“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 off
ing, 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.
II
“My chief aim in life?” Orlando G. Spence repeated. He threw himself back in his chair, straightened the tortoise-shell pince-nez, on his short blunt nose, and beamed down the luncheon table at the two young men who shared his repast.
His glance rested on his son Draper, seated opposite him behind a barrier of Georgian silver and orchids; but his words were addressed to his secretary who, stylograph in hand, had turned from the seductions of a mushroom souffle in order to jot down, for the Sunday Investigator, an outline of his employer’s views and intentions respecting the newly endowed Orlando G. Spence College for Missionaries. It was Mr. Spence’s practice to receive in person the journalists privileged to impart his opinions to a waiting world; but during the last few months—and especially since the vast project of the Missionary College had been in process of development—the pressure of business and beneficence had necessitated Millner’s frequent intervention, and compelled the secretary to snatch the sense of his patron’s elucubrations between the courses of their hasty meals.
Young Millner had a healthy appetite, and it was not one of his least sacrifices to be so often obliged to curb it in the interest of his advancement; but whenever he waved aside one of the triumphs of Mr. Spence’s chef he was conscious of rising a step in his employer’s favour. Mr. Spence did not despise the pleasures of the table, though he appeared to regard them as the reward of success rather than as the alleviation of effort; and it increased his sense of his secretary’s merit to note how keenly the young man enjoyed the fare which he was so frequently obliged to deny himself. Draper, having subsisted since infancy on a diet of truffles and terrapin, consumed such delicacies with the insensibility of a traveller swallowing a railway sandwich; but Millner never made the mistake of concealing from Mr. Spence his sense of what he was losing when duty constrained him to exchange the fork for the pen.
“My chief aim in life!” Mr. Spence repeated, removing his eye-glass and swinging it thoughtfully on his finger. (“I’m sorry you should miss this souffle, Millner: it’s worth while.) Why, I suppose I might say that my chief aim in life is to leave the world better than I found it. Yes: I don’t know that I could put it better than that. To leave the world better than I found it. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to use that as a headline. ‘Wants to leave the world better than he found it.’ It’s exactly the point I should like to make in this talk about the College.”
Mr. Spence paused, and his glance once more reverted to his son, who, having pushed aside his plate, sat watching Millner with a dreamy intensity.
“And it’s the point I want to make with you, too, Draper,” his father continued genially, while he turned over with a critical fork the plump and perfectly matched asparagus which a footman was presenting to his notice. “I want to make you feel that nothing else counts in comparison with that—no amount of literary success or intellectual celebrity.”
“Oh, I do feel that,” Draper murmured, with one of his quick blushes, and a glance that wavered between his father and Millner. The secretary kept his eyes on his notes, and young Spence continued, after a pause: “Only the thing is—isn’t it?—to try and find out just what does make the world better?”
“To try to find out?” his father echoed compassionately. “It’s not necessary to try very hard. Goodness is what makes the world better.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” his son nervously interposed; “but the question is, what is good—”
Mr. Spence, with a darkening brow, brought his fist down emphatically on the damask. “I’ll thank you not to blaspheme, my son!”
Draper’s head reared itself a trifle higher on his thin neck. “I was not going to blaspheme; only there may be different ways—”
“There’s where you’re mistaken, Draper. There’s only one way: there’s my way,” said Mr. Spence in a tone of unshaken conviction.
“I know, father; I see what you mean. But don’t you see that even your way wouldn’t be the right way for you if you ceased to believe that it was?”
His father looked at him with mingled bewilderment and reprobation. “Do you mean to say that the fact of goodness depends on my conception of it, and not on God Almighty’s?”
“I do … yes … in a specific sense …” young Draper falteringly maintained; and Mr. Spence turned with a discouraged gesture toward his secretary’s suspended pen.
“I don’t understand your scientific jargon, Draper; and I don’t want to.—What’s the next point, Millner? (No; no savarin. Bring the fruit—and the coffee with it.)”
