Nicolovius, who had been born Surface, suffered a moment of collapse. He
fell back in his chair, and covered his face with his hands.
The dying efforts of the June sun still showed in the pretty
sitting-room, though the town clocks were striking seven. From without
floated in the voices of merry passers; eddies of the day's celebration
broke even into this quiet street. Queed sat down in a big-armed rocker,
and looked out the window into the pink west.
So, in a minute's time and by a wholly chance happening, the mystery was
out at last. Professor Nicolovius, the bland recluse of Mrs. Paynter's,
and Henry G. Surface, political arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of
false friends, were one and the same man.
The truth had been instantly plain to Queed when the name had blazed up
at him from the envelope on the floor. It was as though Fate herself had
tossed that envelope under his eyes, as the answer to all his
questionings. Not an instant's doubt had troubled him; and now a score
of memories were marshaling themselves before him to show that his first
flashing certainty had been sound. As for the book, it was clearly from
the library of the old man's youth, kept and hidden away for some
reason, when nearly everything else had been destroyed. Between the
musty pages the accusing letter had lain forgotten for thirty years,
waiting for this moment.
He turned and glanced once at the silent figure, huddled back in the
chair with covered eyes; the unhappy old man whom nobody had ever
trusted without regretting it. _Henry G. Surface_--whose name was a
synonym for those traits and things which honest men of all peoples and
climes have always hated most, treachery, perfidy, base betrayal of
trust, shameful dishonesty--who had crowded the word _infamy_ from the
popular lexicon of politics with the keener, more biting epithet,
_Surfaceism_. And here--wonder of wonders--sat Surface before him, drawn
back to the scene of his fall like a murderer to the body and the
scarlet stain upon the floor, caught, trapped, the careful mask of many
years plucked from him at a sudden word, leaving him no covering upon
earth but his smooth white hands. And he, Queed, was this man's closest,
his only friend, chosen out of all the world to live with him and
minister to his declining years....
"It's true!" now broke through the concealing hands. "I am that man....
God help me!"
Queed looked unseeingly out of the window, where the sun was couching in
a bed of copper flame stippled over with brightest azure. Why had he
done it? What crazy prompting had struck from him that promise to yoke
his destiny forever with this terrible old man? If Nicolovius, the
Fenian refugee, had never won his liking, Surface, the Satan apostate,
was detestable to him. What devil of impulse had trapped from him the
mad offer to spend his days in the company of such a creature, and in
the shadow of so odious an ill-fame?
As on the day when Fifi had asked him her innocent question about
altruism, a sudden tide swept the young man's thoughts inward. And after
them, this time, groped the blundering feet of his spirit.
Here was he, a mature man, who, in point of work, in all practical and
demonstrable ways, was the millionth man. He was a great editorial
writer, which was a minor but genuine activity. He was a yet greater
writer on social science, which was one of the supreme activities. On
this side, then, certainly the chief side, there could be no question
about the successfulness of his life. His working life was, or would be
before he was through, brilliantly successful. But it had for some time
been plain to him that he stopped short there. He was a great workman,
but that was all. He was a superb rationalist; but after that he did not
exist.
Through the science of Human Intercourse, he saw much more of people now
than he had ever done before, and thus it had become driven home upon
him that most people had two lives, their outer or practical lives, and
their inner or personal lives. But he himself had but one life. He was a
machine; a machine which turned out matchless work for the enlightenment
of the world, but after all a machine. He was intellect. He was Pure
Reason. Yet he himself had said, and written, that intellectual
supremacy was not the true badge of supremacy of type. There was nothing
sure of races that was not equally sure of the individuals which make up
those races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of thought,
feeling, and conduct, in which the people around him spent so much of
their time, were entirely closed to him. He had no personal life at all.
That part of him had atrophied from lack of use, like the eyes of the
mole and of those sightless fishes men take from the waters of caverns.
And now this part of him, which had for some time been stirring
uneasily, had risen suddenly without bidding of his and in defiance of
his reason, and laid hold of something in his environment. In doing so,
it appeared to have thrust upon him an inner, or personal, life from
this time forward. That life lay in being of use to the old man before
him: he who had never been of personal use to anybody so far, and the
miserable old man who had no comfort anywhere but in him.
He knew the scientific name of this kind of behavior very well. It was
altruism, the irrational force that had put a new face upon the world.
Fifi, he remembered well, had assured him that in altruism he would find
that fiercer happiness which was as much better than content as being
well was better than not being sick. But ... could this be happiness,
this whirling confusion that put him to such straits to keep a calm face
above the tumult of his breast? If this was happiness, then it came to
him for their first meeting wearing a strange face....
"You know the story?"