From that time on Quin's status in the family became less anomalous. To
be sure, he was still Mr. Randolph's private secretary, Madam's top
sergeant, Miss Isobel's and Miss Enid's body-guard, and the household's
general-utility man; but he was now something else in addition. Miss
Isobel had discovered, quite by chance, that he was the grandson of Dr.
Ezra Quinby, whose book "Christianizing China" had been one of the
inspirations of her girlhood.
"And to think we considered asking him to eat in the pantry!" she
exclaimed in horror to her sister.
"Well, I told you all along he was a gentleman by instinct," said Miss
Enid.
To be sure, they were constantly shocked by his manners and his frank
method of speech, but they were also exhilarated. He was like a
disturbing but refreshing breeze that swept through their quiet, ordered
lives. He talked about things and places they had never heard of or seen,
and recounted his experiences with an enthusiasm that was contagious.
As for Quin, he found, to his surprise, that he was enjoying his new
quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending
source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid
soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk
petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray.
He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the
flattering interest they began to take in all his affairs.
Miss Isobel developed a palpitating concern for his spiritual welfare and
invited him to go to church with her. She even introduced him to the
minister with proud reference to his distinguished grandfather, and
basked in the reflected glory.
Quin did not take kindly to church. He considered that he had done his
full duty by it in the first fourteen years of his life, when he, along
with the regenerate heathen, had been forced to attend five services
every Sunday in the gloomy chapel in the compound at Nanking. But if
Eleanor's aunt had asked him to accompany her to the gates of hell
instead of the portals of heaven, he would have acquiesced eagerly. So
strenuously did he lift his voice in the familiar hymns of his youth that
he was promptly urged to join the choir, an ordeal whose boredom was
mitigated only during the few moments when the collection was taken up
and he and the tenor could bet on which deacon would make his round
first.
Not for years had Miss Isobel had such thrilling occupation as that of
returning Ezra Quinby's grandson to the spiritual fold. In spite of the
fact that Quin was a fairly decent chap already, whose worst vices were
poker and profanity, she persisted in regarding him as a brand which she
had been privileged to snatch from the burning.
What gave him a yet more intimate claim upon her was the fact that his
heart and lungs were still troublesome, and with any over-exertion on his
part, or a sudden change in the weather, his chest became very sore and
his racking cough returned. At such times Miss Isobel was in her glory.
She would put him to bed with hot-water bottles and mustard plasters and
feed him hot lemonade. Quin took kindly to the coddling. No one had
fussed over him like that since his mother died, and he was touchingly
grateful.
"Say, you'd be a wonder out at the hospital," he said to her on one of
these occasions. "I wish some of those fellows with the flu could have
you to look after them."
Miss Isobel's long, sallow face with its dark-ringed eyes lit up for a
moment.
"There is nothing I should like better," she said. "But of course it's
out of the question."
"Why?"
"Mother doesn't approve of us doing any work at the camp. She did make an
exception in the case of my niece, but Eleanor was so insistent. Sister
and I try never to oppose mother's wishes. It cuts us off from a great
many things; but then, I contend that our first duty is to her."
Miss Isobel's attitude toward her mother was that of a monk to his
haircloth shirt. She acquired so much merit in her friends' eyes and in
her own by her patient endurance that the penance was robbed of half its
sting.
"Things are awful bad out at the hospital now," went on Quin. "A fellow
was telling me yesterday that in some of the wards they only have one
nurse to two hundred patients. The epidemic is getting worse every day.
You-all in town here don't know what it's like where there's so many sick
and so few to take care of 'em."
Miss Isobel, with morbid interest, insisted upon the details. When Quin
had finished his grim recital, she turned to him with scared
determination.
"Do you know," she fluttered, "I almost feel as if I ought to go in spite
of mother's wishes."
"Of course you ought," Quin conceded, "especially when you are keeping a
trained nurse here in the house who doesn't do a thing but carry up trays
and sit around and look at herself!"
"I know it," Miss Isobel admitted miserably. "I've lain awake nights
worrying over it. Sister and I are perfectly able to do what is to be
done. But mother insists upon keeping the nurse."
"Well, she can't keep you, if you really want to go. I guess you got a
right to do your duty."
The word was like a bugle call to Miss Isobel. She went about all day in
a tremor of uncertainty, and at last yielded to Quin's insistence, and,
donning Eleanor's Red Cross uniform, accompanied him to the hospital.
Every afternoon after that, when Madam was taking her rest, Miss Isobel,
feeling like Machiavelli one moment and Florence Nightingale the next,
stepped into the carriage, already loaded with delicacies, and proceeded
on her errand of mercy. She invariably returned in a twitter of subdued
excitement, and recounted her experiences with breathless interest at the
dinner-table.
