"Oh! Then you are one already?"
For answer, Mr. Queed dipped his hand into his inner pocket, produced a
large wallet, and from a mass of papers selected a second envelope.
"You mention references. Possibly these will impress you as even better
than friends."
Sharlee, seated on the arm of Major Brooke's chair, ran through the
clippings: two advertisements of a well-known "heavy" review announcing
articles by Mr. Queed; a table of contents torn from a year-old number
of the _Political Science Quarterly_ to the same effect; an editorial
from a New York newspaper commenting on one of these articles and
speaking laudatorily of its author; a private letter from the editor of
the "heavy" urging Mr. Queed to write another article on a specified
subject, "Sociology and Socialism."
To Sharlee the exhibit seemed surprisingly formidable, but the wonder in
her eyes was not at that. Her marvel was for the fact that the man who
was capable of so cruelly elbowing little Fifi out of his way should be
counted a follower of the tenderest and most human of sciences.
"They impress me," she said, returning his envelope; "but not as better
than friends."
"Ah? A matter of taste. Now--"
"I had always supposed," continued the girl, looking at him, "that
sociology had a close relation with life--in fact, that it was based on
a conscious recognition of--the brotherhood of man."
"Your supposition is doubtless sound, though you express it so loosely."
"Yet you feel that the sociologist has no such relation?"
He glanced up sharply. At the subtly hostile look in her eyes, his
expression became, for the first time, a little interested.
"How do you deduce that?"
"Oh!... It is loose, if you like--but I deduce it from what you have
said--and implied--about your father and--having friends."
But what she thought of, most of all, was the case of Fifi.
She stood across the table, facing him, looking down at him; and there
was a faintly heightened color in her cheeks. Her eyes were the clearest
lapis lazuli, heavily fringed with lashes which were blacker than
Egypt's night. Her chin was finely and strongly cut; almost a masculine
chin, but unmasculinely softened by the sweetness of her mouth.
Mr. Queed eyed her with some impatience through his round spectacles.
"You apparently jumble together the theory and what you take to be the
application of a science in the attempt to make an impossible unit.
Hence your curious confusion. Theory and application are as totally
distinct as the poles. The few must discover for the many to use. My own
task--since the matter appears to interest you--is to work out the laws
of human society for those who come after to practice and apply."
"And suppose those who come after feel the same unwillingness to
practice and apply that you, let us say, feel?"
"It becomes the business of government to persuade them."
"And if government shirks also? What is government but the common
expression of masses of individuals very much like yourself?"
"There you return, you see, to your fundamental error. There are very
few individuals in the least like me. I happen to be writing a book of
great importance, not to myself merely, but to posterity. If I fail to
finish my book, if I am delayed in finishing it, I can hardly doubt that
the world will be the loser. This is not a task like organizing a
prolonged search for one's father, or dawdling with friends, which a
million men can do equally well. I alone can write my book. Perhaps you
now grasp my duty of concentrating all my time and energy on this single
work and ruthlessly eliminating whatever interferes with it."
The girl found his incredible egoism at once amusing and extremely
exasperating.
"Have you ever thought," she asked, "that thousands of other
self-absorbed men have considered their own particular work of supreme
importance, and that most of them have been--mistaken?"
"Really I have nothing to do with other men's mistakes. I am responsible
only for my own."
"And that is why it is a temptation to suggest that conceivably you had
made one here."
"But you find difficulty in suggesting such a thought convincingly? That
is because I have not conceivably made any such mistake. A Harvey must
discover the theory of the circulation of the blood; it is the business
of lesser men to apply the discovery to practical ends. It takes a
Whitney to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout can
operate it. Why multiply illustrations of a truism? Theory, you
perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than application. The man who
can formulate the eternal laws of social evolution can safely leave it
to others to put his laws into practice."
Sharlee gazed at him in silence, and he returned her gaze, his face
wearing a look of the rankest complacence that she had ever seen upon a
human countenance. But all at once his eyes fell upon his watch, and his
brow clouded.
"Meantime," he went on abruptly, "there remains the question of my
board."
"Yes.... Do I understand that you--derive your living from these social
laws that you write up for others to practice?"
"Oh, no--impossible! There is no living to be made there. When my book
comes out there may be a different story, but that is two years and ten
months off. Every minute taken from it for the making of money is, as
you may now understand, decidedly unfortunate. Still," he added
depressedly, "I must arrange to earn something, I suppose, since my
father's assistance is so problematical. I worked for money in New York,
for awhile."
"Oh--did you?"
"Yes, I helped a lady write a thesaurus."
"Oh...."
"It was a mere fad with her. I virtually wrote the work for her and
charged her five dollars an hour." He looked at her narrowly. "Do you
happen to know of any one here who wants work of that sort done?"
