He spent an hour unpacking and overhauling his belongings, wrote notes
to his banker friend in Laconia and to the cousin there with whom he
had maintained a correspondence since he first went away to school.
The pencil with which he idly scribbled on a sheet of hotel paper
traced his name unconsciously. _Bruce Storrs._
It was not his name; he had no honest right to it. He had speculated
many times in his wanderings as to whether he shouldn’t change it,
but this would lead to endless embarrassments. Now, with his thoughts
crystalized by the knowledge that this other man who had been his
mother’s lover was within reach, he experienced a strong sense of
loyalty to the memory of the man he had called father. It would be a
contemptible thing to abandon the name of one who had shown him so
tender an affection and understood so perfectly his needs and aims.
Somewhere among the several hundred thousand people of the city
about him was the man his mother had described. In the quiet room he
experienced suddenly a feeling of loneliness. Usually in his wanderings
he had stopped at cheap lodging houses, and the very comfort of his
surroundings now added to his feeling of strangeness in having at last
arrived at a goal which marked not merely the end of his physical
wandering, but the termination of a struggle with his own spirit.
He sent down for the evening papers and found himself scanning
carefully the local news, thinking that he might find some clue to the
activities of Franklin Mills.
His attention was immediately caught by the caption, “Franklin Mills
Sells Site of Old Homestead to Trust Company.” The name fell like a
blow upon his consciousness. He seized the telephone book and hurriedly
turned the pages.
Mills Franklin--r 5800 Jefferson Ave...King 1322
Mills Franklin--1821 First Ntl Bnk....Main 2222
He stared at the two lines till they were a blur before his eyes. There
was but one man of the name in the directory; there could be no mistake
as to his identity.
It was a disconcerting thought that by calling these numbers he might
at any time hear Franklin Mills’s voice. The idea both fascinated and
repelled him. What, after all, had he to do with Franklin Mills?
He turned to the newspaper and reread the report of the real estate
transaction, then opened to the personal and society page, where he
found this item:
Miss Leila Mills of Jefferson Avenue gave a luncheon yesterday at the
Faraway Country Club for her house guest, Miss Helene Ridgeway of
Cincinnati. The decorations were purple asters and pink roses.
Helene Ridgeway he knew; she had been the college chum of one of his
Laconia cousins. He had not realized the strain he had undergone in the
past year till he saw the familiar name. The nightmare pictures of his
year-long speculations faded; whatever else Mills might be he was at
least a reputable citizen, and this was something to be thankful for;
and obviously he was not poor and helpless.
The Leila referred to must be Mills’s daughter, and the same blood ran
in her veins as in his own. Bruce flung the paper away; touched his
forehead, found it covered with perspiration. He paced the floor till
he had quieted himself, paused at the window, finding relief in the
lights and sounds of the street, the bells and whistles of trains at
the railway station somewhere in the distance. The world surged round
him, indifferent to his hopes and aims and fears. He must keep tight
hold of himself....
His mother had urged him to think kindly of Franklin Mills; and yet,
now that the man was within reach, a contempt that bordered upon
hatred filled his heart. For his mother his love turned for the moment
to pity. He recalled the look she had bent upon him at times when he
and his putative father had talked happily together. John Storrs had
lavished an unusual devotion upon his wife to the end of his life. The
wrong done him seemed monstrous as Bruce thought of it, remembering
Storrs’s pride in him, the sympathetic interest he had taken in his
education, the emotion with which they had parted when Bruce went away
to war. There was a vast pathos in all this--in the very ignorance of
his wife’s infidelity that John Storrs had carried to his grave.