"I've never seen sister like this before," Miss Enid told Quin. "She
talks more in an hour now than she used to talk in a week, and she seems
so happy."
The change wrought in Miss Isobel's life by Quin's advent into the family
was mild, however, compared to the cataclysm effected in the life of her
sister. Miss Enid, having had her own affections wrecked in early youth,
spent her time acting as a sort of salvage corps following the
devastation caused by her cyclonic mother. When Madam shattered things to
bits, Miss Enid tried patiently to remold them nearer to the heart's
desire. She had acquired a habit of offsetting every disagreeable remark
by an agreeable one, and she was apt to see incipient halos hovering
above heads where less sympathetic observers saw horns. When the last
chance of getting rid of the disturbing but helpful Quin vanished, she
set herself to work to discover his possibilities with the view of
undertaking his social reclamation.
One evening, as he was passing through the hall, she called him into the
library. It was a small, high-ceilinged room, with bookcases reaching to
the ceiling, and a massive mahogany table bearing a reading-lamp with two
green shades. Lincoln and his Cabinet held session over one door, and
Andrew Jackson, surrounded by his weeping family, died over the other.
Miss Enid, with books piled up in front of her, was sitting at the table.
"Quinby," she said,--it had been "Quinby" ever since the discovery of his
grandfather,--"I wonder if you can help me? I have a club paper on the
14th, and I can't find a thing about my subject. Can't you tell me
something about the position of women in China?"
Quin, who had come in expecting to be called upon to put up a window or
fix the electric light, looked at her blankly. Under ordinary
circumstances he would have laughingly disclaimed any knowledge of the
subject; but with Miss Enid sitting there looking up at him with such
flattering confidence, it was different. Out of the dusty pigeon holes of
his brain he dragged odds and ends of information, memories of the native
houses, the customs and manners of the people, stories he had heard from
his Chinese nurses, street incidents he had seen, stray impressions
picked up here and there by a lively active American boy in a foreign
city.
"I ought to be able to tell you a lot more," he said apologetically in
conclusion. "I could if I wasn't such a bonehead."
"But you've given me just what I wanted!" cried Miss Enid. "And you've
made it all so _vivid_. It takes a very good mind to register details
like that and to be able to present them in such good order."
Quin looked at her quizzically. He was confident enough of his abilities
along other lines, but he had a low opinion of his mental equipment.
"I guess the only kind of sense I got is common," he said.
But Miss Enid would not have it so. "No," she said, earnestly regarding
the toe of her beaded slipper; "your mind is much above the average. But
it isn't enough to be born with brains--one must know how to use them."
"I suppose you mean I don't?" asked Quin, also regarding the beaded
slipper.
"Nobody does who has had no training," Miss Enid gently suggested. "It
seems a pity that a young man of your possibilities should have had so
little opportunity for cultivating them."
"Well, I ain't a Methuselah!" said Quin, slightly peaked. "What's the
matter with me beginning now?"
"It's rather late, I am afraid. Still, other men have done it. I wonder
if you would consider taking up some night courses at the university?"
"I'd consider anything that would get me on in the world. I've got a very
particular reason, Miss Enid, for--for wanting to get on."
She looked at him with increased interest.
"Really? How interesting! You must tell me all about it some day. But
this would keep you back for a time. You would have to give all your
spare hours to study, and you might not even be able to take the better
position they promised you at the factory this spring."
"I've already got it," Quin said. "Mr. Bangs told me to-day that I was to
start in as shipping clerk Monday morning. But he'd let me off nights if
I'd put it up to him. Old Chester says----"
Miss Enid's Pre-Raphaelite brows contracted slightly. "Don't you think it
would be more respectful----"
"Sure," agreed Quin; "I didn't mean any harm. I like Mr. Chester. He
asked me to come up to his rooms some night and see his collection of
flutes."
"That was like him," Miss Enid said warmly. "He's always doing kind
things like that. I know his reputation for being diffident and hard to
get acquainted with, but once you get beneath the surface----"
Quin was not in the least interested in Mr. Chester's surface. He sat on
the edge of the table, swinging his foot and staring off into space,
wholly absorbed in the idea of cultivating that newly discovered
intellect of his.
"Say, Miss Enid," he said, impulsively interrupting her eulogy of Mr.
Chester's neglected virtues, "I wish you'd sort of take me in hand. _You_
know what I need better than I do. If you'll get a line on that school
business, I'll start right in, if I have to start in the kindergarten.
Hand out the dope and I'll take it. And whenever you see me doing things
wrong, or saying things wrong, I'd take it as a favor if you'd jack me
up."
Miss Enid smiled ruefully. "Why, Quinby, that is just what we have all
been doing ever since you came. If you weren't the best-natured----"
"Not a bit of it," disclaimed Quin. "Queen Vic lets me have it in the
neck sometimes, but that's nothing. I've learned more since I've been in
this house than I ever learned in all my life put together. Why,
sometimes I don't hardly know myself!"
