"Yes--you--DO!" said Fifi, with surprising emphasis for so weak a little
voice. "You need first a good girl friend, one lots older and better
than me--one just like Sharlee. O if only you and she _would_ be
friends!--she'd be the very best in the world! And then you need men
friends, plenty of them, and to go around with them, and everything. You
ought to like _men_ more, Mr. Queed! You ought to learn to _be_ like
them, and--"
"Be like them!" he interrupted, "I am like them. Why," he conceded
generously, "I am one of them."
Fifi dismissed this with a smile, but he immediately added: "Has it
occurred to you that, apart from my greater concentration on my work, I
am different from other men?"
"Why, Mr. Queed, you are no more like them than I am! You don't do any
of the things they do. You don't--"
"Such as what? Now, Fifi, let us be definite as we go along. Suppose
that it was my ambition to be, as you say, like other men. Just what
things, in your opinion, should I do?"
"Well, smoke--that's one thing that all men do. And fool around more
with people--laugh and joke, and tell funny stories and all. And then
you could take an interest in your appearance--your clothes, you know;
and be interested in all sorts of things going on around you, like
politics and baseball. And go to see girls and take them out sometimes,
like to the theatre. Some men that are popular drink, but of course I
don't care for that."
Fifi, of course, had no idea that the little Doctor's world had been
shattered to its axis that morning by three minutes' talk from Colonel
Cowles. Therefore, though conscious that there never was a man who did
not get a certain pleasure from talking himself over, she was secretly
surprised at the patience, even the interest, with which he listened to
her. She would have been still more surprised to know that his wonderful
memory was nailing down every word with machine-like accuracy.
She expounded her little thesis in considerable detail, and at the end
he said:--
"As I've told you, Fifi, my first duty is toward my book--to give it to
the cause of civilization at the earliest possible moment. Therefore,
the whole question is one of time, rather than of deliberate personal
inclination. At present I literally cannot afford to give time to
matters which, while doubtless pleasant enough in their fashion--"
"That's what you would have said about the exercise, two months ago. And
now look, how it's helped you! And then, Mr. Queed--are you happy?"
Surprised and a little amused, he replied: "Really, I've never stopped
to think. I should say, though, that I was perfectly content."
Fifi laughed and coughed. "There's a big difference--isn't there? Why,
it's just like the exercise, Mr. Queed. Before you began it you were
just _not sick_; now you are _very well_. That's the difference between
content and happiness. Now I," she ran on, "am very, very happy. I wake
up in the mornings _so_ glad that I'm alive that sometimes I can hardly
bear it, and all through the day it's like something singing away inside
of me! Are you like that?"
No, Mr. Queed must confess that he was not like that. Indeed, few
looking at his face at this moment would ever have suspected him of it.
Fifi regarded him with a kind of wistful sadness, but he missed the
glance, being engaged in consulting his great watch; after which he
sprang noisily to his feet, horrified at himself.
"Good heavens--it's ten minutes past five! I must go immediately. Why,
I'm twenty-five minutes behind My Schedule!"
Fifi smiled through her wistfulness. "Don't ask me to be sorry, Mr.
Queed, because I don't think I can. You see, I haven't taken up a minute
of your time for nearly a month, so I was entitled to some of it
to-day."
You see! Hadn't he figured it exactly right from the beginning? Once
give a human being a moment of your time, as a special and extraordinary
kindness, and before you can turn around there that being is claiming it
wholesale as a matter-of-course right!
"It was so sweet of you to send me these flowers, and then to come and
see me, too.... Do you know, it's been the very best day I've had since
I've been sick, and you've made it so!"
"It's all right. Well, good-bye, Fifi."
Fifi held out both her tiny hands, and he received them because, in the
sudden emergency, he could think of no way of avoiding them.
"You'll remember what I said about friends, and _men_--won't you, Mr.
Queed? Remember it begins with liking people, liking everybody. Then
when you really like them you want to do things for them, and that is
happiness."
He looked surprised at this definition of happiness, and then: "Oh--I
see. That's your religion, isn't it?"
"No, it's just common sense."
"I'll remember. Well, Fifi, good-bye."
"Good-bye--and thank you for everything."
Into her eyes had sprung a tenderness which he was far from
understanding. But he did not like the look of it in the least, and he
extricated his hands from the gentle clasp with some abruptness.
From the safe distance of the door he looked back, and wondered why
Fifi's great eyes were fixed so solemnly on him.
