Tales of Men and Ghosts

THE twenty minutes prolonged themselves to forty, the forty to fifty, and the fifty to an hour; and still Millner waited for Mr. Spence’s summons.

During the two years of his secretaryship the young man had learned the significance of such postponements.  Mr. Spence’s days were organized like a railway time-table, and a delay of an hour implied a casualty as far-reaching as the breaking down of an express.  Of the cause of the present derangement Hugh Millner was ignorant; and the experience of the last months allowed him to fluctuate between conflicting conjectures.  All were based on the indisputable fact that Mr. Spence was “bothered”—­had for some time past been “bothered.”  And it was one of Millner’s discoveries that an extremely parsimonious use of the emotions underlay Mr. Spence’s expansive manner and fraternal phraseology, and that he did not throw away his feelings any more than (for all his philanthropy) he threw away his money.  If he was bothered, then, it could be only because a careful survey of his situation had forced on him some unpleasant fact with which he was not immediately prepared to deal; and any unpreparedness on Mr. Spence’s part was also a significant symptom.

Obviously, Millner’s original conception of his employer’s character had suffered extensive modification; but no final outline had replaced the first conjectural image.  The two years spent in Mr. Spence’s service had produced too many contradictory impressions to be fitted into any definite pattern; and the chief lesson Millner had learned from them was that life was less of an exact science, and character a more incalculable element, than he had been taught in the schools.  In the light of this revised impression, his own footing seemed less secure than he had imagined, and the rungs of the ladder he was climbing more slippery than they had looked from below.  He was not without the reassuring sense of having made himself, in certain small ways, necessary to Mr. Spence; and this conviction was confirmed by Draper’s reiterated assurance of his father’s appreciation.  But Millner had begun to suspect that one might be necessary to Mr. Spence one day, and a superfluity, if not an obstacle, the next; and that it would take superhuman astuteness to foresee how and when the change would occur.  Every fluctuation of the great man’s mood was therefore anxiously noted by the young meteorologist in his service; and this observer’s vigilance was now strained to the utmost by the little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, adumbrated by the banker’s unpunctuality.

When Mr. Spence finally appeared, his aspect did not tend to dissipate the cloud.  He wore what Millner had learned to call his “back-door face”:  a blank barred countenance, in which only an occasional twitch of the lids behind his glasses suggested that some one was on the watch.  In this mood Mr. Spence usually seemed unconscious of his secretary’s presence, or aware of it only as an arm terminating in a pen.  Millner, accustomed on such occasions to exist merely as a function, sat waiting for the click of the spring that should set him in action; but the pressure not being applied, he finally hazarded:  “Are we to go on with the Investigator, sir?”

Mr. Spence, who had been pacing up and down between the desk and the fireplace, threw himself into his usual seat at Millner’s elbow.

“I don’t understand this new notion of Draper’s,” he said abruptly.  “Where’s he got it from?  No one ever learned irreligion in my household.”

He turned his eyes on Millner, who had the sense of being scrutinized through a ground-glass window which left him visible while it concealed his observer.  The young man let his pen describe two or three vague patterns on the blank sheet before him.

“Draper has ideas—­” he risked at last.

Mr. Spence looked hard at him.  “That’s all right,” he said.  “I want my son to have everything.  But what’s the point of mixing up ideas and principles?  I’ve seen fellows who did that, and they were generally trying to borrow five dollars to get away from the sheriff.  What’s all this talk about goodness?  Goodness isn’t an idea.  It’s a fact.  It’s as solid as a business proposition.  And it’s Draper’s duty, as the son of a wealthy man, and the prospective steward of a great fortune, to elevate the standards of other young men—­of young men who haven’t had his opportunities.  The rich ought to preach contentment, and to set the example themselves.  We have our cares, but we ought to conceal them.  We ought to be cheerful, and accept things as they are—­not go about sowing dissent and restlessness.  What has Draper got to give these boys in his Bible Class, that’s so much better than what he wants to take from them?  That’s the question I’d like to have answered?”

