Selections from Contemporary Opinions of Mr. Queed; also concerning Henry G. Surface, his Life and Deeds; of Fifi, the Landlady's Daughter, and how she happened to look up Altruism in the Dictionary.
A month later, one icy afternoon, Charles Gardiner West ran into Colonel Cowles at the club, where the Colonel, a lone widower, repaired each day at six P.M., there to talk over the state of the Union till nine-thirty.
"Colonel," said West, dropping into a chair, "man to man, what is your opinion of Doctor Queed's editorials?"
"They are unanswerable," said the Colonel, and consulted his favorite ante-prandial refreshment.
West laughed. "Yes, but from the standpoint of the general public, Constant Reader, Pro Bono Publico, and all that?"
"No subscriber will ever be angered by them."
"Would you say that they helped the editorial page or not?"
"They lend to it an academic elegance, a scientific stateliness, a certain grand and austere majesty—"
"Colonel, I asked you for your opinion of those articles."
"Damn it, sir," roared the Colonel, "I've never read one."
Later West repeated the gist of this conversation to Miss Weyland, who ornamented with him a tiny dinner given that evening at the home of their very good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Byrd.
It was a beautiful little dinner, as befitted the hospitable distinction of the givers. The Stewart Byrds were hosts among a thousand. In him, as it further happens, West (himself the beau ideal of so many) had from long ago recognized his own paragon and pattern; a worthy one, indeed, this tall young man whose fine abilities and finer faiths were already writing his name so large upon the history of his city. About the dim-lit round of his table there were gathered but six this evening, including the host and hostess; the others, besides Sharlee Weyland and West, being Beverley Byrd and Miss Avery: the youngest of the four Byrd brothers, and heir with them to one of the largest fortunes in the State; and the only daughter of old Avery, who came to us from Mauch Chunk, Pa., his money preceding him in a special train of box cars, especially invented for the transportation of Pennsylvania millions to places where the first families congregate.
"And I had to confess that I'd never read one either. I did begin one," said West—"it was called 'Elementary Principles of Incidence and Distribution,' I remember—but the hour was eleven-thirty and I fell asleep."
"I know exactly how you felt about it," said Sharlee, "for I have read them all—moi!"
He looked at her with boundless admiration. "His one reader!"
"There are two of us, if you please. I think of getting up a club—Associated Sons and Daughters of Mr. Queed's Faithful Followers; President, Me. I'll make the other member Secretary, for he is experienced in that work. He's at present Secretary of the Tax Reform League in New York. Did Colonel Cowles show you the wonderful letter that came from him, asking the name of the man who was writing the Post's masterly tax articles, et cetera, et cetera?"
"No—really! But tell me, how have you, as President, enjoyed them?"
"I haven't understood a single word in any of them. Where on earth did he dig up his fearful vocabulary? Yet it is the plain duty of both of us to read these articles: you as one of his employers, I as the shrewd landlady's agent who keeps a watchful eye upon the earning power of her boarders."
West mused. "He has a wonderful genius for crushing all the interest out of any subject he touches, hasn't he? Yet manifestly the first duty of an editorial is to get itself read. How old do you think he is?"
"Oh—anywhere from twenty-five to—forty-seven."
"He'll be twenty-four this month. I see him sometimes at the office, you know, where he still treats me like an intrusive subscription agent. In some ways, he is undoubtedly the oldest man in the world. In another way he hasn't any age at all. Spiritually he is unborn—he simply doesn't exist at all. I diagnose his complaint as ingrowing egoism of a singularly virulent variety."
It was beyond Sharlee's power to controvert this diagnosis. Mr. Queed had in fact impressed her as the most frankly and grossly self-centred person she had ever seen in her life. But unlike West, her uppermost feeling in regard to him was a strong sense of pity. She knew things about his life that West did not know and probably never would. For though the little Doctor of Mrs. Paynter's had probably not intended to give her a confidence, and certainly had no right to do so, she had thus regarded what he said to her in the dining-room that night, and of his pathetic situation in regard to a father she never meant to say a word to anybody.
"I sized him up for a remarkable man," said she, "when I saw the wonderful way he sat upon his hat that afternoon. Don't you remember? He struck me then as the most natural, unconscious, and direct human being I ever saw—don't you think that?—and now think of his powers of concentration. All his waking time, except what he gives to the Post, goes to that awful book of his. He is ridiculous now because his theory of life is ridiculous. But suppose it popped into his head some day to switch all that directness and concentrated energy in some other direction. Don't you think he might be rather a formidable young person?"
West conceded that there might be something in that. And happening to glance across the flower-sweet table at the moment, he was adroitly detached and re-attached by the superbly "finished" Miss Avery.
The little dinner progressed. Nor was this the only spot in town where evening meals were going forward amid stimulating talk. Far away over the town, at the same hour, the paying guests of Mrs. Paynter's were gathered about her hospitable board, plying the twin arts of supping and talking. And as Sharlee's fellow-diners talked of Mr. Queed, it chanced that Mr. Queed's fellow-suppers were talking of Sharlee, or at any rate of her family's famous misfortune. Mr. Queed, it is true, did not appreciate this fact, for the name of the female agent who had taken his Twenty from him could not have been more unknown to him if she had been a dweller in Phrygia or far Cappadocia.
