III

_Encounter between Charlotte Lee Weyland, a Landlady's Agent, and

Doctor Queed, a Young Man who wouldn't pay his Board._

Sharlee glanced at Mrs. Paynter, who caught herself and said: "Mr.

Queed, my niece--Miss Weyland."

But over the odious phrase, "my business woman," her lips boggled and

balked; not to save her life could she bring herself to damn her own

niece with such an introduction.

Noticing the omission and looking through the reasons for it as through

window-glass, Sharlee smothered a laugh, and bowed. Mr. Queed bowed, but

did not laugh or even smile. He drew up a chair at his usual place and

sat down. As by an involuntary reflex, his left hand dropped toward his

coat-pocket, whence the top edges of a book could be descried

protruding. Mrs. Paynter moved vaguely toward the door. As for her

business woman, she made at once for the kitchen, where Emma and her

faithful co-worker and mother, Laura, rose from their supper to assist

her. With her own hands the girl cut a piece of the Porterhouse for Mr.

Queed. Creamed potatoes, two large spoonfuls, were added; two rolls;

some batterbread; coffee, which had to be diluted with a little hot

water to make out the full cup; butter; damson preserves in a saucer:

all of which duly set forth and arranged on a shiny black "waiter."

"Enough for a whole platform of doctors," said Sharlee, critically

reviewing the spread. "Thank you, Emma."

She took the tray in both hands and pushed open the swing-doors with her

side, thus making her ingress to the dining-room in a sort of

crab-fashion. Mrs. Paynter was gone. Mr. Queed sat alone in the

dining-room. His book lay open on the table and he was humped over it,

hand in his hair.

Having set her tray on the side-table, Sharlee came to his side with the

plate of steak and potatoes. He did not stir, and presently she

murmured, "I beg your pardon."

He looked up half-startled, not seeming to take in for the first second

who or what she was.

"Oh ... yes."

He moved his book, keeping his finger in the place, and she set down the

plate. Next she brought the appurtenances one by one, the butter,

coffee, and so on. The old mahogany sideboard yielded knife, fork, and

spoon; salt and pepper; from the right-hand drawer, a fresh napkin.

These placed, she studied them, racked her brains a moment and, from

across the table--

"Is there anything else?"

Mr. Queed's eye swept over his equipment with intelligent quickness. "A

glass of water, please."

"Oh!--Certainly."

Sharlee poured a glass from the battered silver pitcher on the

side-table--the one that the Yankees threw out of the window in May,

1862--and duly placed it. Mr. Queed was oblivious to the little

courtesy. By this time he had propped his book open against the plate of

rolls and was reading it between cuts on the steak. Beside the plate he

had laid his watch, an open-faced nickel one about the size of a

desk-clock.

"Do you think that is everything?"

"I believe that is all."

"Do you remember me?" then asked Sharlee.

He glanced at her briefly through his spectacles, his eyes soon

returning to his supper.

"I think not."

The girl smiled suddenly, all by herself. "It was my dog that--upset you

on Main Street this afternoon. You may remember ...? I thought you

seemed to--to limp a little when you came in just now. I'm awfully

sorry for the--mishap--"

"It is of no consequence," he said, with some signs of unrest. "I walk

seldom. Your--pleasure-dog was uninjured, I trust?"

"Thank you. He was never better."

That the appearance of the pleasure-dog's owner as a familiar of his

boarding-house piqued his curiosity not the slightest was only too

evident. He bowed, his eyes returning from steak to book.

"I am obliged to you for getting my supper."

If he had said, "Will you kindly go?" his meaning could hardly have been

more unmistakable. However, Mrs. Paynter's resolute agent held her

ground. Taking advantage of his gross absorption, she now looked the

delinquent boarder over with some care. At first glance Mr. Queed looked

as if he might have been born in a library, where he had unaspiringly

settled down. To support this impression there were his pallid

complexion and enormous round spectacles; his dusty air of premature

age; his general effect of dried-up detachment from his environment. One

noted, too, the tousled mass of nondescript hair, which he wore about a

month too long; the necktie-band triumphing over the collar in the back;

the collar itself, which had a kind of celluloid look and shone with a

blue unwholesome sheen under the gas-light. On the other hand there was

the undeniably trim cut of the face, which gave an unexpected and

contradictory air of briskness. The nose was bold; the long straight

mouth might have belonged to a man of action. Probably the great

spectacles were the turning-point in the man's whole effect. You felt

that if you could get your hands on him long enough to pull those off,

and cut his hair, you might have an individual who would not so surely

have been christened the little Doctor.

