“Well, you’re not troubled about me any more!” he laughed. “A little while ago you thought Connie had designs on me! Has it got to be someone?”
“That’s exactly it! It’s got to be someone with Connie!”
But when he had left her and was driving on to his apartment it was of Millicent he thought, not of Constance and Whitford. It was astonishing how much freer he felt now that the Atlantic rolled between him and Franklin Mills.
III
Bruce, deeply engrossed in his work, was nevertheless aware that the performance of “The Beggar” had stimulated gossip about Constance Mills and Whitford. Helen Torrence continued to fret about it; Bud Henderson insisted on keeping Bruce apprised of it; Maybelle deplored and Dale Freeman pretended to ignore. The provincial mind must have exercise, and Bruce was both amused and disgusted as he found that the joint appearance of Constance and Whitford in Whitford’s one-act play had caused no little perturbation in minds that lacked nobler occupation or were incapable of any very serious thought about anything.
It had become a joke at the University Club that Bruce, who was looked upon as an industrious young man, gave so much time to Shepherd Mills. There was a doglike fidelity in Shep’s devotion that would have been amusing if it hadn’t been pathetic. Bud Henderson said that Shep trotted around after Bruce like a lame fox terrier that had attached itself to an Airedale for protection.
Shep, inspired perhaps by Bruce’s example, or to have an excuse for meeting him, had taken up handball. As the winter wore on this brought them together once or twice a week at the Athletic Club. One afternoon in March they had played their game and had their shower and were in the locker room dressing.
Two other men came in a few minutes later and, concealed by the lockers, began talking in low tones. Their voices rose until they were audible over half the room. Bruce began to hear names—first Whitford’s, then unmistakably Constance Mills was referred to. Shep raised his head as he caught his wife’s name. One of the voices was unmistakably that of Morton Walters, a young man with an unpleasant reputation as a gossip. Bruce dropped a shoe to warn the men that they were not alone in the room. But Walters continued, and in a moment a harsh laugh preluded the remark:
“Well, George takes his pleasure where he finds it. But if I were Shep Mills I certainly wouldn’t stand for it!”
Shep jumped up and started for the aisle, but Bruce stepped in front of him and walked round to where Walters and a friend Bruce didn’t know were standing before their lockers.