Major Brooke told, not by request, one of his well-known stories about how he had flouted and routed the Republicans in 1875. The plot of these stories was always the same, but the setting shifted about here and there, and this one had to do with a county election in which, the Major said, the Republicans and negroes had gone the limit trying to swindle the Democrats out of the esteemed offices.
"And I said, 'You'—the ladies will excuse me, I'm sure—'You lying rascal,' s' I, 'don't you dare to contradict me! You're all tarred with the same pitch,' s' I. 'Everything you touch turns corrupt and rotten. Look at Henry G. Surface,' s' I. 'The finest fellow God ever made, till the palsied hand of Republicanism fell upon him, and now cankering and rotting in jail—'"
"But Henry G. Surface wasn't rotting in jail in 1875," said William Klinker, and boldly winked at the little Doctor.
The Major, disconcerted for an instant by his anachronism, recovered superbly. "My vision, sir, was prophetic. The stain was upon him. The cloven foot had already been betrayed...."
"And who was Henry G. Surface?" inquired Mr. Queed.
"What! You haven't heard that infamous story!" cried the Major, with the surprised delight of the inveterate raconteur who has unexpectedly stumbled upon an audience.
A chair-leg scraped, and Professor Nicolovius was standing, bowing in his sardonic way to Mrs. Paynter.
"Since I have happened to hear it often, madam, through Major Brooke's tireless kindness, you will perhaps be so good as to excuse me."
And he stalked out of the room, head up, his auburn goatee stabbing the atmosphere before him, in rather a heavy silence.
"Pish!" snapped the Major, when the door had safely shut. And tapping his forehead significantly, he gave his head a few solemn wags and launched upon the worn biography of Henry G. Surface.
Tattered with much use as the story is, and was, the boarders listened with a perennial interest while Major Brooke expounded the familiar details. His wealth of picturesque language we may safely omit, and briefly remind the student of the byways of history how Henry G. Surface found himself, during the decade following Appomattox, with his little world at his feet. He was thirty at the time, handsome, gifted, high-spirited, a brilliant young man who already stood high in the councils of the State. But he was also restless in disposition, arrogant, over-weeningly vain, and ambitious past all belief—"a yellow streak in him, and we didn't know it!" bellowed the Major. Bitterly chagrined by his failure to secure, from a legislature of the early seventies, the United States Senatorship which he had confidently expected, young Surface, in a burst of anger and resentment, committed the unforgivable sin. He went over bag and baggage to the other side, to the "nigger party" whom all his family, friends, and relations, all his "class," everybody else with his instincts and traditions, were desperately struggling, by hook and by crook, to crush.
In our mild modern preferences as between presidents, or this governor and that, we catch no reminiscence of the fierce antagonisms of the elections of reconstruction days. The idolized young tribune of the people became a Judas Iscariot overnight, with no silver pieces as the price of his apostasy. If he expected immediate preferment from the other camp, he was again bitterly disappointed. Life meantime had become unbearable to him. He was ostracized more studiously than any leper; it is said that his own father cut him when they passed each other in the street. His young wife died, heartbroken, it was believed, by the flood of hatred and vilification that poured in upon her husband. One man alone stood by Surface in his downfall, his classmate and friend of his bosom from the cradle, John Randolph Weyland, a good man and a true. Weyland's affection never faltered. When Surface withdrew from the State with a heart full of savage rancor, Weyland went every year or two to visit him, first in Chicago and later in New York, where the exile was not slow in winning name and fortune as a daring speculator. And when Weyland died, leaving a widow and infant daughter, he gave a final proof of his trust by making Surface sole trustee of his estate, which was a large one for that time and place. Few have forgotten how the political traitor rewarded this misplaced confidence. The crash came within a few months. Surface was arrested in the company of a woman whom he referred to as his wife. The trust fund, saving a fraction, was gone, swallowed up to stay some ricketty deal. Surface was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to ten years at hard labor, and every Democrat in the State cried, "I told you so." What had become of him after his release from prison, nobody knew; some of the boarders said that he was living in the west, or in Australia; others, that he was not living anywhere, unless on the shores of perpetual torment. All agreed that the alleged second Mrs. Surface had long since died—all, that is, but Klinker, who said that she had only pretended to die in order to make a fade-away with the gate receipts. For many persons believed, it seemed, that Surface, by clever juggling of his books, had managed to "hold out" a large sum of money in the enforced settlement of his affairs. At any rate, very little of it ever came back to the family of the man who had put trust in him, and that was why the daughter, whose name was Charlotte Lee Weyland, now worked for her daily bread.
That Major Brooke's hearers found this story of evergreen interest was natural enough. For besides the brilliant blackness of the narrative, there was the close personal connection that all Paynterites had with some of its chief personages. Did not the sister-in-law of John Randolph Weyland sit and preside over them daily, pouring their coffee morning and night with her own hands? And did not the very girl whose fortune had been stolen, the bereft herself, come now and then to sit among them, occupying that identical chair which Mr. Bylash could touch by merely putting out his hand? Henry G. Surface's story? Why, Mrs. Paynter's wrote it!