These details the agent gathered at her leisure. Meantime here was the

situation, stark and plain; and she, and she alone, must handle it. She

must tell this young man, so frankly engrossed in his mental and

material food, which he ate by his watch, that he must fork over four

times seven-fifty or vacate the premises.... Yes, but how to do it? He

could not be much older than she herself, but his manner was the most

impervious, the most impossible that she had ever seen. "I'm grim and

I'm resolute," she said over to herself; but the splendid defiance of

the motto failed to quicken her blood. Not even the recollection of the

month's sponge for board and the house-rent due next week spurred her to

action. Then she thought of Fifi, whom Mr. Queed had packed off sobbing

for his good pleasure, and her resolution hardened.

"I'm afraid I must interrupt your reading for a moment," she said

quietly. "There is something I want to say...."

He glanced up for the second time. There was surprise and some vexation

in the eyes behind his circular glasses, but no sign of any interest.

"Well?"

"When my aunt introduced you to me just now she did not--did not

identify me as she should--"

"Really, does it make any difference?"

"Yes, I think it does. You see, I am not only her niece, but her

business woman, her agent, as well. She isn't very good at business, but

still she has a good deal of it to be done. She runs this

boarding-place, and people of various kinds come to her and she takes

them into her house. Many of these people are entirely unknown to her.

In this way trouble sometimes arises. For instance people come now and

then who--how shall I put it?--are very reserved about making their

board-payments. My aunt hardly knows how to deal with them--"

He interrupted her with a gesture and a glance at his watch. "It always

seems to me an unnecessary waste of time not to be direct. You have

called to collect my arrearage for board?"

"Well, yes. I have."

"Please tell your aunt that when I told her to give herself no concern

about that matter, I exactly meant what I said. To-night I received

funds through the mail; the sum, twenty dollars. Your aunt," said he,

obviously ready to return to his reading matter, "shall have it all."

But Sharlee had heard delinquent young men talk like that before, and

her business platform in these cases was to be introduced to their funds

direct.

"That would cut down the account nicely," said she, looking at him

pleasantly, but a shade too hard to imply a beautiful trust. She went on

much like the firm young lady enumerators who take the census: "By the

way--let me ask: Have you any regular business or occupation?"

"Not, I suppose, in the sense in which you mean the interrogation."

"Perhaps you have friends in the city, who--"

"Friends! Here! Good Lord--_no!_" said he, with exasperated vehemence.

"I gather," was surprised from her, "that you do not wish--"

"They are the last thing in the world that I desire. My experience in

that direction in New York quite sufficed me, I assure you. I came

here," said he, with rather too blunt an implication, "to be let alone."

"I was thinking of references, you know. You have friends in New York,

then?"

"Yes, I have two. But I doubt if you would regard them as serviceable

for references. The best of them is only a policeman; the other is a

yeggman by trade--his brother, by the way."

She was silent a moment, wondering if he were telling the truth, and

deciding what to say next. The young man used the silence to bolt his

coffee at a gulp and go hurriedly but deeply into the preserves.

"My aunt will be glad that you can make a remittance to-night. I will

take it to her for you with pleasure."

"Oh!--All right."

He put his hand into his outer breast-pocket, pulled out an envelope,

and absently pitched it across the table. She looked at it and saw that

it was postmarked the city and bore a typewritten address.

"Am I to open this?"

"Oh, as you like," said he, and, removing the spoon, turned a page.

The agent picked up the envelope with anticipations of helpful clues. It

was her business to find out everything that she could about Mr. Queed.

A determinedly moneyless, friendless, and vocationless young man could

not daily stretch his limbs under her aunt's table and retain the Third

Hall Back against more compensatory guests. But the letter proved a

grievous disappointment to her. Inside was a folded sheet of cheap white

paper, apparently torn from a pad. Inside the sheet was a new

twenty-dollar bill. That was all. Apart from the address, there was no

writing anywhere.

