THERE had been only one condition attached to the transaction: Millner
was to speak to Draper about the Bible Class.
The condition was easy to fulfil. Millner was confident of his power to
deflect his young friend’s purpose; and he knew the opportunity would be
given him before the day was over. His professional duties despatched,
he had only to go up to his room to wait. Draper nearly always looked
in on him for a moment before dinner: it was the hour most propitious to
their elliptic interchange of words and silences.
Meanwhile, the waiting was an occupation in itself. Millner looked about
his room with new eyes. Since the first thrill of initiation into its
complicated comforts--the shower-bath, the telephone, the many-jointed
reading-lamp and the vast mirrored presses through which he was always
hunting his scant outfit--Millner’s room had interested him no more than
a railway-carriage in which he might have been travelling. But now
it had acquired a sort of historic significance as the witness of the
astounding change in his fate. It was Corsica, it was Brienne--it was
the kind of spot that posterity might yet mark with a tablet. Then
he reflected that he should soon be leaving it, and the lustre of its
monumental mahogany was veiled in pathos. Why indeed should he linger on
in bondage? He perceived with a certain surprise that the only thing he
should regret would be leaving Draper. ...
It was odd, it was inconsequent, it was almost exasperating, that such
a regret should obscure his triumph. Why in the world should he suddenly
take to regretting Draper? If there were any logic in human likings,
it should be to Mr. Spence that he inclined. Draper, dear lad, had the
illusion of an “intellectual sympathy” between them; but that, Millner
knew, was an affair of reading and not of character. Draper’s temerities
would always be of that kind; whereas his own--well, his own, put to the
proof, had now definitely classed him with Mr. Spence rather than with
Mr. Spence’s son. It was a consequence of this new condition--of his
having thus distinctly and irrevocably classed himself--that, when
Draper at length brought upon the scene his shy shamble and his wistful
smile, Millner, for the first time, had to steel himself against them
instead of yielding to their charm.
In the new order upon which he had entered, one principle of the old
survived: the point of honour between allies. And Millner had promised
Mr. Spence to speak to Draper about his Bible Class. ...
Draper, thrown back in his chair, and swinging a loose leg across a
meagre knee, listened with his habitual gravity. His downcast eyes
seemed to pursue the vision which Millner’s words evoked; and the words,
to their speaker, took on a new sound as that candid consciousness
refracted them.
“You know, dear boy, I perfectly see your father’s point. It’s naturally
distressing to him, at this particular time, to have any hint of civil
war leak out--”
Draper sat upright, laying his lank legs knee to knee.
“That’s it, then? I thought that was it!”
Millner raised a surprised glance. “_ What’s_ it?”
“That it should be at this particular time--”
“Why, naturally, as I say! Just as he’s making, as it were, his public
profession of faith. You know, to men like your father convictions are
irreducible elements--they can’t be split up, and differently combined.
And your exegetical scruples seem to him to strike at the very root of
his convictions.”
Draper pulled himself to his feet and shuffled across the room. Then he
turned about, and stood before his friend.
“Is it that--or is it this?” he said; and with the word he drew a letter
from his pocket and proffered it silently to Millner.
The latter, as he unfolded it, was first aware of an intense surprise at
the young man’s abruptness of tone and gesture. Usually Draper fluttered
long about his point before making it; and his sudden movement seemed as
mechanical as the impulsion conveyed by some strong spring. The spring,
of course, was in the letter; and to it Millner turned his startled
glance, feeling the while that, by some curious cleavage of perception,
he was continuing to watch Draper while he read.
“Oh, the beasts!” he cried.
He and Draper were face to face across the sheet which had dropped
between them. The youth’s features were tightened by a smile that was
like the ligature of a wound. He looked white and withered.
“Ah--you knew, then?”
Millner sat still, and after a moment Draper turned from him, walked
to the hearth, and leaned against the chimney, propping his chin on his
hands. Millner, his head thrown back, stared up at the ceiling, which
had suddenly become to him the image of the universal sounding-board
hanging over his consciousness.