These personal bearings were of course lost upon Mr. Queed, the name Weyland being utterly without significance to him. He left the table the moment he had absorbed all the supper he wanted. In the hall he ran upon Professor Nicolovius, the impressive-looking master of Greek at Milner's Collegiate School, who, already hatted and overcoated, was drawing on his gloves under the depressed fancy chandelier. The old professor glanced up at the sound of footsteps and favored Queed with a bland smile.
"I can't resist taking our doughty swashbuckler down a peg or two every now and then," said he. "Did you ever know such an interminable ass?"
"Really, I never thought about it," said the young man, raising his eye-brows in surprise and annoyance at being addressed.
"Then take my word for it. You'll not find his match in America. You show your wisdom, at any rate, in giving as little of your valuable time as possible to our charming supper-table."
"That hardly argues any Solomonic wisdom, I fancy."
"You're in the hands of the Philistines here, Mr. Queed," said Nicolovius, snapping his final button. "May I say that I have read some of your editorials in the Post with—ah—pleasure and profit? I should feel flattered if you would come to see me in my room some evening, where I can offer you, at any rate, a fire and a so-so cigar."
"Thank you. However, I do not smoke," said Doctor Queed, and, bowing coldly to the old professor, started rapidly up the stairs.
Aloft the young man went to his scriptorium, happy in the thought that five hours of incorruptible leisure and unswerving devotion to his heart's dearest lay before him. It had been a day when the Post did not require him; hour by hour since breakfast he had fared gloriously upon his book. But to-night his little room was cold; unendurably cold; not even the flamings of genius could overcome its frigor; and hardly half an hour had passed before he became aware that his sanctum was altogether uninhabitable. Bitterly he faced the knowledge that he must fare forth into the outer world of the dining-room that night; irritably he gathered up his books and papers.
Half-way down the first flight a thought struck Queed, and he retraced his steps. The last time that he had been compelled to the dining-room the landlady's daughter had been there—(it was all an accident, poor child! Hadn't she vowed to herself never to intrude on the little Doctor again?)—and, stupidly breaking the point of her pencil, had had the hardihood to ask him for the loan of his knife. Mr. Queed was determined that this sort of thing should not occur again. A method for enforcing his determination, at once firm and courteous, had occurred to him. One could never tell when trespassers would stray into the dining-room—his dining-room by right of his exalted claim. Rummaging in his bottom bureau drawer, he produced a placard, like a narrow little sign-board, and tucking it under his arm, went on downstairs.
The precaution was by no means superfluous. Disgustingly enough the landlady's daughter was once more in his dining-room before him, the paraphernalia of her algebra spread over half the Turkey-red cloth. Fifi looked up, plainly terrified at his entrance and his forbidding expression. It was her second dreadful blunder, poor luckless little wight! She had faithfully waited a whole half-hour, and Mr. Queed had shown no signs of coming down. Never had he waited so long as this when he meant to claim the dining-room. Mrs. Paynter's room, nominally heated by a flume from the Latrobe heater in the parlor, was noticeably coolish on a wintry night. Besides, there was no table in it, and everybody knows that algebra is hard enough under the most favorable conditions, let alone having to do it on your knee. It seemed absolutely safe; Fifi had yielded to the summons of the familiar comforts; and now—
"Oh—how do you do?" she was saying in a frightened voice.
Mr. Queed bowed, indignantly. Silently he marched to his chair, the one just opposite, and sat down in offended majesty. To Fifi it seemed that to get up at once and leave the room, which she would gladly have done, would be too crude a thing to do, too gross a rebuke to the little Doctor's Ego. She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were indubitably right. Therefore she feigned enormous engrossment in her algebra, and struggled to make herself as small and inoffensive as she could.
The landlady's daughter wore a Peter Thompson suit of blue serge, which revealed a few inches of very thin white neck. She was sixteen and reddish-haired, and it was her last year at the High School. The reference is to Fifi's completion of the regular curriculum, and not to any impending promotion to a still Higher School. She was a fond, uncomplaining little thing, who had never hurt anybody's feelings in her life, and her eyes, which were light blue, had just that look of ethereal sweetness you see in Burne-Jones's women and for just that same reason. Her syrup she took with commendable faithfulness; the doctor, in rare visits, spoke cheerily of the time when she was to be quite strong and well again; but there were moments when Sharlee Weyland, looking at her little cousin's face in repose, felt her heart stop still.
Fifi dallied with her algebra, hoping and praying that she would not have to cough. She had been very happy all that day. There was no particular reason for it; so it was the nicest kind of happiness, the kind that comes from inside, which even the presence of the little Doctor could not take away from her. Heaven knew that Fifi harbored no grudge against Mr. Queed, and she had not forgotten what Sharlee said about being gentle with him. But how to be gentle with so austere a young Socrates? Raising her head upon the pretext of turning a page, Fifi stole a hurried glance at him.
The first thing Mr. Queed had done on sitting down was to produce his placard, silently congratulating himself on having brought it. Selecting the book which he would be least likely to need, he shoved it well forward, nearly halfway across the table, and against the volume propped up his little pasteboard sign, the printed part staring straight toward Fifi. The sign was an old one which he had chanced to pick up years ago at the Astor Library. It read:
SILENCE
Arch-type and model of courteous warning!
When Fifi read the little Doctor's sign, her feelings were not in the least wounded, insufficiently subtle though some particular people might have thought its admonition to be. On the contrary, it was only by the promptest work in getting her handkerchief into her mouth that she avoided laughing out loud. The two of them alone in the room and his Silence sign gazing at her like a pasteboard Gorgon!
