_Sharlee's Parlor on Another Evening; how One Caller outsat Two,
and why; also, how Sharlee looked in her Mirror for a Long Time,
and why._
On the very night after West made his happy discovery, namely on the
evening of February 24, at about twenty minutes of nine, Sharlee
Weyland's door-bell rang, and Mr. Queed was shown into her parlor.
His advent was a complete surprise to Sharlee. For these nine months,
her suggestion that he should call upon her had lain utterly neglected.
Since the Reunion she had seen him but four times, twice on the street,
and once at each of their offices, when the business of the reformatory
had happened to draw them together. The last of these meetings, which
had been the briefest, was already six weeks old. In all of her
acquaintance with him, extending now over two years and a half, this was
the first time that he had ever sought her out with intentions that
were, presumably, deliberately social.
The event, Sharlee felt in greeting him, could not have happened, more
unfortunately. Queed found the parlor occupied, and the lady's attention
engaged, by two young men before him. One of them was Beverley Byrd, who
saluted him somewhat moodily. The other was a Mr. Miller--no relation to
Miss Miller of Mrs. Paynter's, though a faint something in his
_ensemble_ lent plausibility to that conjecture--a newcomer to the city
who, having been introduced to Miss Weyland somewhere, had taken the
liberty of calling without invitation or permission. It was impossible
for Sharlee to be rude to anybody under her own roof, but it is equally
impossible to describe her manner to Mr. Miller as exactly cordial. He
himself was a cordial man, mustached and anecdotal, who assumed rather
more confidence than he actually felt. Beverley Byrd, who did not always
hunt in pairs, had taken an unwonted dislike to him at sight. He did not
consider him a suitable person to be calling on Sharlee, and he had been
doing his best, with considerable deftness and success, to deter him
from feeling too much at home.
Byrd wore a beautiful dinner jacket. So did Mr. Miller, with a gray tie,
and a gray, brass-buttoned vest, to boot. Queed wore his day clothes of
blue, which were not so new as they were the day Sharlee first saw them,
on the rustic bridge near the little cemetery. He had, of course, taken
it for granted that he would find Miss Weyland alone. Nevertheless, he
did not appear disconcerted by the sudden discovery of his mistake, or
even by Mr. Miller's glorious waistcoat; he was as grave as ever, but
showed no signs of embarrassment. Sharlee caught herself observing him
closely, as he shook hands with the two men and selected a chair for
himself; she concluded that constant contact with the graces of Charles
Gardiner West had not been without its effect upon him. He appeared
decidedly more at his ease than Mr. Miller, for instance, and he had
another valuable possession which that personage lacked, namely, the
face of a gentleman.
But it was too evident that he felt little sense of responsibility for
the maintenance of the conversation. He sat back in a chair of
exceptionable comfortableness, and allowed Beverley Byrd to discourse
with him; a privilege which Byrd exercised fitfully, for his heart was
in the talk that Sharlee was dutifully supporting with Mr. Miller. Into
this talk he resolutely declined to be drawn, but his ear was alert for
opportunities--which came not infrequently--to thrust in a polished oar
to the discomfiture of the intruder.
Not that he would necessarily care to do it, but the runner could read
Mr. Miller, without a glass, at one hundred paces' distance. He was of
the climber type, a self-made man in the earlier and less inspiring
stages of the making. Culture had a dangerous fascination for him. He
adored to talk of books; a rash worship, it seemed, since his but bowing
acquaintance with them trapped him frequently into mistaken identities
over which Sharlee with difficulty kept a straight face, while Byrd
palpably rejoiced.
"You know _Thanatopsis_, of course," he would ask, with a rapt and
glowing eye--"Lord Byron's beautiful poem on the philosophy of life? Now
that is my idea of what poetry ought to be, Miss Weyland...."
And Beverley Byrd, breaking his remark to Queed off short in the middle,
would turn to Sharlee with a face of studious calm and say:--
"Will you ever forget, Sharlee, the first time you read the other
_Thanatopsis_--the one by William Cullen Bryant? Don't you remember how
it looked--with the picture of Bryant--in the old Fifth Reader?"
Mr. Miller proved that he could turn brick-red, but he learned nothing
from experience.
In time, the talk between the two young men, which had begun so
desultorily, warmed up. Byrd had read something besides the Fifth
Reader, and Queed had discovered before to-night that he had ideas to
express. Their conversation progressed with waxing interest, from the
President's message to the causes of the fall of Rome, and thence by
wholly logical transitions to the French Revolution and Woman's
Suffrage. Byrd gradually became so absorbed that he almost, but not
quite, neglected to keep Mr. Miller in his place. As for Queed, he spoke
in defense of the "revolt of woman" for five minutes without
interruption, and his masterly sentences finally drew the silence and
attention of Mr. Miller himself.
"Who is that fellow?" he asked in an undertone. "I didn't catch his
name."
Sharlee told him.
"He's got a fine face," observed Mr. Miller. "I've made quite a study of
faces, and I never saw one just like his--so absolutely on one note, if
you know what I mean."
"What note is that?" asked Sharlee, interested by him for the only time
so long as they both did live.
"Well, it's not always easy to put a name to it, but I'd call it ...
_honesty_.--_If_ you know what I mean."
Mr. Miller stayed until half-past ten. The door had hardly shut upon him
when Byrd, too, rose.
"Oh, don't go, Beverley!" protested Sharlee. "I've hardly spoken to
you."
"Duty calls," said Byrd. "I'm going to walk home with Mr. Miller."
"Beverley--don't! You were quite horrid enough while he was here."
"But you spoiled it all by being so unnecessarily agreeable! It is my
business, as your friend and well-wisher, to see that he doesn't carry
away too jolly a memory of his visit. Take lunch downtown with me
to-morrow, won't you, Mr. Queed--at the Business Men's Club? I want to
finish our talk about the Catholic nations, and why they're decadent."
Queed said that he would, and Byrd hurried away to overtake Mr. Miller.
Or, perhaps that gentleman was only a pretext, and the young man's
experienced eye had read that any attempt to outsit the learned
assistant editor was foredoomed to failure.
"I'm so glad you stayed," said Sharlee, as Queed reseated himself. "I
shouldn't have liked not to exchange a word with you on your first visit
here."
"Oh! This is not my first visit, you may remember."
"Your first voluntary visit, perhaps I should have said."
He let his eyes run over the room, and she could see that he was
thinking, half-unconsciously, of the last time when he and she had sat
here.
"I had no idea of going," he said absently, "till I had the opportunity
of speaking to you."
A brief silence followed, which clearly did not embarrass him, at any
rate. Sharlee, feeling the necessity of breaking it, still puzzling
herself with speculations as to what had put it into his head to come,
said at random:--
"Oh, do tell me--how is old Père Goriot?"
"Père Goriot? I never heard of him."
"Oh, forgive me! It is a name we used to have, long ago, for Professor
Nicolovius."