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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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