Fifi became more than ever interested in Mr. Queed. An intense and strictly feminine curiosity filled her soul to know something of the nature of that work which demanded so stern a noiselessness. Observing rigorously the printed Rule of the Dining-Room, she could not forbear to pilfer glance after glance at the promulgator of it. Mr. Queed was writing, not reading, to-night. He wrote very slowly on half-size yellow pads, worth seventy-five cents a dozen, using the books only for reference. Now he tore off a sheet only partly filled with his small handwriting, and at the head of a new sheet inscribed a Roman numeral, with a single word under that. Like her cousin Sharlee at an earlier date, Fifi experienced a desire to study out, upside down, what this heading was. Several peeks were needed, with artful attention to algebra between whiles, before she was at last convinced that she had it. Undoubtedly it was
XVIII
ALTRUISM
There was nothing enormous about Fifi's vocabulary, but she well knew what to do in a case like this. Behind her stood a battered little walnut bookcase, containing the Paynter library. After a safe interval of absorption in her sums, she pushed back her chair with the most respectful quietude and pulled out a tall volume. The pages of it she turned with blank studious face but considerable inner expectancy: Af—Ai—Al—Alf....
A giggle shattered the academic calm, and Fifi, in horror, realized that she was the author of it. She looked up quickly, and her worst fears were realized. Mr. Queed was staring at her, as one scarcely able to credit his own senses, icy rebuke piercing through and overflowing his great round spectacles.
"I beg your pardon!—Mr. Queed. It—it slipped out, really—"
But the young man thought that the time had come when this question of noise in his dining-room must be settled once and for all.
"Indeed? Be kind enough to explain the occasion of it."
"Why," said Fifi, too truthful to prevaricate and completely cowed, "it—it was only the meaning of a word here. It—was silly of me. I—I can't explain it—exactly—"
"Suppose you try. Since your merriment interrupts my work, I claim the privilege of sharing it."
"Well! I—I—happened to see that word at the head of the page you are writing—"
"Proceed."
"I—I looked it up in the dictionary. It says," she read out with a gulp and a cough, "it means 'self-sacrificing devotion to the interests of others.'"
The poor child thought her point must now be indelicately plain, but the lips of Doctor Queed merely emitted another close-clipped: "Proceed."
At a desperate loss as she was, Fifi was suddenly visited by an idea. "Oh! I see. You're—you're writing against altruism, aren't you?"
"What leads you to that conclusion, if I may ask?"
"Why—I—I suppose it's the—way you—you do. Of course I oughtn't to have said it—"
"Go on. What way that I do?"
Poor Fifi saw that she was floundering in ever more deeply. With the boldness of despair she blurted out: "Well—one thing—you sent me out of the room that night—when I coughed, you know. I—I don't understand about altruism like you do, but I—should think it was—my interests to stay here—"
There followed a brief silence, which made Fifi more miserable than any open rebuke, and then Mr. Queed said in a dry tone: "I am engaged upon a work of great importance to the public, I may say to posterity. Perhaps you can appreciate that such a work is entitled to the most favorable conditions in which to pursue it."
"Of course. Indeed I understand perfectly, Mr. Queed," said Fifi, immediately touched by what seemed like kindness from him. And she added innocently: "All men—writing men, I mean—feel that way about their work—I suppose. I remember Mr. Sutro who used to have the very same room you're in now. He was writing a five-act play, all in poetry, to show the horrors of war, and he used to say—"
The young man involuntarily shuddered. "I have nothing to do with other men. I am thinking," he said with rather an unfortunate choice of words, "only of myself."
"Oh—I see! Now I understand exactly!"
"What is it that you see and understand so exactly?"
"Why, the way you feel about altruism. You believe in it for other people, but not for yourself! Isn't that right?"
They stared across the table at each other: innocent Fifi, who barely knew the meaning of altruism, but had practiced it from the time she could practice anything, and the little Doctor, who knew everything about altruism that social science would ever formulate, and had stopped right there. All at once, his look altered; from objective it became subjective. The question seemed suddenly to hook onto something inside, like a still street-car gripping hold of a cable and beginning to move; the mind's eye of the young man appeared to be seized and swept inward. Presently without a word he resumed his writing.
Fifi was much disturbed at the effect of her artless question, and just when everything was beginning to go so nicely too. In about half an hour, when she got up to retire, she said timidly:—
"I'm sorry if I—I was rude just now, Mr. Queed. Indeed, I didn't mean to be...."
"I did not say that you were rude," he answered without looking up.
But at the door Fifi was arrested by his voice.
"Why do you think it to your advantage to work in here?"
"It's—it's a good deal warmer, you know," said Fifi, flustered, "and—then of course there's the table and lamp. But it's quite all right upstairs—really!"
He made no answer.
VI
Autobiographical Data imparted, for Sound Business Reasons, to a Landlady's Agent; of the Agent's Other Title, etc.
While all move in slots in this world, Mr. Queed's slot was infinitely more clearly marked than any of his neighbors'. It ran exclusively between the heaven of his room and the hades of the Post office; manifesting itself at the latter place in certain staid writings done in exchange for ten dollars, currency of the realm, paid down each and every Saturday. Into this slot he had been lifted, as it were by the ears, by a slip of a girl of the name of Charlotte Lee Weyland, though it was some time before he ever thought of it in that way.
