The hope of happiness

by Meredith Nicholson

I

The day following his discovery of Leila Mills in the boathouse, Bruce remained in his apartment. He was not a little awed by the instinct that had led him to the river—the unlikeliest of places in which to seek the runaway girl. The poor little drugged body lying there in the cold room; her deep sigh and the touch of her hand on his face as he took her up, and more poignantly the look in Franklin Mills’s face when they met at the door, remained with him, and he knew that these were things he could never forget....

There was more of superstition and mysticism in his blood than he had believed. Lounging about his rooms, staring down at the bleak street as it whitened in a brisk snowfall, his thoughts ranged the wide seas of doubt and faith. Life was only a corridor between two doors of mystery. Petty and contemptible seemed the old familiar teachings about God. Men were not rejecting God; they were merely misled as to his nature. The spirit of man was only an infinitesimal particle of the spirit that was God. No other person he had ever talked with had offered so reasonable a solution of the problem as Millicent.

Again he went over their talk on the golf course. Millicent had the clue—the clue to a reality no less tangible and plausible because it was born of unreality. And here was the beginning of wisdom: to abandon the attempt to explain all things when so manifestly life would become intolerable if the walls of mystery through which man moves were battered down. As near as he was able to express it, the soul required room—all infinity, indeed, as the playground for its proper exercise. The freer a man’s spirit the greater its capacity for loving and serving its neighbor souls. Somewhere in the illimitable horizons of which Millicent dreamed it was imaginable that Something august and supreme dominated the universe—Something only belittled by every attempt to find a name for it....

Strange reflections for a healthy young mind in a stalwart, vigorous young body! Bruce hardly knew himself today. The scent of Leila’s hair as he bore her out of the boathouse had stirred a tenderness in his heart that was strange to him. He hoped Franklin Mills had dealt leniently with Leila. He had no idea what the man would do or say after finding his daughter in such a plight. He considered telephoning Mills’s house to ask about her, but dismissed the thought. His duty was discharged the moment he gave her into her father’s keeping; in all the circumstances an inquiry would be an impertinence.

Poor Leila! Poor, foolish, wilful, generous-hearted little girl! Her father was much too conspicuous for her little excursions among the shoals of folly to pass unremarked. Bruce found himself excusing and defending her latest escapade. She had taken refuge in the oblivion of alcohol as an escape from her troubles.... Something wrong somewhere. Shep and Leila both groping in the dark for the door of happiness and getting no help from their father in their search—a deplorable situation. Not altogether Franklin Mills’s fault; perhaps no one’s fault; just the way things happen, but no less tragic for all that.

Bruce asked the janitor to bring in his meals, content to be alone, looking forward to a long day in which to brood over his plans for the memorial. He was glad that he had not run away from Franklin Mills. It was much better to have remained in the town, and more comfortable to have met Mills and the members of his family than to have lived in the same community speculating about them endlessly without ever knowing them. He knew them now all too well! Even Franklin Mills was emerging from the mists; Bruce began to think he knew what manner of man Mills was. Shepherd had opened his own soul to him; and Leila—Bruce made allowances for Leila and saw her merits with full appreciation. One thing was certain: he did not envy Franklin Mills or his children their lot; he coveted nothing they possessed. He thanked his stars that he had had the wit to reject Mills’s offer to help him into a business position of promise; to be under obligation of any sort to Franklin Mills would be intolerable. Through the afternoon he worked desultorily on his sketches of the Laconia memorial, enjoying the luxury of undisturbed peace. He began combining in a single drawing his memoranda of details; was so pleased with the result in crayon that he began a pen and ink sketch and was still at this when Henderson appeared, encased in a plaid overcoat that greatly magnified his circumference.

“What’s responsible for this!” Bruce demanded.

“Thanks for your hearty greeting! I called your office at five-minute intervals all day and that hard-boiled telephone girl said you hadn’t been there. All the clubs denied knowledge of your whereabouts, so I clambered into my palatial Plantagenet and sped out, expecting to find you sunk in mortal illness. You must stop drinking, son.”

“That’s a good one from you! Please don’t sit on those drawings!”