call like a doctor or a lawyer. But how could a man reach Lindley’s God, who wasn’t in the church at all, but within man himself?
In his pondering he came back to his own family. He didn’t know Shepherd; he didn’t know Leila. And this was all wrong. He knew Millicent Harden better than he knew either of his children.
He had friends who were good pals with their children, and he wondered how they managed it. Maybe it was the spirit of the age that was the trouble. It was a common habit to fix responsibility for all the disturbing moral and social phenomena of the time on the receding World War, or the greed for gain, or the diminished zeal for religion. This brought him again to God; uncomfortable—the reflection that thought in all its circling and tangential excursions does somehow land at that mysterious door.... Leila must be dealt with. She was much too facile in dissimulation. He was confident that no other Mills had ever been like that.
When they reached home he followed Leila into her room. He took the cigarette she offered him and sat down in the low rocking chair she pulled out for him—a befrilled feminine contrivance little to his taste. Utterly at a loss as to how he could most effectively reprimand her for her attempted deception and give her to understand that he would never countenance a marriage with Thomas, he was relieved when she took the initiative.
“I was naughty, Dada!” she said. “But Freddy was going over to the Burtons’ tonight and I had told him I’d be there—that’s all. I wasn’t just crazy about going to the farm.”
She held a match for him, extinguished it with a flourish, and after lighting her own cigarette dropped down on the chaise longue with a weary little sigh. If she had remained standing or had sat down properly in a chair, his rôle as the stern, aggrieved parent would have been simpler. Leila was so confoundedly difficult, so completely what he wished she was not!
“About this Thomas——” he began.
“Oh, pshaw! Don’t you bother a little tiny bit about him. I’m just teasing him along.”
“I must say your talk over the telephone sounded pretty serious to me!”
“Oh, bunk! All the girls talk to men that way these days—it doesn’t mean anything!”
“What’s that? You say the words you used don’t mean anything?”
“Not a thing, Dada. If you’d tell a man you didn’t love him he’d be sure to think you did!”
“A dangerous idea, I should think.”
“Oh, no! Everything’s different from what it was when you were young!”
“Yes; I’ve noticed that!” he replied drily. “But seriously, Leila, this meeting a man—a man we know little about—at other people’s houses won’t do! You ought to have more self-respect and dignity than that!”
“You’re making too much of it, Dada! It’s happened only two or three times. I thought you were sore about Freddy’s coming here so much, and I have met him other places—always perfectly proper places!”
“I should hope so!” he exclaimed with his first display of spirit. “But you can’t afford to go about with him. You’ve got to remember the community has a right to expect the best of you. You should think of your dear mother even if you don’t care for me!”
“Now, Dada!” She leveled her arm at him, the smoking cigarette in her slim fingers. “Don’t be silly; you know I adore you; I’ve always been perfectly crazy about you!”
She spoke in much the same tone she would have used in approving of a new suit of clothes he had submitted for inspection.
“Now, I have your promise——” he said, sitting up alertly in his chair.
“Promise, Dada?” she inquired, her thoughts far afield. “Oh, about Freddy! Well, if you’ll be happier I promise you now never to marry him. Frankly—frankly—I’m not going to marry anybody right away. When I get ready I’ll probably marry Arthur if some widow doesn’t snatch him first. But please don’t crowd me, Dada! If there is anything I hate it’s being crowded!”
“Nobody’s crowding you!” he said, feeling that she was once more eluding him.
“Then don’t push!” she laughed.
“Let’s not have any more nonsense,” he said. “I think you do a lot of things just to annoy me. It isn’t fair!”
“Why, Dada!” she exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I thought you liked being kidded. I kid all your old friends and it tickles ’em to death.”
“Go to bed!” he retorted, laughing in spite of himself.
She mussed his hair before kissing him good-night, but even as he turned away he could see that her thoughts were elsewhere.