“You knew, then?” Draper repeated.
Millner remained silent. He had perceived, with the surprise of a
mathematician working out a new problem, that the lie which Mr. Spence
had just bought of him was exactly the one gift he could give of his own
free will to Mr. Spence’s son. This discovery gave the world a strange
new topsy-turvyness, and set Millner’s theories spinning about his brain
like the cabin furniture of a tossing ship.
“You _knew_,” said Draper, in a tone of quiet affirmation.
Millner righted himself, and grasped the arms of his chair as if that
too were reeling. “About this blackguardly charge?”
Draper was studying him intently. “What does it matter if it’s
blackguardly?”
“Matter--?” Millner stammered.
“It’s that, of course, in any case. But the point is whether it’s true
or not.” Draper bent down, and picking up the crumpled letter, smoothed
it out between his fingers. “The point, is, whether my father, when he
was publicly denouncing the peonage abuses on the San Pablo plantations
over a year ago, had actually sold out his stock, as he announced at the
time; or whether, as they say here--how do they put it?--he had simply
transferred it to a dummy till the scandal should blow over, and has
meanwhile gone on drawing his forty per cent interest on five thousand
shares? There’s the point.”
Millner had never before heard his young friend put a case with such
unadorned precision. His language was like that of Mr. Spence making
a statement to a committee meeting; and the resemblance to his father
flashed out with ironic incongruity.
“You see why I’ve brought this letter to you--I couldn’t go to _him_
with it!” Draper’s voice faltered, and the resemblance vanished as
suddenly as it had appeared.
“No; you couldn’t go to him with it,” said Millner slowly.
“And since they say here that _you_ know: that they’ve got your letter
proving it--” The muscles of Draper’s face quivered as if a blinding
light had been swept over it. “For God’s sake, Millner--it’s all right?”
“It’s all right,” said Millner, rising to his feet.
Draper caught him by the wrist. “You’re sure--you’re absolutely sure?”
“Sure. They know they’ve got nothing to go on.”
Draper fell back a step and looked almost sternly at his friend. “You
know that’s not what I mean. I don’t care a straw what they think
they’ve got to go on. I want to know if my father’s all right. If he is,
they can say what they please.”
Millner, again, felt himself under the concentrated scrutiny of the
ceiling. “Of course, of course. I understand.”
“You understand? Then why don’t you answer?”
Millner looked compassionately at the boy’s struggling face. Decidedly,
the battle was to the strong, and he was not sorry to be on the side of
the legions. But Draper’s pain was as awkward as a material obstacle, as
something that one stumbled over in a race.
“You know what I’m driving at, Millner.” Again Mr. Spence’s
committee-meeting tone sounded oddly through his son’s strained voice.
“If my father’s so awfully upset about my giving up my Bible Class, and
letting it be known that I do so on conscientious grounds, is it because
he’s afraid it may be considered a criticism on something _he_ has done
which--which won’t bear the test of the doctrines he believes in?”
Draper, with the last question, squared himself in front of Millner, as
if suspecting that the latter meant to evade it by flight. But Millner
had never felt more disposed to stand his ground than at that moment.
“No--by Jove, no! It’s not _that_.” His relief almost escaped him in a
cry, as he lifted his head to give back Draper’s look.
“On your honour?” the other passionately pressed him.
“Oh, on anybody’s you like--on _yours!_” Millner could hardly restrain
a laugh of relief. It was vertiginous to find himself spared, after all,
the need of an altruistic lie: he perceived that they were the kind he
least liked.
Draper took a deep breath. “You don’t--Millner, a lot depends on
this--you don’t really think my father has any ulterior motive?”
“I think he has none but his horror of seeing you go straight to
perdition!”
They looked at each other again, and Draper’s tension was suddenly
relieved by a free boyish laugh. “It’s his convictions--it’s just his
funny old convictions?”
“It’s that, and nothing else on earth!”
