Hope of Happiness — 14
I
Franklin Mills was now on better terms with himself than at any time since Bruce Storrs’s appearance in town.
Open weather had made it possible for him to go to Deer Trail once or twice a week for a ride, and he walked several miles every day.
Leila had agreed to accompany him on a trip to Bermuda the first of February.
In his absence the machinery he had set in motion would be projecting the Hardens a little further into the social limelight without his appearing to be concerned in it.
He was hoping that the trip would serve effectually to break off Thomas’s attentions to Leila, and that within the next year he would see her engaged to Carroll.
Leila couldn’t be driven; to attempt to force the thing would be disastrous.
But the thought of her marrying Thomas, a divorced man, was abhorrent, while Carroll was in all ways acceptable.
What Shepherd lacked in force and experience, Carroll would bring into the family.
Mills was annoyed that he had ever entertained a thought that he could be denied anything in life that he greatly coveted, or deprived of the comfort and peace he had so long enjoyed.
He would prolong his Indian Summer; his last years should be his happiest.
He enjoyed the knowledge that he exercised, with so little trouble to himself, a real power in the community.
In a directors’ meeting no one spoke with quite his authoritative voice.
No other business man in town was so thoroughly informed in finance and economics as he.
He viewed the life of his city with the tranquil delight of a biologist who in the quiet of his laboratory studies specimens that have been brought to the slide without any effort on his own part.
And Mills liked to see men squirm--silly men who overreached themselves, pretentious upstarts who gestured a great deal with a minimum of accomplishment.
Blessed with both brains and money, he derived the keenest satisfaction in screening himself from contact with the vulgar while he participated in the game like an invisible master chess player....
Doctor Lindley had asked him to come in to St. Barnabas to look at the Mills Memorial window, which had been restored with Mills’s money.
He stopped on his way to the office a few days before Christmas and found Lindley busy in his study.
They went into the church and inspected the window, which was quite as good as new.
While they were viewing it Mrs. Torrence came in, her vivacity subdued to the spirit of the place.
She was on a committee to provide the Christmas decorations.
“You’re just the man I want to see,” she said to Mills.
“I was going to call you up.
There’s some stuff in your greenhouses I could use if you don’t mind.
” “Anything I’ve got!
Tell me what you want and I’ll have the people at the farm deliver it.
” “That’s fine!
I knew you’d be glad to help.
The florists are such robbers at Christmas.
” She scribbled a memorandum of her needs on an envelope and left them.
Mills stood with his hand resting on the Mills pew for a last glance at the transept window.
The church, which had survived all the changes compelled by the growth of the city, was to Mills less of a holy place than a monument to the past.
His grandfather and father had been buried from the church; here he had been married, and here Shepherd and Leila had been baptized.
Leila would want a church wedding....
His thoughts transcribed a swift circle; then, remembering that the rector was waiting, he followed him into the vestry.
“Can’t you come in for a talk?
” asked Lindley after Mills had expressed his gratification that the window had been repaired so successfully.
“No; I see there are people waiting for you.
” Mills glanced at a row of men and women of all ages--a discouraged-looking company ranged along the wall outside the study door.
One woman with a shawl over her head coughed hideously as she tried to quiet a dirty child.
“These people want advice or other help?
I suppose there’s no end to your work.
” “It’s my business to help them,” the rector replied.
“They’re all strangers--I never saw any of them before.
I rather like that--their sense of the church standing ready to help them.
” “If they ask for money, what do you do?
” asked Mills practically.
“Is there a fund?
” “Well, I have a contingency fund--yes.
Being here in the business district, I have constant calls that I don’t feel like turning over to the charity society.
I deal with them right here the best I can.
I make mistakes, of course.
” “How much have you in hand now?
” Mills asked bluntly.
The bedraggled child had begun to whimper, and the mother, in hoarse whispers, was attempting to silence it.
“Well, I did have about four dollars,” laughed Lindley, “but Mrs. Torrence handed me a hundred this morning.
” “I’ll send you a check for a thousand for these emergency cases.
When it gets low again, let me know.