In the freemasonry of the boarding-house, the young man was early accepted as he was. He was promptly voted the driest, most uninteresting and self-absorbed savant ever seen. Even Miss Miller, ordinarily indefatigable where gentlemen were concerned, soon gave him up. To Mr. Bylash she spoke contemptuously of him, but secretly she was awed by his stately manner of speech and his godlike indifference to all pleasures, including those of female society. Of them all, Nicolovius was the only one who seemed in the least impressed by Mr. Queed's appointment as editorial writer on the Post. With the others the exalted world he moved in was so remote from theirs that no surprises were possible there, and if informed that the little Doctor had been elected president of Harvard University, it would have seemed all in the day's work to William Klinker. Klinker was six feet high, red-faced and friendly, and Queed preferred his conversation above any heard at Mrs. Paynter's table. It reminded him very much of his friend the yeggman in New York.
What went on behind the door of the tiny Scriptorium the boarders could only guess. It may be said that its owner's big grievance against the world was that he had to leave it occasionally to earn his bread and meat. Apart from this he never left it in those days except for one reason, viz., the consumption three times a day of the said bread and meat. Probably this was one explanation of the marked pallor of his cheek, but of such details as this he never took the smallest notice.
Under the tiny bed were three boxes of books, chief fruit of the savings of an inexpensive lifetime. But the books were now merely the occasional stimulus of a mind already well stored with their strength, well fortified against their weaknesses. Nowadays nearly all of Queed's time, which he administered by an iron-clad Schedule of Hours, duly drawn up, went to the actual writing of his Magnum Opus. He had practically decided that it should be called "The Science of Sciences." For his book was designed to coördinate and unify the theories of all science into the single theory which alone gave any of them a living value, namely, the progressive evolution of a higher organized society and a higher individual type. That this work would blaze a wholly new trail for a world of men, he rarely entertained a doubt. To its composition he gave fifteen actual hours a day on Post days, sixteen hours on non-Post days. Many men speak of working hours like these, or even longer ones, but investigation would generally show that all kinds of restful interludes are indiscriminately counted in. Queed's hours, you understand, were not elapsed time—they were absolutely net. He was one of the few men in the world who literally "didn't have time."
He sat in Colonel Cowles's office, scribbling rapidly, with his eye on his watch, writing one of those unanswerable articles which were so much dead space to a people's newspaper. It was a late afternoon in early February, soon after the opening of the legislature; and he was alone in the office. A knock fell upon the door, and at his "Come," a girl entered who looked as pretty as a dewy May morning. Queed looked up at her with no welcome in his eye, or greeting on his lip, or spring in the pregnant hinges of his knee. Yet if he had been a less self-absorbed young scientist, it must certainly have dawned on him that he had seen this lady before.
"Oh! How do you do!" said Sharlee, for it was indeed no other.
"Oh—quite well."
"Miss Leech tells me that Colonel Cowles has gone out. I particularly wished to see him. Perhaps you know when he will be back?"
"Perhaps in half an hour. Perhaps in an hour. I cannot say."
She mused disappointedly. "I could hardly wait. Would you be good enough to give him a message for me?"
"Very well."
"Well—just tell him, please, that if he can make it convenient, we'd like the article about the reformatory to go in to-morrow, or the next day, anyway. He'll understand perfectly; I have talked it all over with him. The only point was as to when the article would have the most effect, and we think the time has come now."
"You would like an article written about a reformatory for to-morrow's Post or next day's. Very well."
"Thank you so much for telling him. Good-afternoon."
"You would like," the young man repeated—"but one moment, if you please. You have omitted to inform me who you are."
To his surprise the lady turned round with a gay laugh. Sharlee had supposed that Mr. Queed, having been offended by her, was deliberately cutting her. That her identity had literally dropped cleanly from his mind struck her as both much better and decidedly more amusing.
"Don't you remember me?" she reminded him once again, laughing full at him from the threshhold. "My dog knocked you over in the street one day—surely you remember the pleasure-dog?—and then that night I gave you your supper at Mrs. Paynter's and afterwards collected twenty dollars from you for back board. I am Mrs. Paynter's niece and my name is Charlotte Weyland."
Weyland?... Weyland? Oho! So this was the girl—sure enough—that Henry G. Surface had stripped of her fortune. Well, well!
"Ah, yes, I recall you now."
She thought there was an inimical note in his voice, and to pay him for it, she said with a final smiling nod: "Oh, I am so pleased!"
Her little sarcasm passed miles over his head. She had touched the spring of the automatic card-index system known as his memory and the ingenious machinery worked on. Presently it pushed out and laid before him the complete record, neatly ticketed and arranged, the full dossier, of all that had passed between him and the girl. But she was nearly through the door before he had decided to say:
"I had another letter from my father last night."
"Oh!" she said, turning at once—"Did you!"
He nodded, gloomily. "However, there was not a cent of money in it."
If he had racked his brains for a subject calculated to detain her—which we may rely upon it that he did not do—he could not have hit upon a surer one. Sharlee Weyland had a great fund of pity for this young man's worse than fatherlessness, and did not in the least mind showing it. She came straight back into the room and up to the table where he sat.
