I
IT had been almost too easy--that was young Millner’s first feeling,
as he stood again on the Spence door-step, the great moment of his
interview behind him, and Fifth Avenue rolling its grimy Pactolus at his
feet.
Halting there in the winter light, with the clang of the ponderous
vestibule doors in his ears, and his eyes carried down the perspective
of the packed interminable thoroughfare, he even dared to remember
Rastignac’s apostrophe to Paris, and to hazard recklessly under his
small fair moustache: “Who knows?”
He, Hugh Millner, at any rate, knew a good deal already: a good deal
more than he had imagined it possible to learn in half an hour’s talk
with a man like Orlando G. Spence; and the loud-rumouring city spread
out there before him seemed to grin like an accomplice who knew the
rest.
A gust of wind, whirling down from the dizzy height of the building on
the next corner, drove sharply through his overcoat and compelled him
to clutch at his hat. It was a bitter January day, a day of fierce light
and air, when the sunshine cut like icicles and the wind sucked one into
black gulfs at the street corners. But Millner’s complacency was like
a warm lining to his shabby coat, and heaving steadied his hat he
continued to stand on the Spence threshold, lost in the vision revealed
to him from the Pisgah of its marble steps. Yes, it was wonderful what
the vision showed him. ... In his absorption he might have frozen
fast to the door-step if the Rhadamanthine portals behind him had not
suddenly opened to let out a slim fur-coated figure, the figure, as he
perceived, of the youth whom he had caught in the act of withdrawal as
he entered Mr. Spence’s study, and whom the latter, with a wave of his
affable hand, had detained to introduce as “my son Draper.”
It was characteristic of the odd friendliness of the whole scene that
the great man should have thought it worth while to call back and name
his heir to a mere humble applicant like Millner; and that the heir
should shed on him, from a pale high-browed face, a smile of such
deprecating kindness. It was characteristic, equally, of Millner, that
he should at once mark the narrowness of the shoulders sustaining this
ingenuous head; a narrowness, as he now observed, imperfectly concealed
by the wide fur collar of young Spence’s expensive and badly cut coat.
But the face took on, as the youth smiled his surprise at their second
meeting, a look of almost plaintive good-will: the kind of look that
Millner scorned and yet could never quite resist.
“Mr. Millner? Are you--er--waiting?” the lad asked, with an intention
of serviceableness that was like a finer echo of his father’s resounding
cordiality.
“For my motor? No,” Millner jested in his frank free voice. “The fact
is, I was just standing here lost in the contemplation of my luck”--and
as his companion’s pale blue eyes seemed to shape a question, “my
extraordinary luck,” he explained, “in having been engaged as your
father’s secretary.”
“Oh,” the other rejoined, with a faint colour in his sallow cheek. “I’m
so glad,” he murmured: “but I was sure--” He stopped, and the two looked
kindly at each other.
Millner averted his gaze first, almost fearful of its betraying the
added sense of his own strength and dexterity which he drew from the
contrast of the other’s frailness.
“Sure? How could any one be sure? I don’t believe in it yet!” he laughed
out in the irony of his triumph.
The boy’s words did not sound like a mere civility--Millner felt in them
an homage to his power.
“Oh, yes: I was sure,” young Draper repeated. “Sure as soon as I saw
you, I mean.”
Millner tingled again with this tribute to his physical straightness and
bloom. Yes, he looked his part, hang it--he looked it!
But his companion still lingered, a shy sociability in his eye.
“If you’re walking, then, can I go along a little way?” And he nodded
southward down the shabby gaudy avenue.
That, again, was part of the high comedy of the hour--that Millner
should descend the Spence steps at young Spence’s side, and stroll down
Fifth Avenue with him at the proudest moment of the afternoon; O. G.
Spence’s secretary walking abroad with O. G. Spence’s heir! He had the
scientific detachment to pull out his watch and furtively note the hour.
Yes--it was exactly forty minutes since he had rung the Spence door-bell
and handed his card to a gelid footman, who, openly sceptical of his
claim to be received, had left him unceremoniously planted on the cold
tessellations of the vestibule.
“Some day,” Miller grinned to himself, “I think I’ll take that footman
as furnace-man--or to do the boots.” And he pictured his marble palace
rising from the earth to form the mausoleum of a footman’s pride.
Only forty minutes ago! And now he had his opportunity fast! And he
never meant to let it go! It was incredible, what had happened in the
interval. He had gone up the Spence steps an unknown young man, out of a
job, and with no substantial hope of getting into one: a needy young
man with a mother and two limp sisters to be helped, and a lengthening
figure of debt that stood by his bed through the anxious nights. And he
went down the steps with his present assured, and his future lit by the
hues of the rainbow above the pot of gold. Certainly a fellow who made
his way at that rate had it “in him,” and could afford to trust his
star.
Descending from this joyous flight he stooped his ear to the discourse
of young Spence.