Mr. Spence, carried away by his own eloquence, had removed his pince-nez and was twirling it about his extended fore-finger with the gesture habitual to him when he spoke in public.  After a pause, he went on, with a drop to the level of private intercourse:  “I tell you this because I know you have a good deal of influence with Draper.  He has a high opinion of your brains.  But you’re a practical fellow, and you must see what I mean.  Try to make Draper see it.  Make him understand how it looks to have him drop his Bible Class just at this particular time.  It was his own choice to take up religious teaching among young men.  He began with our office-boys, and then the work spread and was blessed.  I was almost alarmed, at one time, at the way it took hold of him:  when the papers began to talk about him as a formative influence I was afraid he’d lose his head and go into the church.  Luckily he tried University Settlement first; but just as I thought he was settling down to that, he took to worrying about the Higher Criticism, and saying he couldn’t go on teaching fairy-tales as history.  I can’t see that any good ever came of criticizing what our parents believed, and it’s a queer time for Draper to criticize my belief just as I’m backing it to the extent of five millions.”

Millner remained silent; and, as though his silence were an argument, Mr. Spence continued combatively:  “Draper’s always talking about some distinction between religion and morality.  I don’t understand what he means.  I got my morals out of the Bible, and I guess there’s enough left in it for Draper.  If religion won’t make a man moral, I don’t see why irreligion should.  And he talks about using his mind—­well, can’t he use that in Wall Street?  A man can get a good deal farther in life watching the market than picking holes in Genesis; and he can do more good too.  There’s a time for everything; and Draper seems to me to have mixed up week-days with Sunday.”

Mr. Spence replaced his eye-glasses, and stretching his hand to the silver box at his elbow, extracted from it one of the long cigars sheathed in gold-leaf which were reserved for his private consumption.  The secretary hastened to tender him a match, and for a moment he puffed in silence.  When he spoke again it was in a different note.

“I’ve got about all the bother I can handle just now, without this nonsense of Draper’s.  That was one of the Trustees of the College with me.  It seems the Flashlight has been trying to stir up a fuss—­” Mr. Spence paused, and turned his pince-nez on his secretary.  “You haven’t heard from them?” he asked.

“From the Flashlight? No.”  Millner’s surprise was genuine.

He detected a gleam of relief behind Mr. Spence’s glasses.  “It may be just malicious talk.  That’s the worst of good works; they bring out all the meanness in human nature.  And then there are always women mixed up in them, and there never was a woman yet who understood the difference between philanthropy and business.”  He drew again at his cigar, and then, with an unwonted movement, leaned forward and mechanically pushed the box toward Millner.  “Help yourself,” he said.

Millner, as mechanically, took one of the virginally cinctured cigars, and began to undo its wrappings.  It was the first time he had ever been privileged to detach that golden girdle, and nothing could have given him a better measure of the importance of the situation, and of the degree to which he was apparently involved in it.  “You remember that San Pablo rubber business?  That’s what they’ve been raking up,” said Mr. Spence abruptly.

Millner paused in the act of striking a match.  Then, with an appreciable effort of the will, he completed the gesture, applied the flame to his cigar, and took a long inhalation.  The cigar was certainly delicious.

Mr. Spence, drawing a little closer, leaned forward and touched him on the arm.  The touch caused Millner to turn his head, and for an instant the glance of the two men crossed at short range.  Millner was conscious, first, of a nearer view than he had ever had of his employer’s face, and of its vaguely suggesting a seamed sandstone head, the kind of thing that lies in a corner in the court of a museum, and in which only the round enamelled eyes have resisted the wear of time.  His next feeling was that he had now reached the moment to which the offer of the cigar had been a prelude.  He had always known that, sooner or later, such a moment would come; all his life, in a sense, had been a preparation for it.  But in entering Mr. Spence’s service he had not foreseen that it would present itself in this form.  He had seen himself consciously guiding that gentleman up to the moment, rather than being thrust into it by a stronger hand.  And his first act of reflection was the resolve that, in the end, his hand should prove the stronger of the two.  This was followed, almost immediately, by the idea that to be stronger than Mr. Spence’s it would have to be very strong indeed.  It was odd that he should feel this, since—­as far as verbal communication went—­it was Mr. Spence who was asking for his support.  In a theoretical statement of the case the banker would have figured as being at Millner’s mercy; but one of the queerest things about experience was the way it made light of theory.  Millner felt now as though he were being crushed by some inexorable engine of which he had been playing with the lever. ...