Draper turned back to the arm-chair he had left, and let his narrow
figure sink down into it as into a bath. Then he looked over at Millner
with a smile. “I can see that I’ve been worrying him horribly. So he
really thinks I’m on the road to perdition? Of course you can fancy what
a sick minute I had when I thought it might be this other reason--the
damnable insinuation in this letter.” Draper crumpled the paper in his
hand, and leaned forward to toss it into the coals of the grate. “I
ought to have known better, of course. I ought to have remembered that,
as you say, my father can’t conceive how conduct may be independent of
creed. That’s where I was stupid--and rather base. But that letter made
me dizzy--I couldn’t think. Even now I can’t very clearly. I’m not sure
what _my_ convictions require of me: they seem to me so much less to be
considered than his! When I’ve done half the good to people that he
has, it will be time enough to begin attacking their beliefs.
Meanwhile--meanwhile I can’t touch his. ...” Draper leaned forward,
stretching his lank arms along his knees. His face was as clear as a
spring sky. “I _won’t_ touch them, Millner--Go and tell him so. ...”
V
In the study a half hour later Mr. Spence, watch in hand, was doling
out his minutes again. The peril conjured, he had recovered his dominion
over time. He turned his commanding eye-glasses on Millner.
“It’s all settled, then? Tell Draper I’m sorry not to see him
again to-night--but I’m to speak at the dinner of the Legal Relief
Association, and I’m due there in five minutes. You and he dine alone
here, I suppose? Tell him I appreciate what he’s done. Some day he’ll
see that to leave the world better than we find it is the best we can
hope to do. (You’ve finished the notes for the _Investigator?_ Be sure
you don’t forget that phrase.) Well, good evening: that’s all, I think.”
Smooth and compact in his glossy evening clothes, Mr. Spence advanced
toward the study door; but as he reached it, his secretary stood there
before him.
“It’s not quite all, Mr. Spence.”
Mr. Spence turned on him a look in which impatience was faintly tinged
with apprehension. “What else is there? It’s two and a half minutes to
eight.”
Millner stood his ground. “It won’t take longer than that. I want to
tell you that, if you can conveniently replace me, I’d like--there are
reasons why I shall have to leave you.”
Millner was conscious of reddening as he spoke. His redness deepened
under Mr. Spence’s dispassionate scrutiny. He saw at once that the
banker was not surprised at his announcement.
“Well, I suppose that’s natural enough. You’ll want to make a start for
yourself now. Only, of course, for the sake of appearances--”
“Oh, certainly,” Millner hastily agreed.
“Well, then: is that all?” Mr. Spence repeated.
“Nearly.” Millner paused, as if in search of an appropriate formula.
But after a moment he gave up the search, and pulled from his pocket an
envelope which he held out to his employer. “I merely want to give this
back.”
The hand which Mr. Spence had extended dropped to his side, and his
sand-coloured face grew chalky. “Give it back?” His voice was as thick
as Millner’s. “What’s happened? Is the bargain off?”
“Oh, no. I’ve given you my word.”
“Your word?” Mr. Spence lowered at him. “I’d like to know what that’s
worth!”
Millner continued to hold out the envelope. “You do know, now. It’s
worth _that_. It’s worth my place.”
Mr. Spence, standing motionless before him, hesitated for an appreciable
space of time. His lips parted once or twice under their square-clipped
stubble, and at last emitted: “How much more do you want?”
Millner broke into a laugh. “Oh, I’ve got all I want--all and more!”
“What--from the others? Are you crazy?”
“No, you are,” said Millner with a sudden recovery of composure. “But
you’re safe--you’re as safe as you’ll ever be. Only I don’t care to take
this for making you so.”
Mr. Spence slowly moistened his lips with his tongue, and removing his
_pince-nez_, took a long hard look at Millner.
“I don’t understand. What other guarantee have I got?”
“That I mean what I say?” Millner glanced past the banker’s figure at
his rich densely coloured background of Spanish leather and mahogany. He
remembered that it was from this very threshold that he had first seen
Mr. Spence’s son.
“What guarantee? You’ve got Draper!” he said.