"Does it help you at all—about knowing where he is, I mean?"
"Not in the least. I wonder what he's up to anyway?"
He squinted up at her interrogatively through his circular glasses, as though she ought to be able to tell him if anybody could. Then a thought very much like that took definite shape in his mind. He himself had no time to give to mysterious problems and will-o'-the-wisp pursuits; his book and posterity claimed it all. This girl was familiar with the city; doubtless knew all the people; she seemed intelligent and capable, as girls went. He remembered that he had consulted her about securing remunerative work, with some results; possibly she would also have something sensible to say about his paternal problem. He might make an even shrewder stroke. As his landlady's agent, this girl would of course be interested in establishing his connection with a relative who had twenty-dollar bills to give away. Therefore if it ever should come to a search, why mightn't he turn the whole thing over to the agent—persuade her to hunt his father for him, and thus leave his own time free for the service of the race?
"Look here," said he, with a glance at his watch. "I'll take a few minutes. Kindly sit down there and I'll show you how the man is behaving."
Sharlee sat down as she was bidden, close by his side, piqued as to her curiosity, as well as flattered by his royal condescension. She wore her business suit, which was rough and blue, with a smart little pony coat. She also wore a white veil festooned around her hat, and white gloves that were quite unspotted from the world. The raw February winds had whipped roses into her cheeks; her pure ultramarine eyes made the blue of her suit look commonplace and dull. Dusk had fallen over the city, and Queed cleverly bethought him to snap on an electric light. It revealed a very shabby, ramshackle, and dingy office; but the long table in it was new, oaken, and handsome. In fact, it was one of the repairs introduced by the new management.
"Here," said he, "is his first letter—the one that brought me from New York."
He took it from its envelope and laid it open on the table. A sense of the pathos in this ready sharing of one's most intimate secrets with a stranger took hold of Sharlee as she leaned forward to see what it might say.
"Be careful! Your feather thing is sticking my eye."
Meekly the girl withdrew to a safer distance. From there she read with amazement the six typewritten lines which was all that the letter proved to be. They read thus:
Your father asks that, if you have any of the natural feelings of a son, you will at once leave New York and take up your residence in this city. This is the first request he has ever made of you, as it will be, if you refuse it, the last. But he earnestly begs that you will comply with it, anticipating that it will be to your decided advantage to do so.
"The envelope that that came in," said Queed, briskly laying it down. "Now here's the envelope that the twenty dollars came in—it is exactly like the other two, you observe.—The last exhibit is somewhat remarkable; it came yesterday. Read that."
Sharlee required no urging. She read:
Make friends; mingle with people, and learn to like them. This is the earnest injunction of
Your father.
"Note especially," said the young man, "the initial Q on each of the three envelopes. You will observe that the tail in every instance is defective in just the same way."
Sure enough, the tail of every Q was broken off short near the root, like the rudimentary tail anatomists find in Genus Homo. Mr. Queed looked at her with scholarly triumph.
"I suppose that removes all doubt," said she, "that all these came from the same person."
"Unquestionably.—Well? What do they suggest to you?"
A circle of light from the green-shaded desk-lamp beat down on the three singular exhibits. Sharlee studied them with bewilderment mixed with profound melancholy.
"Is it conceivable," said she, hesitatingly—"I only suggest this because the whole thing seems so extraordinary—that somebody is playing a very foolish joke on you?"
He stared. "Who on earth would wish to joke with me?"
Of course he had her there. "I wish," she said, "that you would tell me what you yourself think of them."
"I think that my father must be very hard up for something to do."
"Oh—I don't think I should speak of it in that way if I were you."
"Why not? If he cites filial duty to me, why shall I not cite paternal duty to him? Why should he confine his entire relations with me in twenty-four years to two preposterous detective-story letters?"
Sharlee said nothing. To tell the truth, she thought the behavior of Queed Senior puzzling in the last degree.
"You grasp the situation? He knows exactly where I am; evidently he has known it all along. He could come to see me to-night; he could have come as soon as I arrived here three months ago; he could have come five, ten, twenty years ago, when I was in New York. But instead he elects to write these curious letters, apparently seeking to make a mystery, and throwing the burden of finding him on me. Why should I become excited over the prospect? If he would promise to endow me now, to support or pension me off, if I found him, that would be one thing. But I submit to you that no man can be expected to interrupt a most important life-work in consideration of a single twenty-dollar bill. And that is the only proof of interest I ever had from him. No—" he broke off suddenly—"no, that's hardly true after all. I suppose it was he who sent the money to Tim."
"To Tim?"
"Tim Queed."
Presently she gently prodded him. "And do you want to tell me who Tim Queed is?"
He eyed her thoughtfully. If the ground of his talk appeared somewhat delicate, nothing could have been more matter-of-fact than the way he tramped it. Yet now he palpably paused to ask himself whether it was worth his while to go more into detail. Yes; clearly it was. If it ever became necessary to ask the boarding-house agent to find his father for him, she would have to know what the situation was, and now was the time to make it plain to her once and for all.