He had always been intensely interested in observing his own reactions, and had regarded this faculty of self-detachment as of immense advantage in such a career as he had planned.  He felt this still, even in the act of noting his own bewilderment—­felt it the more in contrast to the odd unconsciousness of Mr. Spence’s attitude, of the incredible candour of his self-abasement and self-abandonment.  It was clear that Mr. Spence was not troubled by the repercussion of his actions in the consciousness of others; and this looked like a weakness—­unless it were, instead, a great strength. ...

Through the hum of these swarming thoughts Mr. Spence’s voice was going on.  “That’s the only rag of proof they’ve got; and they got it by one of those nasty accidents that nobody can guard against.  I don’t care how conscientiously a man attends to business, he can’t always protect himself against meddlesome people.  I don’t pretend to know how the letter came into their hands; but they’ve got it; and they mean to use it—­and they mean to say that you wrote it for me, and that you knew what it was about when you wrote it. ...  They’ll probably be after you tomorrow—­”

Mr. Spence, restoring his cigar to his lips, puffed at it slowly.  In the pause that followed there was an instant during which the universe seemed to Hugh Millner like a sounding-board bent above his single consciousness.  If he spoke, what thunders would be sent back to him from that intently listening vastness?

“You see?” said Mr. Spence.

The universal ear bent closer, as if to catch the least articulation of Millner’s narrowed lips; but when he opened them it was merely to re-insert his cigar, and for a short space nothing passed between the two men but an exchange of smoke-rings.

“What do you mean to do?  There’s the point,” Mr. Spence at length sent through the rings.

Oh, yes, the point was there, as distinctly before Millner as the tip of his expensive cigar:  he had seen it coming quite as soon as Mr. Spence.  He knew that fate was handing him an ultimatum; but the sense of the formidable echo which his least answer would rouse kept him doggedly, and almost helplessly, silent.  To let Mr. Spence talk on as long as possible was no doubt the best way of gaining time; but Millner knew that his silence was really due to his dread of the echo.  Suddenly, however, in a reaction of impatience at his own indecision, he began to speak.

The sound of his voice cleared his mind and strengthened his resolve.  It was odd how the word seemed to shape the act, though one knew how ancillary it really was.  As he talked, it was as if the globe had swung around, and he himself were upright on its axis, with Mr. Spence underneath, on his head.  Through the ensuing interchange of concise and rapid speech there sounded in Millner’s ears the refrain to which he had walked down Fifth Avenue after his first talk with Mr. Spence:  “It’s too easy—­it’s too easy—­it’s too easy.”  Yes, it was even easier than he had expected.  His sensation was that of the skilful carver who feels his good blade sink into a tender joint.

As he went on talking, this surprised sense of mastery was like wine in his veins.  Mr. Spence was at his mercy, after all—­that was what it came to; but this new view of the case did not lessen Millner’s sense of Mr. Spence’s strength, it merely revealed to him his own superiority.  Mr. Spence was even stronger than he had suspected.  There could be no better proof of that than his faith in Millner’s power to grasp the situation, and his tacit recognition of the young man’s right to make the most of it.  Millner felt that Mr. Spence would have despised him even more for not using his advantage than for not seeing it; and this homage to his capacity nerved him to greater alertness, and made the concluding moments of their talk as physically exhilarating as some hotly contested game.

When the conclusion was reached, and Millner stood at the goal, the golden trophy in his grasp, his first conscious thought was one of regret that the struggle was over.  He would have liked to prolong their talk for the purely aesthetic pleasure of making Mr. Spence lose time, and, better still, of making him forget that he was losing it.  The sense of advantage that the situation conferred was so great that when Mr. Spence rose it was as if Millner were dismissing him, and when he reached his hand toward the cigar-box it seemed to be one of Millner’s cigars that he was taking.