By a signal passed from one to the other they began feigning to ignore
her. Constance said she was going; Bud, Whitford and Thomas joined
Bruce at the door where he was saying good-night to Mrs. Torrence.
Leila was not so tipsy but that she understood what they were doing.
“Think you can freeze me out, do you? Well, I’m not so easily friz! Mr.
What’s-your-name----” She fixed her eyes upon Bruce detainingly.
“Storrs,” Bruce supplied good-naturedly.
“You’re the only lady or gentleman in this room. I’m going to ask you
to take me home!”
“Certainly, Miss Mills!”
With a queenly air she took his arm. Henderson ran forward and opened
the door, the others hanging back, silent, afraid to risk a word that
might reopen the discussion and delay her departure.
“Shall I drive?” Bruce asked when they reached the curb.
“Yes, thanks; if you don’t mind.”
“Home?” he inquired as he got her car under way.
“I was just doing a little thinking,” she said deliberatingly. “It will
take only five minutes to run over to that little cafeteria on Fortieth
Street. Some coffee wouldn’t be a bad thing; and would you mind turning
the windshield--I’d like the air.”
“A good idea,” said Bruce, and stepped on the gas. The car had been
built for Leila’s special use and he had with difficulty squeezed
himself into the driver’s seat; but he quickly caught the hang of it.
He stopped a little beyond the cafeteria to avoid the lights of the
busy corner and brought out a container of hot coffee and paper cups.
“Like a picnic, isn’t it?” she said. “You won’t join me?”
She sipped the coffee slowly while he stood in the street beside her.
“There!” she said. “Thank you, ever so much. Quarter of seven?
Forty-five minutes to dress! Just shoot right along home now. Would
you mind driving over to the boulevard and going in that way? The air
certainly feels good.”
“Nothing would please me more,” he said, giving her a quick inspection
as they passed under the lights at a cross-street. She was staring
straight ahead, looking singularly young as she lay back with her hands
clasped in her lap.
“Constance was furious!” she said suddenly. “Well, I suppose she had a
right to be. I had no business getting lit.”
“Well, strictly speaking, you shouldn’t do it,” he said. It was not the
time nor place and he was not the proper person to lecture her upon
her delinquencies. But he had not been displeased that she chose him to
take her home, even though the choice was only a whim.
“You must think me horrid! This is the second time you’ve seen me teed
up too high.”
“I’ve seen a lot of other people teed up much higher! You’re perfectly
all right now?”
“Absolutely! That coffee fixed me; I’m beginning to feel quite bully. I
can go home now and jump into my joy rags and nobody will ever be the
wiser. This is an old folks’ party, but Dada always wants to exhibit me
when he feeds the nobility--can you see me?”
Her low laugh was entirely reassuring as to her sobriety, and he was
satisfied that she would be able to give a good account of herself at
her father’s table.
“Just leave the car on the drive,” she said as they reached the house.
“Maybe I can crawl up to my room without Dada knowing I’m late. I’m a
selfish little brute--to be leaving you here stranded! Well, thanks
awfully!”
He walked with her to the entrance and she was taking out her key when
Mills, in his evening clothes, opened the door.
“Leila! You’re late!” he exclaimed sharply. “Where on earth have you
been?”
“Just gadding about, as usual! But I’m in plenty of time, Dada. Please
thank Mr. Storrs for coming home with me. Good-night and thank you some
more!”
She darted into the house, leaving Bruce confronting her father.
“Oh, Mr. Storrs!” The emphasis on the name was eloquent of Mills’s
surprise that Bruce was on his threshold. Bruce had decided that any
explanations required were better left to Leila, who was probably an
adept in explanations. He was about to turn away when Mills stepped
outside.
“We’re entertaining tonight,” he said pleasantly. “I was a little
afraid something had happened to my daughter.”
A certain dignity of utterance marked his last words--my daughter. He
threw into the phrase every possible suggestion of paternal pride.
Bruce, halfway down the steps, paused until Mills had concluded his
remark. Then lifting his hat with a murmured good-night, he hurried
toward the gate. An irresistible impulse caused him to look back. Mills
remained just inside the entry, his figure clearly defined by the
overhead lights, staring toward the street. Seeing Bruce look back, he
went quickly into the house and the heavy door boomed upon him.
Bruce walked to the nearest street car line and rode downtown for
dinner. The fact that Mills was waiting at the door for his daughter
was not without its significance, hinting at a constant uneasiness for
her safety beyond ordinary parental solicitude. What Constance had
said that afternoon about Mills came back to him. He was oppressed by
a sense of something tragic in Mills’s life--the tragedy of a failure
that wore outwardly the guise of success.
In spite of a strong effort of will to obliterate these thoughts he
found his memory dragging into his consciousness odd little pictures
of Mills--fragmentary snapshots, more vivid and haunting than complete
portraits: the look Mills gave him the first time they met at the
Country Club; Mills’s shoulders and the white line of his collar above
his dinner coat as he left the Hardens’; and now the quick change from
irritation to relief and amiable courtesy when he admitted Leila.
Henderson and Millicent and now today Constance had given him hints
of Mills’s character, and Bruce found himself trying to reconcile
and unify their comments and fit them into his own inferences and
conclusions. The man was not without his fascinations as a subject for
analysis. Behind that gracious exterior there must be another identity
either less noble or finer than the man the world knew.... Before he
slept, Bruce found it necessary to combat an apprehension that, if he
continued to hear Mills dissected and analyzed, he might learn to pity
the man.