But a poor soulless thing like me mustn't think of such things.
Harry's prospects have improved wonderfully of late. You know his heart was never in professional wrestling. He deliberately gave up a promising career on the mat, as they call it, where he acquired that odious nickname of the "Harlem Gorilla." Poor Hercules is about as much like a gorilla as I am like an elephant. Refusing engagements to appear in public contests brought him down on his luck for a time. That's how he happened to land in the model tenements. He never was even the least bit of a radical. Among the Outlaws, our gorilla is quite a lamb.
Well, this repulsive part of his career is over for good. He is now the physical director of the Bankers' Club. (What think you of my prophetic nickname for Hercules? The bankers have their monster clubhouse on Fifth Avenue, almost next door to the Pillars of Hercules, as the Gotham and St. Regis hotels are called.) It's a good position. And an even better one is in sight. The Life Prolongation Institute (I say, Araminta, what a name!) has lately approached him in regard to a post at one of its European branches.
Wouldn't it be odd, if we all met some fine morning in Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysees?
As for Robert, he has become as mad as a March hare. His Guild League seems to have dropped through a hole in the ground. (I predicted that, too!) He says the Guildsman propaganda was too radical for the old-style Laborites and too conservative for the Bolsheviks. But I can't pretend to follow these distinctions.
At all events, he was very much at loose ends for a while. One or two excellent openings in the newspaper line he calmly turned down with the remark that a successful journalist would have to be as corrupt as Falstaff and Hutchins Burley rolled into one. He is really quite incorrigible. He never seems to be content until he has got himself thoroughly on the wrong side of everybody who might be of service to him.
There are any number of instances of this trait. His personal quarrel with Hutchins Burley was quite unnecessarily lengthened into a business feud. He never made the most of his friendship with Claude (think what a chance it was for a man in his circumstances to be intimate with a man in Claude's!). He got himself in the black books of the whole newspaper world because of his agitation for the Guildsmen. And he is always flinging off violently from his friends. To this day, he rebuffs Hercules and me whenever we try to help him.
But finally, on account of his mother and sister out West, he had to put his pride in his pocket. It was too late! Did Cato ever tell you that he had an uncle with bushels of money in California? Well, it seems there is such a relative, and Robert applied to him for temporary help. The uncle, a chip of Robert's block—for he evidently has little use for affection, family or otherwise—preserved a discreet silence. After cross-questioning our friend, I found out why. He had painstakingly sent the old gentleman (who made a fortune in real estate speculation) his own pamphlet on land profiteering! As I said before, Robert is incorrigible.
What does he do next but hit on the brilliant scheme of going to work as a clerk in an insurance company, downtown. Denman Page's insurance company, as it happens. Fancy our fastidious Cato with his quick ways and ideal enthusiasms sitting from nine till five at a poky desk in Wall Street. And is this fearful sacrifice made for the sake of turning over an honest penny (thirty dollars a week, to be exact)? Never believe it. Robert's little game is to help organize the mercantile employees into a radical labor union. Can you beat it?
He says that the clerk is the most abject boot-licker and willing slave of the ruling robber bankers to be found in the whole industrial system (I won't vouch for the accuracy of this description). He (the clerk, that is) needs redemption. But although plenty of rich people go a-slumming amongst the very poor and downtrodden, nobody is self-sacrificing enough to go on a mission of mercy amongst the benighted and degraded "clerkical" classes.—And so he raves on.