PART TWO
I
Nothing in the Gore offices could have been changed in many years, Wilfred supposed. Many a country lawyer did himself better. Mr. Amasa Gore shared one very large room with his secretary, John Dobereiner and his assistant secretary, or office boy, or door-keeper, or whatever you chose to call him, which was Wilfred. The room had a door opening directly on the public corridor; and double doors in the right and left walls. Various officials of the Gore railroads strolled through from time to time; and Mr. Isaac Gore, the elder brother, was in the habit of making his escape through their room, when his own way out was blocked. Still, there was privacy of a kind, the room was so big. From his corner Wilfred could not hear what Mr. Gore might be saying in his corner; nor could Dobereiner from his.
Wilfred’s particular job was to open the corridor door when anyone knocked. He would open it a crack first, with his foot behind it, while he reconnoitred. So far there had never been any excitement. Nothing was painted on the door but the number of the room, 47; and this password, was given out only to Mr. Gore’s friends. Occasionally a crank or a begging widow took a chance and knocked: that was all. In the beginning Wilfred had speculated on what he would do should an anarchist burst in with a bomb in a satchel. That had happened to Russell Sage, once. Wilfred had made up a story about it, in which he played a heroic part; but it was not one of his best stories.
Mr. Gore’s big roll-top desk was turned cater-cornered. The door into his brother’s office was at his hand in case he wanted to make a quick getaway. When he was seated at his desk, Wilfred could see no more than the thin lock of hair which waved on his forehead, and his sulky eyes when he raised them. Mr. Dobereiner’s desk was in the other front corner; Wilfred’s desk in one of the back corners. One could have given a ball in the middle of the room.
The great chance of his life! his aunts called it; being placed so close to a millionaire. How Wilfred hated it! Day after day he felt as if there was some foul stuff smoldering in his breast, the fumes of which were slowly suffocating him. So much had been made of this job, he couldn’t conceive of any escape from it. The whole millionaire atmosphere; the bluff, man-to-man air which the cleverest of Mr. Gore’s creatures had learned to adopt towards their master; he hated it. The private secretary, Dobereiner was an out and out toady and lick-spittle; Wilfred didn’t mind him; it was the fine gentlemen; the various stockbrokers; corporation officials; dummy directors and so on; Ugh! Loathsome!
Mr. Gore was a good enough employer; liberal; he was rather a fool behind his big front, and Wilfred could have liked him under other circumstances. Millionaire and office boy preserved a distant air towards each other. Wilfred took care to keep the lashes lowered over his resentful eyes. He kept his employer’s check-books and accounts; thus he knew that Mr. Gore’s income amounted to more than seven hundred thousand dollars a year. It made the office boy grind his teeth.
Wilfred had not enough to do to keep him busy during office hours; and he shamefully neglected what he had to do. It had been understood when he came, that he was to perfect himself in shorthand; that he might take some of the correspondence off Dobereiner’s hands. There lay the Pitman textbook, and the note-book handy to his hand; and the sight of them turned his stomach. Wilfred spent the greater part of the days in listless dreaming: his body held in such a position that to a glance from behind he might appear to be practicing shorthand. He suspected that Mr. Gore spent hours dreaming, too. Well he was able to if he wanted. Certainly there wasn’t much business transacted in that office. Yet Mr. Gore kept regular office hours. Apparently he hadn’t anything to do, but come sit in his office. So far as Wilfred could judge he had never read a book in his life. What an existence for one with two thousand dollars a day to spend! But to scorn his employer didn’t help Wilfred any; he knew he was the idle apprentice, and he hated himself.
A murmur was heard from Mr. Gore’s corner, and Dobereiner, springing up, paddled to his employer’s desk. He had very large flat feet that turned out wide, and his knees gave a little with every step. He had bulging blue eyes that held a doglike expression; and his broad, ugly, German face was always oily with devotion. An invaluable creature, Wilfred conceded, but not the man he would choose to have around him. A brief whispered colloquy took place—everything was whispered in that office; and Dobereiner came hustling over to Wilfred’s desk, breathing a little hard, as one who bears momentous tidings.