In response to a direct question Bruce stated concisely the nature of his service. His colorless recital of the bare record brought a smile to Mills’s face.
“You’re like all the young fellows I’ve talked with—modest, even a little indifferent about it. I think if I’d been over there I should do some bragging!”
Still bewildered to find himself at Mills’s fireside, Bruce was wondering how soon he could leave; but Mills talked on in leisurely fashion of the phenomenal growth of the town and the opportunities it offered to young men. Bruce was ashamed of himself for not being more responsive; but Mills seemed content to ramble on, though carefully attentive to the occasional remarks Bruce roused himself to make. Bruce, with ample opportunity, observed Mills’s ways—little tricks of speech, the manner in which he smoked—lazily blowing rings at intervals and watching them waver and break—an occasional quick lifting of his well-kept hand to his forehead.
It was after they had been together for half an hour that Bruce noted that Mills, after meeting his gaze, would lift his eyes and look intently at something on the wall over the bookcases—something immediately behind Bruce and out of the range of his vision. It seemed not to be the unseeing stare of inattention; but whatever it was, it brought a look of deepening perplexity—almost of alarm—to Mills’s face. Bruce began to find this upward glance disconcerting, and evidently aware that his visitor was conscious of it, Mills got up and, with the pretence of offering his guest another cigarette, reseated himself in a different position.
“I must run along,” said Bruce presently. “The storm is letting up. I can easily foot it home.”
“Not at all! After keeping you till midnight I’ll certainly not send you out to get another wetting. There’s still quite a splash on the windows.”
He rang for the car before going downstairs, and while he was waiting for the chauffeur to answer on the garage extension of the house telephone, Bruce, from the fireplace, saw that it must have been a portrait—one of a number ranged along the wall—that had invited Mills’s gaze so frequently. It was the portrait of a young man, the work of a painstaking if not a brilliant artist. The clean-shaven face, the long, thick, curly brown hair, and the flowing scarf knotted under a high turn-over collar combined in an effect of quaintness.
There was something oddly familiar in the young man’s countenance. In the few seconds that Mills’s back was turned Bruce found himself studying it, wondering what there was about it that teased his memory—what other brow and eyes and clean-cut, firm mouth he had ever seen were like those of the young man who was looking down at him from Franklin Mills’s wall. And then it dawned upon him that the face was like his own—might, indeed, with a different arrangement of the hair, a softening of certain lines, pass for a portrait of himself.
Mills, turning from the telephone, remarked that the car was on the way.
“Ah!” he added quickly, seeing Bruce’s attention fixed on the portrait, “my father, at about thirty-five. There’s nothing of me there; I take after my mother’s side of the house. Father was taller than I and his features were cleaner cut. He died twenty years ago. I’ve always thought him a fine American type. Those other——”