” “That’s fine, Mills!
I can cheer a good many souls with a thousand dollars.
This is generous of you, indeed!
” “Oh--Lindley!
” Mills had reached the street door when he paused and retraced his steps.
“Just a word--sometime ago in my office I talked to you in a way I’ve regretted.
I’m afraid I wasn’t quite--quite just, to you and the church--to organized religion.
I realize, of course, that the church----” “The church,” said Lindley smilingly, “the church isn’t these walls;
it’s here!
” He tapped his breast lightly.
“It’s in your heart and mine.
” “That really simplifies the whole thing!
” Mills replied, and with a little laugh he went on to his office.
He thought it fine of the minister to give audience to the melancholy suppliants who sought him for alms and counsel.
He didn’t envy Lindley his job, but it had to be done by someone.
Lindley was really a very good fellow indeed, Mills reflected--a useful man in the community, and not merely an agreeable table companion and witty after-dinner speaker.
II
Before he read his mail Mills dispatched the check for a thousand dollars by special messenger.
It was a pleasure to help Lindley in his work.
A man who had to deal with such unpleasant specimens of humanity as collected at Lindley’s door shouldn’t be disregarded.
He remembered having seen Lindley driving about in a rattletrap machine that was a disgrace to the parish and the town.
It was a reflection upon St. Barnabas that its rector was obliged to go about his errands in so disreputable a car.
When Carroll came in with some reports Mills told him to see Henderson and order a Plantagenet for Lindley to be delivered at the clergyman’s house Christmas morning.
Carroll reported a court decision in Illinois sustaining the validity of some municipal bonds in which Mills had invested.
“Christmas presents coming in early,” Mills remarked as he read the telegram.
“I thought I was stung there.
” He approved of the world and its ways.
It was a pretty good world, after all; a world in which he wielded power, as he liked to wield it, quietly, without subjecting himself to the fever and fret of the market place.
Among other memoranda Carroll had placed on his desk was a list of women--old friends of Mrs. Mills--to whom he had sent flowers every Christmas since her death.
The list was kept in the office files from year to year to guard against omissions.
Sentiment.
Mills liked to believe himself singularly blessed with sentiment.
He admired himself for this fidelity to his wife’s old friends.
They probably spoke to one another of these annual remembrances as an evidence of the praiseworthy feeling he entertained for the old times.
“You told me to keep on picking up Rogers Trust whenever it was in the market,” said Carroll.
“Gurley called up yesterday and asked if you wanted any more.
I’ve got two hundred shares here--paid three eighteen.
They’re closing the transfer books tomorrow so I went ahead without consulting you.
” “That part of it’s all right,” Mills remarked, scanning the certificate.
“Who’s selling this?
” “It was in Gurley’s name--he’d bought it himself.
” “A little queer,” Mills remarked.
“There were only a few old stockholders who had blocks of two hundred--Larsen, Skinner, Saintsbury; and Shep and Leila had the same amount.
None of them would be selling now.
Suppose you step over to the Trust Company and see where Gurley got this.
It makes no particular difference--I’m just a little curious.
There’s been no talk about the merger--no gossip?
” “Nothing that I’ve heard.
I’m pretty sure Gurley had no inkling of it.
If he had, of course he wouldn’t have let go at the price he asked.
” When Carroll went out Mills took a turn across the floor.
Before resuming his chair he stood for a moment at the window looking off toward the low hills vaguely limned on the horizon.
His mood had changed.
He greatly disliked to be puzzled.
And he was unable to account for the fact that Gurley, a broker with whom he rarely transacted any business, had become possessed of two hundred shares of Roger Trust just at this time.
Larsen, Skinner and Saintsbury were all in the secret of the impending merger with the Central States Company.
There was Shepherd; he hadn’t told Shepherd, but there had been no reason why he should tell Shepherd any more than he would have made a confidante of Leila, who probably had forgotten that she owned the stock.
Having acquired two-thirds of the Rogers shares, all that was necessary was to call a meeting of the stockholders and put the thing through in accordance with the formula already carefully prepared by his lawyers.