The agent did not answer. By a series of covert glances she had been
trying to learn, upside down, what it was that Mr. Queed was reading.
"Sociology," she had easily picked out, but the chapter heading, on the
opposite page, was more troublesome, and, deeply absorbed, she had now
just succeeded in deciphering it. The particular division of his subject
in which Mr. Queed was so much engrossed was called "Man's Duty to His
Neighbors."
Struck by the silence, Sharlee looked up with a small start, and the
faintest possible blush. "I beg your pardon?"
"I asked if you knew of any lady here, a wealthy one, who would like to
write a thesaurus as a fad."
The girl was obliged to admit that, at the moment, she could think of no
such person. But her mind fastened at once on the vulgar, hopeful fact
that the unsocial sociolologist wanted a job.
"That's unfortunate," said Mr. Queed. "I suppose I must accept a little
regular, very remunerative work--to settle this board question once and
for all. An hour or two a day, at most. However, it is not easy to lay
one's hand on such work in a strange city."
"Perhaps," said Miss Weyland slowly, "I can help you."
"I'm sure I hope so," said he with another flying glance at his watch.
"That is what I have been approaching for seven minutes."
"Don't you always find it an unnecessary waste of time not to be
direct?"
He sat, slightly frowning, impatiently fingering the pages of his book.
The hit bounded off him like a rubber ball thrown against the Great Wall
of China.
"Well?" he demanded. "What have you to propose?"
The agent sat down in a chair across the table, William Klinker's chair,
and rested her chin upon her shapely little hand. The other shapely
little hand toyed with the crisp twenty dollar bill, employing it to
trace geometric designs upon the colored table-cloth. Mr. Queed had
occasion to consult his watch again before she raised her head.
"I propose," she said, "that you apply for some special editorial work
on the _Post_."
"The _Post_? The _Post_? The morning newspaper here?"
"One of them."
He laughed, actually laughed. It was a curious, slow laugh, betraying
that the muscles which accomplished it were flabby for want of exercise.
"And who writes the editorials on the _Post_ now?"
"A gentleman named Colonel Cowles--"
"Ah! His articles on taxation read as if they might have been written by
a military man. I happened to read one the day before yesterday. It was
most amusing--"
"Excuse me. Colonel Cowles is a friend of mine--"
"What has that got to do with his political economy? If he is your
friend, then I should say that you have a most amusing friend."
Sharlee rose, decidedly irritated. "Well--that is my suggestion. I
believe you will find it worth thinking over, Good-night."
"The _Post_ pays its contributors well, I suppose?"
"That you would have to take up with its owners."
"Clearly the paper needs the services of an expert--though, of course, I
could not give it much time, only enough to pay for my keep. The
suggestion is not a bad one--not at all. As to applying, as you call it,
is this amiable Colonel Cowles the person to be seen?"
"Yes. No--wait a minute." She had halted in her progress to the door;
her mind's eye conjured up a probable interview between the Colonel and
the scientist, and she hardly had the heart to let it go at that.
Moreover, she earnestly wished, for Mrs. Paynter's reasons, that the
tenant of the third hall back should become associated with the
pay-envelope system of the city. "Listen," she went on. "I know one of
the directors of the _Post_, and shall be glad to speak to him in your
behalf. Then, if there is an opening, I'll send you, through my aunt, a
card of introduction to him and you can go to see him."
"Couldn't he come to see me? I am enormously busy."
"So is he. I doubt if you could expect him to--"
"H'm. Very well. I am obliged to you for your suggestion. Of course I
shall take no step in the matter until I hear from you."
"Good-evening," said the agent, icily.
He bowed slightly in answer to the salute, uttering no further word; for
him the interview ended right there, cleanly and satisfactorily. From
the door the girl glanced back. Mr. Queed had drawn his heavy book
before him, pencil in hand, and was once more engrossed in the study and
annotation of "Man's Duty to His Neighbors."
In the hail Sharlee met Fifi, who was tipping toward the dining-room to
discover, by the frank method of ear and keyhole, how the grim and
resolute collector was faring.
"You're still alive, Sharlee! Any luck?"
"The finest in the world, darling! Twenty dollars in the hand and a
remunerative job for him in the bush."
Fifi did a few steps of a minuet. "Hooray!" said she in her weak little
voice.
Sharlee put her arms around the child's neck and said in her ear: "Fifi,
be very gentle with that young man. He's the most pitiful little
creature I ever saw."
"Why," said Fifi, "I don't think he feels that way at all--"
"Don't you see that's just what makes him so infinitely pathetic? He's
the saddest little man in the world, and it has never dawned on him."
It was not till some hours later, when she was making ready for bed in
her own room, that it occurred to Sharlee that there was something odd
in this advice to her little cousin. For she had started out with the
intention to tell Mr. Queed that he must be very gentle with Fifi.