“My father’ll work you rather hard, you know: but you look as if you
wouldn’t mind that.”
Millner pulled up his inches with the self-consciousness of the man who
had none to waste. “Oh, no, I shan’t mind that: I don’t mind any amount
of work if it leads to something.”
“Just so,” Draper Spence assented eagerly. “That’s what I feel. And
you’ll find that whatever my father undertakes leads to such awfully
fine things.”
Millner tightened his lips on a grin. He was thinking only of where the
work would lead him, not in the least of where it might land the eminent
Orlando G. Spence. But he looked at his companion sympathetically.
“You’re a philanthropist like your father, I see?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” They had paused at a crossing, and young Draper,
with a dubious air, stood striking his agate-headed stick against the
curb-stone. “I believe in a purpose, don’t you?” he asked, lifting his
blue eyes suddenly to Millner’s face.
“A purpose? I should rather say so! I believe in nothing else,” cried
Millner, feeling as if his were something he could grip in his hand and
swing like a club.
Young Spence seemed relieved. “Yes--I tie up to that. There _is_ a
Purpose. And so, after all, even if I don’t agree with my father on
minor points ...” He coloured quickly, and looked again at Millner. “I
should like to talk to you about this some day.”
Millner smothered another smile. “We’ll have lots of talks, I hope.”
“Oh, if you can spare the time--!” said Draper, almost humbly.
“Why, I shall be there on tap!”
“For father, not me.” Draper hesitated, with another self-confessing
smile. “Father thinks I talk too much--that I keep going in and out of
things. He doesn’t believe in analyzing: he thinks it’s destructive.
But it hasn’t destroyed my ideals.” He looked wistfully up and down the
clanging street. “And that’s the main thing, isn’t it? I mean, that
one should have an Ideal.” He turned back almost gaily to Millner. “I
suspect you’re a revolutionist too!”
“Revolutionist? Rather! I belong to the Red Syndicate and the Black
Hand!” Millner joyfully assented.
Young Draper chuckled at the enormity of the joke. “First rate! We’ll
have incendiary meetings!” He pulled an elaborately armorial watch from
his enfolding furs. “I’m so sorry, but I must say good-bye--this is my
street,” he explained. Millner, with a faint twinge of envy, glanced
across at the colonnaded marble edifice in the farther corner. “Going to
the club?” he said carelessly.
His companion looked surprised. “Oh, no: I never go _there_. It’s too
boring.” And he brought out, after one of the pauses in which he seemed
rather breathlessly to measure the chances of his listener’s indulgence:
“I’m just going over to a little Bible Class I have in Tenth Avenue.”
Millner, for a moment or two, stood watching the slim figure wind its
way through the mass of vehicles to the opposite corner; then he pursued
his own course down Fifth Avenue, measuring his steps to the rhythmic
refrain: “It’s too easy--it’s too easy--it’s too easy!”
His own destination being the small shabby flat off University Place
where three tender females awaited the result of his mission, he had
time, on the way home, after abandoning himself to a general sense
of triumph, to dwell specifically on the various aspects of his
achievement. Viewed materially and practically, it was a thing to be
proud of; yet it was chiefly on aesthetic grounds--because he had done
so exactly what he had set out to do--that he glowed with pride at the
afternoon’s work. For, after all, any young man with the proper “pull”
might have applied to Orlando G. Spence for the post of secretary, and
even have penetrated as far as the great man’s study; but that he, Hugh
Millner, should not only have forced his way to this fastness, but
have established, within a short half hour, his right to remain there
permanently: well, this, if it proved anything, proved that the first
rule of success was to know how to live up to one’s principles.
“One must have a plan--one must have a plan,” the young man murmured,
looking with pity at the vague faces which the crowd bore past him, and
feeling almost impelled to detain them and expound his doctrine. But the
planlessness of average human nature was of course the measure of his
opportunity; and he smiled to think that every purposeless face he met
was a guarantee of his own advancement, a rung in the ladder he meant to
climb.
Yes, the whole secret of success was to know what one wanted to do, and
not to be afraid to do it. His own history was proving that already.
He had not been afraid to give up his small but safe position in
a real-estate office for the precarious adventure of a private
secretaryship; and his first glimpse of his new employer had convinced
him that he had not mistaken his calling. When one has a “way” with
one--as, in all modesty, Millner knew he had--not to utilize it is a
stupid waste of force. And when he had learned that Orlando G. Spence
was in search of a private secretary who should be able to give him
intelligent assistance in the execution of his philanthropic schemes,
the young man felt that his hour had come. It was no part of his plan
to associate himself with one of the masters of finance: he had a notion
that minnows who go to a whale to learn how to grow bigger are likely to
be swallowed in the process. The opportunity of a clever young man
with a cool head and no prejudices (this again was drawn from life) lay
rather in making himself indispensable to one of the beneficent rich,
and in using the timidities and conformities of his patron as the means
of his scruples about formulating these principles to himself. It
was not for nothing that, in his college days, he had hunted the
hypothetical “moral sense” to its lair, and dragged from their
concealment the various self-advancing sentiments dissembled under its
edifying guise. His strength lay in his precocious insight into the
springs of action, and in his refusal to classify them according to the
accepted moral and social sanctions. He had to the full the courage of
his lack of convictions.
To a young man so untrammelled by prejudice it was self-evident that
helpless philanthropists like Orlando G. Spence were just as much the
natural diet of the strong as the lamb is of the wolf. It was pleasanter
to eat than to be eaten, in a world where, as yet, there seemed to be no
third alternative; and any scruples one might feel as to the temporary
discomfort of one’s victim were speedily dispelled by that larger
scientific view which took into account the social destructiveness
of the benevolent. Millner was persuaded that every individual woe
mitigated by the philanthropy of Orlando G. Spence added just so much
to the sum-total of human inefficiency, and it was one of his favourite
subjects of speculation to picture the innumerable social evils that may
follow upon the rescue of one infant from Mount Taygetus.
“We’re all born to prey on each other, and pity for suffering is one of
the most elementary stages of egotism. Until one has passed beyond, and
acquired a taste for the more complex forms of the instinct--”
He stopped suddenly, checked in his advance by a sallow wisp of a dog
which had plunged through the press of vehicles to hurl itself between
his legs. Millner did not dislike animals, though he preferred that they
should be healthy and handsome. The dog under his feet was neither. Its
cringing contour showed an injudicious mingling of races, and its
meagre coat betrayed the deplorable habit of sleeping in coal-holes
and subsisting on an innutritious diet. In addition to these physical
disadvantages, its shrinking and inconsequent movements revealed a
congenital weakness of character which, even under more favourable
conditions, would hardly have qualified it to become a useful member of
society; and Millner was not sorry to notice that it moved with a limp
of the hind leg that probably doomed it to speedy extinction.
The absurdity of such an animal’s attempting to cross Fifth Avenue at
the most crowded hour of the afternoon struck him as only less great
than the irony of its having been permitted to achieve the feat; and
he stood a moment looking at it, and wondering what had moved it to
the attempt. It was really a perfect type of the human derelict
which Orlando G. Spence and his kind were devoting their millions to
perpetuate, and he reflected how much better Nature knew her business in
dealing with the superfluous quadruped.
An elderly lady advancing in the opposite direction evidently took
a less dispassionate view of the case, for she paused to remark
emotionally: “Oh, you poor thing!” while she stooped to caress
the object of her sympathy. The dog, with characteristic lack of
discrimination, viewed her gesture with suspicion, and met it with a
snarl. The lady turned pale and shrank away, a chivalrous male repelled
the animal with his umbrella, and two idle boys backed his action by a
vigorous “Hi!” The object of these hostile demonstrations, apparently
attributing them not to its own unsocial conduct, but merely to the
chronic animosity of the universe, dashed wildly around the corner into
a side street, and as it did so Millner noticed that the lame leg left
a little trail of blood. Irresistibly, he turned the corner to see what
would happen next. It was deplorably clear that the animal itself had
no plan; but after several inconsequent and contradictory movements
it plunged down an area, where it backed up against the iron gate,
forlornly and foolishly at bay.
Millner, still following, looked down at it, and wondered. Then he
whistled, just to see if it would come; but this only caused it to start
up on its quivering legs, with desperate turns of the head that measured
the chances of escape.
“Oh, hang it, you poor devil, stay there if you like!” the young man
murmured, walking away.
A few yards off he looked back, and saw that the dog had made a rush
out of the area and was limping furtively down the street. The idle
boys were in the offing, and he disliked the thought of leaving them in
control of the situation. Softly, with infinite precautions, he began to
follow the dog. He did not know why he was doing it, but the impulse was
overmastering. For a moment he seemed to be gaining upon his quarry,
but with a cunning sense of his approach it suddenly turned and hobbled
across the frozen grass-plot adjoining a shuttered house. Against the
wall at the back of the plot it cowered down in a dirty snow-drift, as
if disheartened by the struggle. Millner stood outside the railings and
looked at it. He reflected that under the shelter of the winter dusk it
might have the luck to remain there unmolested, and that in the morning
it would probably be dead of cold. This was so obviously the best
solution that he began to move away again; but as he did so the idle
boys confronted him.
“Ketch yer dog for yer, boss?” they grinned.
Millner consigned them to the devil, and stood sternly watching them
till the first stage of the journey had carried them around the nearest
corner; then, after pausing to look once more up and down the empty
street, laid his hand on the railing, and vaulted over it into the
grass-plot. As he did so, he reflected that, since pity for suffering
was one of the most elementary forms of egotism, he ought to have
remembered that it was necessarily one of the most tenacious.