Edith Wharton
The Blond Beast
TALES OF MEN
Wharton, Edith. "The Blond Beast."
Scribner's Magazine 48 (Sept. 1910): 291-304.
About the print version
The Blond Beast
Wharton, Edith
Scribner's Magazine
New York
Sept. 1910
Note: Volume 48
Published: 1910
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?" ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go to the beginning of the document
Go to previous page
Go to next page
Go to the end of document