"He is the man I lived with till I was fourteen; one of my friends, a policeman. For a long time I supposed, of course, that Tim was my father, but when I was ten or twelve, he told me, first that I was an orphan who had been left with him to bring up, and later on, that I had a father somewhere who was not in a position to bring up children. That was all he would ever say about it. I became a student while still a little boy, having educated myself practically without instruction of any sort, and when I was fourteen I left Tim because he married at that time, and, with the quarreling and drinking that followed, the house became unbearable. Tim then told me for the first time that he had, from some source, funds equivalent to twenty-five dollars a month for my board, and that he would allow me fifteen of that, keeping ten dollars a month for his services as agent. You follow all this perfectly? So matters went along for ten years, Tim bringing me the fifteen dollars every month and coming frequently to see me in between, often bringing along his brother Murphy, who is a yeggman. Last fall came this letter, purporting to be from my father. Absurd as it appeared to me, I decided to come. Tim said that, in that case, he would be compelled to cut off the allowance entirely. Nevertheless, I came."
Sharlee had listened to this autobiographical sketch with close and sympathetic attention. "And now that you are here—and settled—haven't you decided to do something—?"
He leaned back in his swivel chair and stared at her. "Do something! Haven't I done all that he asked? Haven't I given up fifteen dollars a month for him? Decidedly, the next move is his."
"But if you meant to take no steps when you got here, why did you come?"
"To give him his chance, of course. One city is exactly like another to me. All that I ask of any of them is a table and silence. Apart from the forfeiture of my income, living here and living there are all one. Do! You talk of it glibly enough, but what is there to do? There are no Queeds in this city. I looked in the directory this morning. In all probability that is not his name anyway. Kindly bear in mind that I have not the smallest clue to proceed upon, even had I the time and willingness to proceed upon it."
"I am obliged to agree with you," she said, "in thinking that your—"
"Besides," continued Doctor Queed, "what reason have I for thinking that he expects or desires me to track him down? For all that he says here, that may be the last thing in the world he wishes."
Sharlee, turning toward him, her chin in her white-gloved hand, looked at him earnestly.
"Do you care to have me discuss it with you?"
"Oh, yes, I have invited an expression of opinion from you."
"Then I agree with you in thinking that your father is not treating you fairly. His attitude toward you is extraordinary, to say the least of it. But of course there must be some good reason for this. Has it occurred to you that he may be in some—situation where it is not possible for him to reveal himself to you?"
"Such as what?"
"Well, I don't know—"
"Why doesn't he say so plainly in his letters then?"
"I don't know."
The young man threw out his hands with a gesture which inquired what in the mischief she was talking about then.
"Here is another thought," said Sharlee, not at all disconcerted. "Have you considered that possibly he may be doing this way—as a test?"
"Test of what?"
"Of you. I mean that, wanting to—to have you with him now, he is taking this way of finding out whether or not you want him. Don't you see what I mean? He appeals here to the natural feelings of a son, and then again he tells you to make friends and learn to like people. Evidently he is expecting something of you—I don't know exactly what. But don't you think, perhaps, that if you began a search for him, he would take it as a sign—"
"I told you that there was no way in which a search, as you call it, could be begun. Nor, if there were, have I the smallest inclination to begin it. Nor, again, if I had, could I possibly take the time from My Book."
She was silent a moment. "There is, of course, one way in which you could find out at any moment."
"Indeed! What is that, pray?"
"Mr. Tim Queed."
He smiled faintly but derisively. "Hardly. Of course Tim knows all about it. He told me once that he was present at the wedding of my parents; another time that my mother died when I was born. But he would add, and will add, not a word to these confidences; not even to assure me definitely that my father is still alive. He says that he has sworn an oath of secrecy. I called on him before I left New York. No, no; I may discover my father or he may discover me, or not, but we can rest absolutely assured that I shall get no help from Tim."
"But you can't mean simply to sit still—"
"And leave matters to him. I do."
"But—but," she still protested, "he is evidently unhappy Mr. Queed—evidently counting on you for something—"
"Then let him come out like a man and say plainly what he wants. I cannot possibly drop my work to try to solve entirely superfluous enigmas. Keep all this in mind—take an interest in it, will you?" he added briskly. "Possibly I might need your help some day."
"Certainly I will. I appreciate your telling me about it, and I'd be so glad to help you in any way that I could."
"How do you like my editorials?" he demanded abruptly.
"I'm afraid I don't understand a line of them!"
He waved his hand indulgently, like a grandfather receiving the just tribute of his little ones. "They are for thinkers, experts," said he, and picked up his pencil.
The agent took the hint; pushed back her chair; her glove was unbuttoned and she slowly fastened it. In her heart was a great compassion for the little Doctor.
"Mr. Queed, I want you to know that if I ever could be of help to you about anything, I'd always think it a real pleasure. Please remember that, won't you? Did you know I lived down this way, in the daytime?"
"Lived?"
She made a gesture toward the window, and away to the south and east. "My office is only three blocks away, down there in the park—"
"Your office? You don't work!"
"Oh, don't I though!"
"Why, I thought you were a lady!"
They were so close together that she was compelled to laugh full in his face, disclosing two rows of splendid little teeth and the tip of a rosy little tongue. Probably she could have crushed him by another pointing gesture, turned this time toward her honored great-grandfather who stood in marble in the square; but what was the use?
"What are you laughing at?" he inquired mildly.