Millner, keenly aware that an aromatic savarin au rhum was describing an arc behind his head previous to being rushed back to the pantry under young Draper’s indifferent eye, stiffened himself against this last assault of the enemy, and read out firmly: ” What relation do you consider that a man’s business conduct should bear to his religious and domestic life?”
Mr. Spence mused a moment. “Why, that’s a stupid question. It goes over the same ground as the other one. A man ought to do good with his money—that’s all. Go on.”
At this point the butler’s murmur in his ear caused him to push back his chair, and to arrest Millner’s interrogatory by a rapid gesture. “Yes; I’m coming. Hold the wire.” Mr. Spence rose and plunged into the adjoining “office,” where a telephone and a Remington divided the attention of a young lady in spectacles who was preparing for Zenana work in the East.
As the door closed, the butler, having placed the coffee and liqueurs on the table, withdrew in the rear of his battalion, and the two young men were left alone beneath the Rembrandts and Hobbemas on the dining-room walls.
There was a moment’s silence between them; then young Spence, leaning across the table, said in the lowered tone of intimacy: “Why do you suppose he dodged that last question?”
Millner, who had rapidly taken an opulent purple fig from the fruit-dish nearest him, paused in surprise in the act of hurrying it to his lips.
“I mean,” Draper hastened on, “the question as to the relation between business and private morality. It’s such an interesting one, and he’s just the person who ought to tackle it.”
Millner, despatching the fig, glanced down at his notes. “I don’t think your father meant to dodge the question.”
Young Draper continued to look at him intently. “You think he imagined that his answer really covers the ground?”
“As much as it needs to be covered.”
The son of the house glanced away with a sigh. “You know things about him that I don’t,” he said wistfully, but without a tinge of resentment in his tone.
“Oh, as to that—(may I give myself some coffee?)” Millner, in his walk around the table to fill his cup, paused a moment to la
y an affectionate hand on Draper’s shoulder. “Perhaps I know him better, in a sense: outsiders often get a more accurate focus.”
Draper considered this. “And your idea is that he acts on principles he has never thought of testing or defining?”
Millner looked up quickly, and for an instant their glances crossed. “How do you mean?”
“I mean: that he’s an inconscient instrument of goodness, as it were? A—a sort of blindly beneficent force?”
The other smiled. “That’s not a bad definition. I know one thing about him, at any rate: he’s awfully upset at your having chucked your Bible Class.”
A shadow fell on young Spence’s candid brow. “I know. But what can I do about it? That’s what I was thinking of when I tried to show him that goodness, in a certain sense, is purely subjective: that one can’t do good against one’s principles.” Again his glance appealed to Millner. ” You understand me, don’t you?”
Millner stirred his coffee in a silence not unclouded by perplexity. “Theoretically, perhaps. It’s a pretty question, certainly. But I also understand your father’s feeling that it hasn’t much to do with real life: especially now that he’s got to make a speech in connection with the founding of this Missionary College. He may think that any hint of internecine strife will weaken his prestige. Mightn’t you have waited a little longer?”
“How could I, when I might have been expected to take a part in this performance? To talk, and say things I didn’t mean? That was exactly what made me decide not to wait.”
The door opened and Mr. Spence reentered the room. As he did so his son rose abruptly as if to leave it.
“Where are you off to, Draper?” the banker asked.
“I’m in rather a hurry, sir—”
Mr. Spence looked at his watch. “You can’t be in more of a hurry than I am; and I’ve got seven minutes and a half.” He seated himself behind the coffee—tray, lit a cigar, laid his watch on the table, and signed to Draper to resume his place. “No, Millner, don’t you go; I want you both.” He turned to the secretary. “You know that Draper’s given up his Bible Class? I understand it’s not from the pressure of engagements—” Mr. Spence’s narrow lips took an ironic curve under the straight-clipped stubble of his moustache—“it’s on principle, he tells me. He’s principled against doing good!”
Tales of Men and Ghosts Page 20