Yet the crisp greenback, incognito though it came, indubitably suggested

that Mr. Queed was not an entire stranger to the science of

money-making.

"Ah," said the agent, insinuatingly, "evidently you have _some_

occupation, after all--of--of a productive sort...."

He looked up again with that same air of vexed surprise, as much as to

say: "What! You still hanging around!"

"I don't follow you, I fear."

"I assume that this money comes to you in payment for some--work you

have done--"

"It is an assumption, certainly."

"You can appreciate, perhaps, that I am not idly inquisitive. I

shouldn't--"

"What is it that you wish to know?"

"As to this money--"

"Really, you know as much about it as I do. It came exactly as I handed

it to you: the envelope, the blank paper, and the bill."

"But you know, of course, where it comes from?"

"I can't say I do. Evidently," said Mr. Queed, "it is intended as a

gift."

"Then--perhaps you have a good friend here after all? Some one who has

guessed--"

"I think I told you that I have but two friends, and I know for a

certainty that they are both in New York. Besides, neither of them would

give me twenty dollars."

"But--but--but," said the girl, laughing through her utter

bewilderment--"aren't you interested to know who _did_ give it to you?

Aren't you _curious?_ I assure you that in this city it's not a bit

usual to get money through the mails from anonymous admirers--"

"Nor did I say that this was a usual case. I told you that I didn't

_know_ who sent me this."

"Exactly--"

"But I have an idea. I think my father sent it."

"Oh! Your father ..."

So he had a father, an eccentric but well-to-do father, who, though not

a friend, yet sent in twenty dollars now and then to relieve his son's

necessities. Sharlee felt her heart rising.

"Don't think me merely prying. You see I am naturally interested in the

question of whether you--will find yourself able to stay on here--"

"You refer to my ability to make my board payments?"

"Yes."

Throughout this dialogue, Mr. Queed had been eating, steadily and

effectively. Now he slid his knife and fork into place with a pained

glance at his watch; and simultaneously a change came over his face, a

kind of tightening, shot through with Christian fortitude, which plainly

advertised an unwelcome resolution.

"My supper allowance of time," he began warningly, "is practically up.

However, I suppose the definite settlement of this board question cannot

be postponed further. I must not leave you under any misapprehensions.

If this money came from my father, it is the first I ever had from him

in my life. Whether I am to get any more from him is problematical, to

say the least. Due consideration must be given the fact that he and I

have never met."

"Oh!... Does--he live here, in the city?"

"I have some reason to believe that he does. It is indeed," Mr. Queed

set forth to his landlady's agent, "because of that belief that I have

come here. I have assumed, with good grounds, that he would promptly

make himself known to me, take charge of things, and pay my board; but

though I have been here nearly a month, he has so far made not the

slightest move in that direction, unless we count this letter. Possibly

he leaves it to me to find him, but I, on my part, have no time to spare

for any such undertaking. I make the situation clear to you? Under the

circumstances I cannot promise you a steady revenue from my father. On

the other hand, for all that I know, it may be his plan to send me money

regularly after this."

There was a brief pause. "But--apart from the money consideration--have

you no interest in finding him?"

"Oh--if that is all one asks! But it happens not to be a mere question

of my personal whim. Possibly you can appreciate the fact that finding a

father is a tremendous task when you have no idea where he lives, or

what he looks like, or what name he may be using. My time is wholly

absorbed by my own work. I have none to give to a wild-goose chase such

as that, on the mere chance that, if found, he would agree to pay my

board for the future."

If he had been less in earnest he would have been grotesque. As it was,

Sharlee was by no means sure that he escaped it; and she could not keep

a controversial note out of her voice as she said:--

"Yours must be a very great work to make you view the finding of your

father in that way."

"The greatest in the world," he answered, drily. "I may call it,

loosely, evolutionary sociology."

She was so silent after this, and her expression was so peculiar, that

he concluded that his words conveyed nothing to her.

"The science," he added kindly, "which treats of the origin, nature, and

history of human society; analyzes the relations of men in organized

communities; formulates the law or laws of social progress and

permanence; and correctly applies these laws to the evolutionary

development of human civilization."

"I am familiar with the terms. And your ambition is to become a great

evolutionary sociologist?"