When Carroll came back he placed a memorandum on Mills’s desk and started to leave the room.
“Just a moment, Carroll”--Mills eyed the paper carefully.
“So it was Shep who sold to Gurley--is that right?
” “Yes,” Carroll assented.
“Gurley only held it a day before he offered it to me.
” “Shepherd--um--did Shep tell you he wanted to sell?
” “No; he never mentioned it,” Carroll replied, not relishing Mills’s inquiries.
“Call Shep and tell him to stop in this afternoon on his way home, and--Carroll”--Mills detained his secretary to impress him with his perfect equanimity--“call Mrs. Rawlings and ask how the Judge is.
I
understand he’s had a second stroke.
I hate to see these older men going----” “Yes, the Judge has been a great figure,” Carroll replied perfunctorily.
Carroll was troubled.
He was fond of Shepherd Mills, recognized the young man’s fine qualities and sympathized with his high aims.
There was something pitiful in the inability of father and son to understand each other.
And he was not deceived by Franklin Mills’s characteristic attempt to conceal his displeasure at Shepherd’s sale of the stock.
It was evident from the manner in which the stock had passed through Gurley’s hands that Shepherd wished to hide the fact that he was selling.
Poor Shep!
There could have been no better illustration of his failure to understand his father than this.
Carroll had watched much keener men than Shepherd Mills attempt to deceive Franklin Mills.
Just why Shepherd should have sold the stock Carroll couldn’t imagine.
Constance had, perhaps, been overreaching herself.
No matter what had prompted the sale, Mills would undoubtedly make Shepherd uncomfortable about it--not explosively, for Mills never lost his perfect self-control--but with his own suave but effective method.
Carroll wished there were something he could do to save Shep from the consequences of his folly in attempting to hide from Franklin Mills a transaction so obviously impossible of concealment.
III
Shepherd entered his father’s office as he always did, nervous and apprehensive.
“Well, Father, how’s everything with you today?
” he asked with feigned ease.
“All right, Shep,” Mills replied pleasantly as he continued signing letters.
“Everything all right at the plant?
” “Everything running smoothly, Father.
” “That’s good.
” Mills applied the blotter to the last signature and rang for the stenographer.
When the young woman had taken the letters away Mills filled in the assignment on the back of the certificate of stock in the Rogers Company which Carroll had brought him that morning and pushed it across the desk.
“You seem to have sold your two hundred shares in the Rogers Trust, Shep--the two hundred you got from your mother’s estate.
” “Why, yes, Father,” Shepherd stammered, staring at the certificate.
There was no evidence of irritation in his father’s face; one might have thought that Mills was mildly amused by something.
“You had a perfect right to dispose of it, of course.
I’m just a trifle curious to know why you didn’t mention it to me.
It seemed just a little--a little--unfriendly, that’s all.
” “No, Father; it wasn’t that!
” Shepherd replied hastily.
It had not occurred to him that his father would discover the sale so soon.
While he hadn’t in so many words asked Gurley to consider the transaction a confidential matter, he thought he had conveyed that idea to the broker.
He felt the perspiration creeping out on his face; his hands trembled so that he hid them in his pockets.
Mills, his arms on the desk, was playing with a glass paper weight.
“How much did Gurley give you for it?
” he asked.
“I sold it at two seventy-five,” Shepherd answered.
The air of the room seemed weighted with impending disaster.
An inexorable fate had set a problem for him to solve, and his answers, he knew, exposed his stupidity.
It was like a nightmare in which he saw himself caught in a trap without hope of escape.
“It’s worth five hundred,” said Mills with gentle indulgence.
“But Gurley, in taking advantage of you, blundered badly.
I bought it from him at three eighteen.
And just to show you that I’m a good sport”--Mills smiled as he reflected that he had never before applied the phrase to himself--“I’m going to sell it back to you at the price Gurley paid you.
And here’s a blank check,--we can close the matter right now.
” Mills pretended to be looking over some papers while Shepherd wrote the check, his fingers with difficulty moving the pen.
A crisis was at hand; or was it a crisis?