"Well--good-bye, again. Hurry up and get well--"
"Good-bye--oh, good-bye," said Fifi, and turned her head toward the open
window with the blue skies beyond.
Did Fifi know? How many have vainly tortured themselves with that
question, as they have watched dear ones slipping without a word down
the slopes to the dark Valley! If this child knew that her name had been
read out for the greater Graduation, she gave no sign. Sometimes in the
mornings she cried a little, without knowing why. Sometimes she said a
vague, sad little thing that brought her mother's heart, stone cold, to
her mouth. But her talk was mostly very bright and hopeful. Ten minutes
before Queed came in she had been telling Mrs. Paynter about something
she would do in the fall. If sometimes you would swear that she knew
there would never be another fall for her, her very next remark might
confound you. So her little face turned easily to the great river with
the shining farther shore, and, for her part, there would be no sadness
of farewell when she embarked.
By marvelous work, Queed closed up the twenty-five minutes of time he
had bestowed upon Fifi, and pulled into supper only three minutes behind
running-time. Afterwards, he sat in the Scriptorium, his face like a
carven image, the sacred Schedule in his hands. For it had come down to
that. Either he must at any cost hew his way back to the fastness of his
early days, or he must corrupt the Schedule yet again.
Every minute that he took away from his book meant just that much delay
in giving the great work to the world. That fact was the eternal
backbone of all his consciousness. On the other balance of his personal
equation, there was Buck Klinker and there was Fifi Paynter.
Klinker evidently felt that all bars were down as to him. It would be a
hard world indeed if a trainer was denied free access to his only pupil,
and Klinker, though he had but the one, was always in as full blast as
Muldoon's. He had acquired a habit of "dropping in" at all hours,
especially late at night, which, to say the least, was highly wasteful
of time. It was Queed's privilege to tell Klinker that he must keep away
from the Scriptorium; but in that case Klinker might fairly retort that
he would no longer give the Doc free physical culture. Did he care to
bring that issue to the touch? No, he did not. In fact, he must admit
that he had a distinct need of Buck, a distinct dependence upon him, for
awhile yet at any rate. So he could make no elimination of the
non-essential there.
Then there was Fifi. In a week, or possibly two weeks, Fifi would
doubtless reappear in his dining-room, and if she had no lessons to
trouble him with, she would at any rate feel herself free to talk to him
whenever the whim moved her. Had she not let out this very day that she
considered that she had a kind of title to his time? So it would be to
the end of the chapter. It had been his privilege to tell Fifi that he
could not spare her another minute of time till his work was
finished.... Had been--but no longer was. Looking back now, he found it
impossible to reconstruct the chain of impulse and circumstance which
had trapped him into it, but the stark fact was that his own lips had
authorized Fifi to profane at will his holy time. Not three hours before
he had been betrayed into weakly telling her that he was her friend. He
was a man of truth and honor. He could not possibly get back of that
confession of friendship, or of the privileges it bestowed. So there was
no elimination of the non-essential he could make there.
These were the short and ugly facts. And now he must take official
cognizance of them.
With a leaden heart and the hands of lamentation, he took the Schedule
to pieces and laboriously fitted it together again with a fire-new item
in its midst. The item was Human Intercourse, and to it he allotted the
sum of thirty minutes per diem.
It was a historic moment in his life, and, unlike most men at such
partings of the ways, he was fully conscious of it. Nevertheless, he
passed straight from it to another performance hardly less
extraordinary. From his table drawer he produced a little memorandum
book, and in it--just below a diagram of a new chest-developing exercise
invented last night by Klinker--he jotted down the things that Fifi said
a man must do to be like other men.
A clean half-hour remained before he must go and call on the young lady
with the tom-boy name, Charles Weyland, who knew "what the public
liked." He spent it, he, the indefatigable minute-shaver, sitting with
the head that no longer ached clamped in his hand. It had been the most
disturbing day of his life, but he was not thinking of that exactly. He
was thinking what a mistake it had been to leave New York. There he had
had but two friends with no possibility of getting any more. Here--it
was impossible to blink the fact any longer--he already had two, with at
least two more determinedly closing in on him. He had Fifi and he had
Buck--yes, Buck; the young lady Charles Weyland had offered him her
friendship this very day; and unless he looked alive he would wake up
some morning to find that Nicolovius also had captured him as a friend.
He was far better off in New York, where days would go by in which he
never saw Tim or Murphy Queed. And yet ... did he want to go back?