"Two negatives, Quinby, make an affirmative," suggested Miss Enid primly;
and thus his higher education began.
Miss Enid was right when she said his mind was above the average. Its one
claim to superiority lay in the fact that it had received the little
training it had at first hand. What he knew of geography he knew, not
from maps, but from actual observation in many parts of the world. Higher
mathematics were unknown to him, but through years of experience he had
learned to solve the most difficult of all problems--that of making ends
meet. He had learned astronomy from a Norwegian sailor, as they lay on
the deck of a Pacific transport night after night in the southern seas.
He had even tackled literature during his six months in hospital, when he
had plowed through all the books the wards provided from Dante's
"Inferno" to "Dere Mable."
Soon after his talk with Miss Enid he decided to call upon Mr. Chester,
not because Mr. Chester was an enlivening companion, but because he was
so touchingly grateful for the casual friendship that Quin bestowed upon
him.
"He's so sort of lonesome," Quin told Miss Leaks. "When he looks at me
with those big dog eyes of his, I feel like scratching him back of his
ear."
Mr. Chester, in his small but tastefully furnished bachelor apartment,
outdid himself in his efforts to be hospitable. He insisted upon Quin
taking the best chair, gave him a good cigar, showed him some rare first
editions, displayed his collection of musical instruments, and struggled
valiantly to establish a common footing. But there was only one subject
upon which they could find anything to say, and they came back again and
again to the affairs of the Bartlett family.
"Why don't you ever come around and see the folks?" Quin asked
hospitably. "They get awful lonesome with so few people dropping in."
Mr. Chester in evident embarrassment flicked the ash from his cigar and
answered guardedly:
"I used to be there a great deal in the old days. Unfortunately, Madam
Bartlett and I had a misunderstanding. As a matter of fact, I have not
crossed that threshold in--let me see--it must be fifteen years! It was a
party, I remember, given for Eleanor, the little granddaughter, on her
fifth birthday."
"Oh, yes!" said Quin, finding Mr. Chester for the first time interesting.
"They've got a picture of her taken with Miss Enid in her party dress."
"I suppose you mean this?" Mr. Chester reached over and took from his
desk a somewhat faded photograph, in a silver frame, of a little girl
leaning against a big girl's shoulders, both enveloped in a cloud of
white tulle.
"Gee, but she was pretty!" exclaimed Quin, devouring every detail of
Eleanor's chubby features.
"A beautiful woman," sighed Mr. Chester--and Quin, looking up suddenly,
surprised a look in his host's eyes that was anything but numerical.
Obligingly relinquishing his application of the pronoun for Mr.
Chester's, he said:
"She certainly thinks a lot of you!"
"How do you know?" demanded Mr. Chester.
"From the way she talks. She says people are barking up the wrong tree
when they think you are cold and indifferent and all that; says you've
got one of the noblest natures _she_ ever knew."
Quin was appalled at the effect of these words. Mr. Chester's eyes got
quite red around the rims and his lips actually trembled.
"Poor Enid!" he said. Then he remembered himself, or rather forgot
himself, and became a Number Nine again, and bored Quin talking business
until ten o'clock.
At parting they shook hands cordially, and Mr. Chester urged him to come
again.
"I wonder if you would care to use one of my tickets for the Symphony
Orchestra next week?" he asked.
Quin looked embarrassed. He had accepted a similar invitation the week
before, and had confided to Rose Martel afterward that he "never heard
such a bully band playing such bum music." But Mr. Chester's intention
was so kind that he could run no risk of offending him.
"I'll go if I can," he said, leaving himself a loophole.
"Here is the ticket," said Mr. Chester, "and in case you do not use it,
perhaps you will so good as to pass it on to some one who can."
This suggestion afforded Quin an inspiration.
"Say, Miss Enid," he said the next morning at breakfast. "I want to give
you a ticket to the Symphony Orchestra next Friday night. Will you go?"
"But, my dear boy," she protested greatly touched, "I cannot go by
myself."
"You don't have to. I'm going to take you and come for you. You ain't
going to turn me down, are you?"
"Have you got the ticket?"
"Right here. Now you will go, won't you?"
It would have taken a less susceptible heart than Miss Enid's to resist
Quin's persuasive tones, and in spite of Miss Isobel's disapprobation she
agreed to go.
Just what happened on that opening night of the Fine Arts Series, when
two old lovers found themselves in embarrassing proximity for the first
time in fifteen years, has never been told. But from subsequent events it
is safe to conclude that during the long program they became much more
interested in their own unfinished symphony than in Schubert's, and when
Quin came to take Miss Enid home, he found them in a corner of the lobby,
still so engrossed in conversation that he obligingly walked around the
block to give them an additional five minutes.