His fear of his father, his superstitious awe of Franklin Mills’s supernatural prescience numbed his will.
The desk seemed to mark a wide gulf between them.
He had frequently rehearsed, since his talk with Constance, the scene in which he would defend the building of the clubhouse for the battery employees; but he was unprepared for this discovery of his purpose.
He had meant to seize some opportunity, preferably when he could drive his father to the battery plant and show him the foundations of the clubhouse, for disclosing the fact that he was going ahead, spending his own money.
It hadn’t occurred to him that Gurley might sell the stock to his father.
He had made a mess of it.
He felt himself cowering, weak and ineffectual, before another of those velvety strokes with which his father was always able to defeat him.
“You’d better go in early tomorrow and get a new certificate; they’re closing the transfer books.
The Rogers is merging with the Central States--formal announcement will be made early in the new year.
The combination will make a powerful company.
The Rogers lately realized very handsomely on some doubtful securities that had been charged off several years ago.
It was known only on the inside.
Gurley thought he was making a nice turn for himself, but you see he wasn’t so clever after all!
” Shepherd shrank further into himself.
It was he who was not clever!
He hoped to be dismissed like a presumptuous schoolboy caught in an attempt to evade the rules.
Franklin Mills, putting aside the crystal weight, had taken up the ivory paper knife and was drawing it slowly through his shapely, well-kept hands.
“I suppose it’s none of my business, Shep, but just why did you sell that stock?
It was absolutely safe; and I thought that as it came to you from your mother, and her father had been one of the original incorporators, you would have some sentiment about keeping it.
You’re not embarrassed in any way, are you?
If you’re not able to live within your income you ought to come to me about it.
You can hardly say that I haven’t always stood ready to help when you ran short.
” “Well, no, Father; it wasn’t that.
The fact is--well, to tell the truth----” Mills was always annoyed by Shepherd’s stammering.
He considered it a sign of weakness in his son; something akin to a physical blemish.
Shepherd frowned and with a jerk of the head began again determinedly, speaking slowly.
“I wanted to build that clubhouse for the factory people.
I felt that they deserved it.
You refused to help; I couldn’t make you understand how I felt about it.
I meant to build it myself--pay for it with my own money.
So I sold my Rogers stock.
I thought after I got the thing started you wouldn’t object.
You see----” Shepherd’s eyes had met his father’s gaze, bent upon him coldly, and he ceased abruptly.
“Oh, that’s why you sold!
My dear boy, I’m surprised and not a little grieved that you should think of doing a thing like that.
It’s not--not quite----” “Not quite straight!
” Shepherd flung the words at him, a gleam of defiance in his eyes.
“Well, all right!
We’ll say it wasn’t square.
But I did it!
And you’ve beaten me.
You’ve shown me I’m a fool.
I suppose that’s what I am.
I don’t see things as you do; I wanted to help those people--give them a little cheer--brighten their lives--make them more contented!
But you couldn’t see that!
You don’t care for what I think;
you treat me as though I were a stupid child.
I’m only a figurehead at the plant.
When you ask me questions about the business you do it just to check me up--you’ve already got the answers from Fields.
Oh, I know it!
I know what a failure I am!
” He had never before spoken so to his father.
Amazed that he had gotten through with it, he was horror struck.
He sank back in his chair, waiting for the sharp reprimand, the violent retort he had invited.
It would have been a relief if his father had broken out in a violent tirade.
But Mills had never been more provokingly calm.
“I’m sorry, Shep, that you have this bitterness in your heart.
” Mills’s tone was that of a man who has heard forbearingly an unjust accusation and proceeds patiently to justify himself.
“I wouldn’t have you think I don’t appreciate your feeling about labor; that’s fine.
But I thought you accepted my reasons for refusing.
I’ve studied these things for years.
I believe in dealing justly with labor, but we’ve got to be careful about mixing business and philanthropy.
If you’ll just think it over you’ll see that for yourself.
We’ve got to be sensible.
I’m old-fashioned, I suppose, in my way of thinking, but----” His deprecatory gesture was an appeal to his son to be merciful to a sire so hopelessly benighted.
Shepherd had hardly taken in what his father said.
Once more it was borne in upon him that he was no match for his father.
His anger had fallen upon Franklin Mills as impotently as a spent wave breaking upon a stone wall.
“Well, I guess that’s all,” he said faintly.
“One thing more, Shep.
There’s another matter I want to speak of.
It’s occurred to me the past year that you are not happy at the battery plant.
Frankly, I don’t believe you’re quite adapted to an industrial career.
The fact is you’re just a little too sensitive, too impressionable to deal with labor.
” Mills smiled to neutralize any sting that might lurk in the remark.
“I think you’d be happier somewhere else.
Now I want someone to represent me in the trust company after the merger goes into effect.
Carroll is to be the vice-president and counsel, perhaps ultimately the president.
Fleming did much to build up the Rogers and he will continue at the head of the merged companies for the present.
But he’s getting on in years and is anxious to retire.
Eventually you and Carroll will run the thing.
I never meant for you to stay in the battery plant--that was just for the experience.
Fields will take your place out there.
It’s fitting that you should be identified with the trust company.
I’ve arranged to have you elected a vice-president when we complete the reorganization next month--a fine opportunity for you, Shep.
I hope this meets with your approval.
” Shepherd nodded a bewildered, grudging assent.
This was the most unexpected of blows.
In spite of the fact that his authority at the battery plant was, except as to minor routine matters, subordinate to that of Fields, he enjoyed his work.
He had made many friends among the employees and found happiness in counseling and helping them in their troubles.
He would miss them.
To go into a trust company would mean beginning a new apprenticeship in a field that in no way attracted him.
He felt humiliated by the incidental manner of his dismissal from one place and appointment to another.
His father went on placidly, speaking of the bright prospects of the trust company, which would be the strongest institution of the kind in the State.
There were many details to be arranged, but the enlargement of the Rogers offices to accommodate the combined companies was already begun, and Shepherd was to be ready to make the change on the first of February.
Before he quite realized it his father had glided away from the subject and was speaking of social matters--inquiring about a reception someone was giving the next night.
Shepherd picked up his hat and stared at it as though not sure that it belonged to him.
His father walked round the desk and put out his hand.
“You know, Shep, there’s nothing I have so much at heart as the welfare of my children.
You married the girl you wanted; I’ve given you this experience in the battery company, which will be of value to you in your new position, and now I’m sure you’ll realize my best hopes for you in what I believe to be a more suitable line of work.
I want you always to remember it of me that I put the happiness of my children before every other consideration.
” “Yes, Father.
” Shepherd passed out slowly through the door that opened directly into the hall and, still dazed, reached the street.
He wandered about, trying to remember where he had parked his car.
The city in which he was born had suddenly become strange to him.
He dreaded going home and confessing to Constance that once more he had been vanquished by his father.
Constance would make her usual effort to cheer him, laugh a little at the ease with which his father had frustrated him; tell him not to mind.
But her very good humor would be galling.
He knew what she would think of him.
He must have time to think before facing Constance.
If he went to the club it would be to look in upon men intent upon their rhum or bridge, who would give him their usual abstracted greeting.
They cared nothing for him: he was only the son of a wealthy father who put him into jobs where he would do the least harm!
IV
He must talk to someone.
His heart hungered for sympathy and kindness.
If his father would only treat him as he would treat any other man;
not as a weakling, a bothersome encumbrance!
There was cruelty in the reflection that, envied as no doubt he was as the prospective heir to a fortune and the inheritor of an honored name, there was no friend to whom he could turn in his unhappiness.
He passed Doctor Lindley, who was talking animatedly to two men on a corner.
A man of God, a priest charged with the care of souls; but Shepherd felt no impulse to lay his troubles before the rector of St. Barnabas, much as he liked him.
Lindley would probably rebuke him for rebelling against his father’s judgments.
But there must be someone....
His heart leaped as he thought of Bruce Storrs.
The young architect, hardly more than an acquaintance, had in their meetings impressed him by his good sense and manliness.
He would see Storrs.
