It was ten days later that a communication from the Laconia War Memorial Association gave warning that the stipulations for the contesting architects were being altered, and in another week Bruce received the supplemental data sent out to all the contestants. The amount to be expended had been increased by an unexpected addition to the private subscriptions.
In one of his first fits of homesickness Bruce had subscribed for the Laconia Examiner to keep in touch with affairs in his native town. The paper printed with a proud flourish the news of the augmentation of the fund. One hundred thousand dollars had been contributed through a New York trust company by “a citizen” whose identity for good and sufficient reasons was not to be disclosed. The trust company’s letter as quoted in the Examiner recited that the donation was from a “patriotic American who, recognizing the fine spirit in which Laconia had undertaken the memorial and the community’s desire that it should be an adequate testimony to the valor and sacrifice of American youth, considered it a high privilege to be permitted to assist.”
Mills! Though the Laconia newspaper was evidently wholly at sea as to the identity of the contributor, Bruce was satisfied that Mills was the unknown donor. And he resented it. The agreeable impression left by Mills the evening they discussed the plans was dispelled by this unwarranted interference. Bruce bitterly regretted having taken Mills into his confidence. Mills’s interest had pleased him, but he had never dreamed that the man might feel moved to add to the attractiveness of the contest by a secret contribution to the fund. He felt strongly moved to abandon the whole thing and but for the embarrassment of explaining himself to Freeman he would have done so. But the artist in him prevailed. Mills had greatly broadened the possibilities of the contest and in a few days Bruce fell to work with renewed enthusiasm.
He was living in Laconia again, so engrossed did he become in his work. He dined with Carroll now and then, enjoyed long evenings at the Freemans’ and kept touch with the Hendersons; but he refused so many invitations to the winter functions that Dale protested. He dropped into the Central States Trust Company now and then to observe Shep in his new rôle of vice-president. Shep was happier in the position than he had expected to be. Carroll was seeing to it that he had real work to do, work that was well within his powers. He had charge of the savings department and was pleased when his old friends among the employees of the battery plant looked him up and opened accounts. The friends of the Mills family, where they took note of Shep’s transfer at all, saw in it a promotion.
Bruce, specially importuned by telephone, went to one of Constance’s days at home, which drew a large attendance by reason of the promised presence of an English novelist whose recent severe criticism of American society and manners had made him the object of particular adoration to American women readers. Bud Henderson, who had carried a flask to the tea, went about protesting against the consideration shown the visitor. If, he said, an American writer criticized American women in any such fashion he would be lynched, but let an Englishman do it and women would steal the money out of their children’s banks to buy his books and lecture tickets. So spake Bud. If Bud had had two flasks he would have broken up the tea; restricted as he was, his protest against the Briton took the form of an utterly uncalled for attack upon the drama league delivered to an aunt of Maybelle’s who was president of the local society—a strong Volsteadian who thought Bud vulgar, which at times Bud, by any high social standard, indubitably was. However, if amid so many genuflections the eminent Briton was disturbed by Bud’s evil manners or criticisms, Bud possibly soothed his feelings by following him upstairs when the party was dispersing and demonstrating the manner in which American law is respected by drawing flasks from nine out of fifteen overcoats laid out on Constance’s guest room bed and pouring half a pint of excellent bourbon into the unresisting man of letters.
This function was only an interlude in the city’s rather arid social waste. The local society, Bruce found, was an affair of curiously close groupings. The women of the ancestral crowd were so wary of the women who had floated in on the tide of industrial expansion that one might have thought the newcomers were, in spite of their prosperity, afflicted with leprosy....
While Bruce might bury himself from the sight of others who had manifested a friendly interest in him, Helen Torrence was not so easily denied. She had no intention of going alone to the February play of the Dramatic Club. She telephoned Bruce to this effect and added that he must dine with her that evening and take her to the club. Bud had already sent him an admission card with a warning not to come if anything better offered, such as sitting up with a corpse—this being Bud’s manner of speaking of the organization whose politics he dominated and whose entertainments he would not have missed for a chance to dine with royalty.
Bruce, having reached the Torrence house, found Millicent there.
“You see what you get for being good!” cried Helen, noting the surprise and pleasure in Bruce’s face as he appeared in her drawing room.
“I thought you’d probably run when you saw me,” said Millicent. “You passed me at the post office door yesterday and looked straight over my head. I never felt so small in my life.”