"At your definition of a lady. Where on earth did you get it? Out of those laws of human society you write every night at my aunt's?"
"No," said he, the careful scientist at once, "no, I admit, if you like, that I used the term in a loose, popular sense. I would not seriously contend that females of gentle birth and breeding—ladies in the essential sense—are never engaged in gainful occupations—"
"You shouldn't," she laughed, "not in this city at any rate. It might astonish you to know how many females of gentle birth and breeding are engaged in gainful occupations on this one block alone. It was not ever thus with them. Once they had wealth and engaged in nothing but delicious leisure. But in 1861 some men came down here, about six to one, and took all this wealth away from them, at the same time exterminating the males. Result: the females, ladies in the essential sense, must either become gainful or starve. They have not starved. Sociologically, it's interesting. Make Colonel Cowles tell you about it some time."
"He has told me about it. In fact he tells me constantly. And this work that you do," he said, not unkindly and not without interest, "what is it? Are you a teacher, perhaps, a ... no!—You speak of an office. You are a clerk, doubtless, a bookkeeper, a stenographer, an office girl?"
She nodded with exaggerated gravity. "You have guessed my secret. I am a clerk, bookkeeper, stenographer, and office girl. My official title, of course, is a little more frilly, but you describe—"
"Well? What is it?"
"They call it Assistant Secretary of the State Department of Charities."
He looked astonished; she had no idea his face could take on so much expression.
"You! You! Why, how on earth did you get such a position?"
"Pull," said Sharlee.
Their eyes met, and she laughed him down.
"Who is the real Secretary to whom you are assistant?"
"The nicest man in the world. Mr. Dayne—Rev. George Dayne."
"A parson! Does he know anything about his subject? Is he an expert?—a trained relief worker? Does he know Willoughby? And Smathers? And Conant?"
"Knows them by heart. Quotes pages of them at a time in his letters without ever glancing at the books."
"And you?"
"I may claim some familiarity with their theories."
He fussed with his pencil. "I recall defining sociology for you one night at my boarding-house...."
"I remember."
"Well," said he, determined to find something wrong, "those men whom I mentioned to you are not so good as they think, particularly Smathers. I may as well tell you that I shall show Smathers up completely in my book."
"We shall examine your arguments with care and attention. We leave no stone unturned to keep abreast of the best modern thought."
"It is extraordinary that such a position should be held by a girl like you, who can have no scientific knowledge of the many complex problems.... However," he said, a ray of brightness lightening his displeasure, "your State is notoriously backward in this field. Your department, I fancy, can hardly be more than rudimentary."
"It will be much, much more than that in another year or two. Why, we're only four years old!"
"So this is why you are interested in having editorials written about reformatories. It is a reformatory for women that you wish to establish?"
"How did you know?"
"I merely argue from the fact that your State is so often held up to reproach for lack of one. What is the plan?"
"We are asking," said the Assistant Secretary, "for a hundred thousand dollars—sixty thousand to buy the land and build, forty thousand for equipment and two years' support. Modest enough, is it not? Of course we shall not get a penny from the present legislature. Legislatures love to say no; it dearly flatters their little vanity. We are giving them the chance to say no now. Then when they meet again, two years from now, we trust that they will be ready to give us what we ask—part of it, at any rate. We can make a start with seventy-five thousand dollars."
Queed was moved to magnanimity. "Look here. You have been civil to me—I will write that article for you Myself."
While Sharlee had become aware that the little Doctor was interested, really interested, in talking social science with her, she thought he must be crazy to offer such a contribution of his time. A guilty pink stole into her cheek. A reformatory article by Mr. Queed would doubtless be scientifically pluperfect, but nobody would read it. Colonel Cowles, on the other hand, had never even heard of Willoughby and Smathers; but when he wrote an article people read it, and the humblest understood exactly what he was driving at.
"Why—it's very nice of you to offer to help us, but I couldn't think of imposing on your time—"
"Naturally not," said he, decisively; "but it happens that we have decided to allow a breathing-space in my series on taxation, that the public may digest what I have already written. I am therefore free to discuss other topics for a few days. For to-morrow's issue, I am analyzing certain little understood industrial problems in Bavaria. On the following day—"
"It's awfully good of you to think of it," said Sharlee, embarrassed by his grave gaze. "I can't tell you how I appreciate it. But—but—you see, there's a lot of special detail that applies to this particular case alone—oh, a great lot of it—little facts connected with peculiar State conditions and—and the history of our department, you know—and I have talked it over so thoroughly with the Colonel—"
"Here is Colonel Cowles now."
She breathed a sigh. Colonel Cowles, entering with the breath of winter upon him, greeted her affectionately. Queed, rather relieved that his too hasty offer had not been accepted, noted with vexation that his conversation with the agent had cost him eighteen minutes of time. Vigorously he readdressed himself to the currency problems of the Bavarians; the girl's good-night, as applied to him, fell upon ears deafer than any post.
Sharlee walked home through the tingling twilight; fourteen blocks, and she did them four times a day. It was a still evening, clear as a bell and very cold; already stars were pushing through the dim velvet round; all the world lay white with a light hard snow, crusted and sparkling under the street lights. Her private fear about the whole matter was that Queed Senior was a person of a criminal mode of life, who, discovering the need of a young helper, was somehow preparing to sound and size up his long-neglected son.