When he reached the street Bruce decided to walk the mile that lay
between the Hardens’ and his apartment. His second meeting with
Franklin Mills had left his mind in tumult. He was again beset by an
impulse to flee from the town, but this he fought and vanquished.
Happiness and peace were not to be won by flight. In his soldiering he
had never feared bodily injury, and at times when he had speculated
as to the existence of a soul he had decided that if he possessed
such a thing he would not suffer it to play the coward. But this
unexpected meeting at the Hardens’, which was likely to be repeated
if he continued his visits to the house, had shaken his nerve more
than he liked to believe possible. Millicent evidently admired Mills,
sympathized with him in his loneliness, was flattered perhaps by his
visits to her home in search of solace and cheer, or whatever it was
Mills sought.
The sky was overcast and a keen autumn wind whipped the overhanging
maples as Bruce strode homeward with head bent, his hands thrust deep
into the pockets of his overcoat. He hummed and whistled phrases of the
Parsifal, with his thoughts playing about Millicent’s head as she had
sat at the organ with the knight keeping watch above her. After all,
it was through beautiful things, man-made and God-made, as his mother
had taught him, that life found its highest realizations. In this idea
there was an infinite stimulus. Millicent had found for herself this
clue to happiness and was a radiant proof of its efficacy. It had been
a privilege to see her in her own house, to enjoy contact with her
questioning, meditative mind, and to lose himself in her entrancing
music.
The street was deserted and only a few of the houses he passed
showed lights. Bruce experienced again, as often in his night tramps
during the year of his exile, a happy sense of isolation. He was
so completely absorbed in his thoughts that he was unaware of the
propinquity of another pedestrian who was slowly approaching as though
as unheedful as he of the driving wind and the first fitful patter
of rain. They passed so close that their arms touched. Both turned,
staring blankly in the light of the street lamps, and muttered confused
apologies.
“Oh, Storrs!” Franklin Mills exclaimed, bending his head against the
wind.
“Sorry to have bumped into you, sir,” Bruce replied, and feeling that
nothing more was required of him, he was about to go on, but Mills said
quickly:
“We’re in for a hard rain. Come back to my house--it’s only half a
dozen blocks--and I’ll send you home.”
There was something of kindly peremptoriness in his tone, and Bruce, at
a loss for words with which to refuse, followed, thinking that he would
walk a block to meet the demands of courtesy and turn back. Mills,
forging ahead rapidly, complained good-naturedly of the weather.
“I frequently prowl around at night,” he explained; “I sleep better
afterwards.”
“I like a night walk myself,” Bruce replied.
“Not afraid of hold-ups? I was relieved to find it was you I ran into.
My daughter says I’m bound to get sandbagged some night.”
At the end of the first block both were obliged to battle against
the wind, which now drove the rain in furious gusts through the
intersecting streets. In grasping his hat, Mills dropped his stick, and
after picking it up, Bruce took hold of his arm for their greater ease
in keeping together. It would, he decided, be an ungenerous desertion
to leave him now, and so they arrived after much buffeting at Mills’s
door.
“That’s a young hurricane,” said Mills as he let himself in. “When
you’ve dried out a bit I’ll send you on in my car.”
In response to his ring a manservant appeared and carried away their
hats and overcoats to be dried. Mills at once led the way upstairs
to the library, where a fire had been kindled, probably against the
master’s return in the storm.
“Sit close and put your feet to the blaze. I think a hot drink would be
a help.”
Hot water and Scotch were brought and Mills laughingly assured Bruce
that he needn’t be afraid of the liquor.
“I had it long before Prohibition. Of course, everybody has to say
that!”
In his wildest speculations as to possible meetings with his father,
Bruce had imagined nothing like this. He was not only in Franklin
Mills’s house, but the man was graciously ministering to his comfort.
And Bruce, with every desire to resist, to refuse these courteous
offices, was meekly submitting. Mills, talking easily, with legs
stretched to the fire, sipped his drink contentedly while the storm
beat with mounting fury round the house.
“I think my son said you had been in the army; I should say that the
experience hadn’t done you any harm,” Mills remarked in his pleasant
voice.
“Quite the contrary, sir. The knocking about I got did me good.”
“I envy you young fellows the experience; it was a ghastly business,
but it must mean a lot in a man’s life to have gone through it.”
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----”
Bruce lent polite attention to Mills’s comments on the other portraits,
one representing his maternal grandfather and another a great-uncle
who had been killed in the Civil War. When they reached the lower
floor Mills opened the door of a reception room and turned on the frame
lights about a full-length portrait of a lady in evening dress.
“That is Mrs. Mills,” he said, “and an excellent likeness.”
He spoke in sophisticated terms of American portraiture as they went
to the hall where the servant was waiting with Bruce’s hat and coat. A
limousine was in the porte-cochère, and Mills stood on the steps until
Bruce got in.
“I thank you very much, Mr. Mills,” Bruce said, taking the hand Mills
extended.
“Oh, I owe you the thanks! I hope to see you again very soon!”
Mills on his way to his room found himself clinging to the stair rail.
When he had closed the door he drew his hand slowly across his eyes. He
had spoken with Marian Storrs’s son and the young man by an irony of
nature had the countenance, the high-bred air of Franklin Mills III. It
was astounding, this skipping for a generation of a type! It seemed to
Mills, after he had turned off the lights, that his father’s eyes--the
eyes of young Storrs--were still fixed upon him with a disconcerting
gravity.