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.