"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: