"It is killed," said Mr. Dayne, and went away to his desk.
Sharlee turned in her desk-chair and looked out of the rain-blurred
windows.
Through and beyond the trees of the park, over ridges of roofs and away
to the west and north, she saw the weatherbeaten _Post_ building, its
distant gray tower cutting mistily out of the dreary sky. From where she
sat she could just pick out, as she had so often noticed before, the
tops of the fifth-floor row of windows, the windows from which the
_Post's_ editorial department looked out upon a world with which it
could not keep faith. Behind one of those windows at this moment, in all
likelihood, sat the false friend who had cut down the reformatory from
behind.
Which was it? Oh, was not Mr. Dayne right, as he always was? Where was
there any room for doubt?
Long before Sharlee knew Charles Gardiner West personally, when she was
a little girl and he just out of college, she had known him by report as
a young man of fine ideals, exalted character, the very pattern of
stainless honor. Her later intimate knowledge of him, she told herself,
had fully borne out the common reputation. Wherever she had touched him,
she had found him generous and sound and sweet. That he was capable of
what seemed to her the baldest and basest treachery was simply
unthinkable. And what reason was there ever to drag his name into her
thought of the affair at all? Was it not Mr. Queed who had written all
the reformatory articles since Colonel Cowles's death--Mr. Queed who had
promised only twenty-four hours ago to do his utmost for the cause at
the critical moment to-day?
And yet ... and yet ... her mind clung desperately to the thought that
possibly the assistant editor had not done this thing, after all. The
memory of his visit to her, less than a week ago, was very vivid in her
mind. What sort of world was it that a man with a face of such shining
honesty could stoop to such shabby dishonesty?--that a man who had
looked at her as he had looked at her that night, could turn again and
strike her such a blow? That Queed should have done this seemed as
inconceivable as that West should have done it. There was the wild
hundredth chance that neither had done it, that the article had been
written by somebody else and published by mistake.
But the hope hardly fluttered its wings before her reason struck it
dead. No, there was no way out there. The fact was too plain that one of
her two good friends, under what pressure she could not guess, had
consented to commit dishonor and, by the same stroke, to wound her so
deeply. For no honest explanation was possible; there was no argument in
the case to-day that was not equally potent a month ago. It was all a
story of cajolery or intimidation from the formidable opposition, and of
mean yielding in the places of responsibility. And--yes--She felt it as
bad for one of her two friends to be so stained as another. It had come
to that. At last she must admit that they stood upon level ground in her
imagination, the nameless little Doctor of two years back side by side
with the beau ideal of all her girlhood. One's honor was as dear to her
as another's; one's friendship as sweet; and now one of them was her
friend no more.
And it was not West whom she must cast out. There was no peg anywhere to
hang even the smallest suspicion of him upon. She scourged her mind for
seeking one. It was Queed who, at the pinch, had broken down and
betrayed them with a kiss: Queed, of the obscure parentage, dubious
inheritance, and omitted upbringing; Queed, whom she had first stood
upon his feet and started forward in a world of men, had helped and
counseled and guided, had admitted to her acquaintance, her
friendship--for this.
But because Sharlee had known Queed well as a man who loved truth,
because the very thing that she had seen and most admired in him from
the beginning was an unflinching honesty of intellect and character,
because of the remembrance of his face as she had last seen it: a tiny
corner of her mind, in defiance of all reason, revolted against this
condemnation and refused to shut tight against him. All morning she sat
at her work, torn by anxiety, hoping every moment that her telephone
might ring with some unthought-of explanation, which would leave her
with nothing worse upon her mind than the dead reformatory. But though
the telephone rang often, it was never for this.
* * * * *
Sitting in a corner of the House gallery, about noon, Mr. Dayne saw the
reformatory bill, which he himself had written, called up out of order
and snowed under. The only speech was made by the Solon who had the bill
called up, a familiar organization wheelhorse, named Meachy T. Bangor,
who quoted with unconcealed triumph from the morning's _Post_, wholly
ignoring all the careful safeguards and tearing out of the context only
such portions as suited his humor and his need. Mr. Bangor pointed out
that, inasmuch as the "acknowledged organ" of the State Department of
Charities now at length "confessed" that the reformatory had better wait
two years, there were no longer two sides to the question. Many of the
gentleman's hearers appeared to agree with him. They rose and fell upon
the bill, and massacred it by a vote of 54 to 32.
From "Sis" Hopkins, legislative reporter of the _Post_, the news went
skipping over the telephone wire to the editorial rooms, where the
assistant editor, who received it, remarked that he was sorry to hear
it. That done, the assistant hung up the receiver, and resumed work upon
an article entitled "A Constitution for Turkey?" He had hardly added a
sentence to this composition before West came in and, with a cheery word
of greeting, passed into his own office.
The assistant editor went on with his writing. He looked worn this
morning, Henry Surface's son, and not without reason. Half the night he
had shared the nurse's vigil at the bedside of Surface, who lay in
unbroken stupor. Half the night he had maintained an individual vigil in
his own room, lying flat on his back and staring wide-eyed into the
darkness. And on the heels of the day, there had come new trouble for
him, real trouble, though in the general cataclysm its full bearings and
farther reaches did not at once come home to him. Running professionally
through the _Post_ at breakfast-time, his eye, like Miss Weyland's, had
been suddenly riveted by that paper's remarks upon the reformatory....
What was the meaning of the staggering performance he had no idea, and
need not inquire. Its immediate effect upon his own career was at least
too plain for argument. His editorship and his reformatory had gone down
together.
Yet he was in no hurry now about following West into his sanctum. Of all
things Queed, as people called him, despised heroics and abhorred a
"scene." Nothing could be gained by a quarrel now; very earnestly he
desired the interview to be as matter-of-fact as possible. In half an
hour, when he had come to a convenient stopping-place, he opened the
door and stood uncomfortably before the young man he had so long
admired.
West, sitting behind his long table, skimming busily through the paper
with blue pencil and scissors, looked up with his agreeable smile.
"Well! What do you see that looks likely for--What's the matter? Are you
sick to-day?"
"No, I am quite well, thank you. I find very little in the news, though.
You notice that a digest of the railroad bill is given out?"
"Yes. You don't look a bit well, old fellow. You must take a holiday
after the legislature goes. Yes, I'm going to take the hide off that
bill. Or better yet--you. Don't you feel like shooting off some big guns
at it?"
"Certainly, if you want me to. There is the farmers' convention, too.
And by the way, I'd like to leave as soon as you can fill my place."
West dropped scissors, pencil, and paper and stared at him with dismayed
amazement. "_Leave!_ Why, you are never thinking of _leaving_ me!"
"Yes. I'd--like to leave. I thought I ought to tell you this morning, so
that you can at once make your plans as to my successor."
"But my dear fellow! I can't let you _leave me!_ You've no idea how I
value your assistance, how I've come to lean and depend upon you at
every point. I never dreamed you were thinking of this. What's the
matter? What have you got on your mind?"
"I think," said Queed, unhappily, "that I should be better satisfied off
the paper than on it."
"Why, confound you--it's the money!" said West, with a sudden relieved
laugh. "Why didn't you tell me, old fellow? You're worth five times what
they're paying you--five times as much as I am for that matter--and I
can make the directors see it. Trust me to make them raise you to my
salary at the next meeting."
"Thank you--but no, my salary is quite satisfactory."
West frowned off into space, looking utterly bewildered. "Of course," he
said in a troubled voice, "you have a perfect right to resign without
saying a word. I haven't the smallest right to press you for an
explanation against your will. But--good Lord! Here we've worked
together side by side, day after day, for nearly a year, pretty good
friends, as I thought, and--well, it hurts a little to have you put on
your hat and walk out without a word. I wish you would tell me what's
wrong. There's nothing I wouldn't do, if I could, to fix it and keep
you."
The eyes of the two men met across the table, and it was Queed's that
faltered and fell.
"Well," he said, obviously embarrassed, "I find that I am out of
sympathy with the policy of the paper."
"Oh-h-ho!" said West, slowly and dubiously. "Do you mean my article on
the reformatory?"
"Yes--I do."
"Why, my dear fellow!"
West paused, his handsome eyes clouded, considering how best he might
put the matter to overcome most surely the singular scruples of his
assistant.
"Let's take it this way, old fellow. Suppose that my standpoint in that
article was diametrically wrong. I am sure I could convince you that it
was not, but admit, for argument's sake, that it was. Do you feel that
the appearance in the paper of an article with which you don't agree
makes it necessary for you, in honor, to resign?"
"No, certainly not--"
"Is it that you don't like my turning down one of your articles and
printing one of my own instead? I didn't know you objected to that, old
fellow. You see--while your judgment is probably a hanged sight better
than mine, after all I am the man who is held responsible, and I am paid
a salary to see that my opinions become the opinions of the _Post_."
"It is entirely right that your opinions--"
"Then wherein have I offended? Be frank with me, like a good fellow, I
beg you!"
Queed eyed him strangely. Was the editor's inner vision really so
curiously astigmatic?
"I look at it this way," he said, in a slow, controlled voice. "The
_Post_ has said again and again that _this_ legislature must establish a
reformatory. That was the burden of a long series of editorials, running
back over a year, which, as I thought, had your entire approval. Now, at
the critical moment, when it was only necessary to say once more what
had been said a hundred times before, the _Post_ suddenly turns about
and, in effect, authorizes this legislature not to establish the
reformatory. The House killed the bill just now. Bangor quoted from the
_Post_ editorial. There can be no doubt, of course, that it turned a
number of votes--enough to have safely carried the bill."
West looked disturbed and unhappy.
"But if we find out that this legislature is so drained by inescapable
expenses that it simply cannot provide the money? Suppose the State
had been swept by a plague? Suppose there was a war and a million of
unexpected expenses had suddenly dropped on us from the clouds? Wouldn't
you agree that circumstances altered cases, and that, under such
circumstances, everything that was not indispensable to the State's
existence would have to go over?"
Queed felt like answering West's pepper-fire of casuistry by throwing
Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his determination to avoid a
"scene," he felt his bottled-up indignation rising. A light showed in
his stone-gray eyes.
"Can't you really see that these circumstances are not in the least like
those? Did you do me the courtesy to read what I wrote about this
so-called 'economy argument' last night?"
"Certainly," said West, surprised by the other's tone. "But clever as it
was, it was not based, in my opinion, on a clear understanding of the
facts as they actually exist. You and I stay so close inside of four
walls here that we are apt to get out of touch with practical
conditions. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get new facts, from a
confidential and highly authoritative source. In the light of these--I
wish I could explain them more fully to you, but I was pledged to
secrecy--I am obliged to tell you that what you had written seemed to me
altogether out of focus, unfair, and extreme."
"Did you get these facts, as you call them, from Plonny Neal?"
"As to that, I am at liberty to say nothing."
Queed, looking at him, saw that he had. He began to feel sorry for West.
"I would give four hundred and fifty dollars," he said slowly--"all the
money that I happen to have--if you had told me last night that you
meant to do this."
"I am awfully sorry," said West, with a touch of dignity, "that you take
it so hard. But I assure you--"
"I know Plonny Neal even better than you do," continued Queed, "for I
have known him as his social equal. He is laughing at you to-day."
West, of course, knew better than that. The remark confirmed his belief
that Queed had brooded over the reformatory till he saw everything about
it distorted and magnified.
"Well, old fellow," he said, without a trace of ill-humor in his voice
or his manner, "then it is I he is laughing at--not you. That brings us
right back to my point. If you feel, as I understand it, that the _Post_
is in the position of having deserted its own cause, I alone am the
deserter. Don't you see that? Not only am I the editor of the paper, and
so responsible for all that it says; but I wrote the article, on my own
best information and judgment. Whatever consequences there are," said
West, his thoughts on the consequences most likely to accrue to the
saviour of the party, "I assume them all."
"A few people," said Queed, slowly, "know that I have been conducting
this fight for the _Post_. They may not understand that I was suddenly
superseded this morning. But of course it isn't that. It is simply a
matter--"
"Believe me, it can all be made right. I shall take the greatest
pleasure in explaining to your friends that I alone am responsible. I
shall call to-day--right now--at--"
"I'm sorry," said Queed, abruptly, "but it is entirely impossible for me
to remain."
West looked, and felt, genuinely distressed. "I wish," he said, "the old
reformatory had never been born"; and he went on in a resigned voice:
"Of course I can't keep you with a padlock and chain, but--for the life
of me, I can't catch your point of view. To my mind it appears the
honorable and courageous thing to correct a mistake, even at the last
moment, rather than stand by it for appearance's sake."
"You see I don't regard our principles as a mistake."
But he went back to his office marveling at himself for the ease with
which West had put him in the wrong.
For friendship's sake, West had meant to call at the Charities
Department that day, and explain to his two friends there how his sense
of responsibility to the larger good had made it necessary for him to
inflict a momentary disappointment upon them. But this disturbing
interview with his assistant left him not so sure that an immediate call
would be desirable, after all. At the moment, both Dayne and the dearest
girl in the world would naturally be feeling vexed over the failure of
their plan; wouldn't it be the sensible and considerate thing to give
them a little time to conquer their pique and compose themselves to see
facts as they were?
The _Chronicle_ that afternoon finally convinced him that this would be
the considerate thing. That offensive little busybody, which pretended
to have been a champion of "this people's institution" came out with a
nasty editorial, entitled "The _Post's_ Latest Flop." "Flop" appeared to
be an intensely popular word in the _Chronicle_ office. The article
boldly taxed "our more or less esteemed contemporary" with the murder of
the reformatory, and showed unpleasant freedom in employing such phrases
as "instantaneous conversion," "treacherous friendship," "disgusting
somersaulting," and the like. Next day, grown still more audacious, it
had the hardihood to refer to the _Post_ as "The Plonny Neal organ."
Now, of course, the reformatory had not been in any sense a burning
public "issue." Measures like this, being solid and really important,
seldom interest the people. There was not the smallest popular
excitement over the legislature's conduct, or the _Post's_. The
_Chronicle's_ venomous remarks were dismissed as the usual "newspaper
scrap." All this West understood perfectly. Still, it was plain that a
few enthusiasts, reformatory fanatics, were taking the first flush of
disappointment rather hard. For himself, West reflected, he cared
nothing about their clamor. Conscious of having performed an
unparalleled service to his party, and thus to his State, he was willing
to stand for a time the indignation of the ignorant, the obloquy of the
malicious, even revolt and disloyalty among his own lieutenants. One
day the truth about his disinterested patriotism would become known. For
the present he would sit silent, calmly waiting at least until unjust
resentment subsided and reason reasserted her sway.
Many days passed, as it happened, before West and the Secretary of
Charities met; six days before West and the Assistant Secretary met. On
the sixth night, about half-past seven in the evening, he came
unexpectedly face to face with Sharlee Weyland in the vestibule of Mrs.
Byrd, Senior's, handsome house. In the days intervening, Sharlee's state
of mind had remained very much where it was on the first morning: only
now the tiny open corner of her mind had shrunk to imperceptible
dimensions. Of West she entertained not the smallest doubt; and she
greeted him like the excellent friend she knew him to be.
There was a little dinner-dance at Mrs. Byrd's, for the season's
_débutantes_. It became remembered as one of the most charming of all
her charming parties. To the buds were added a sprinkling of older girls
who had survived as the fittest, while among the swains a splendid
catholicity as to age prevailed. A retinue of imported men, Caucasian at
that, served dinner at six small tables, six at a table; the viands were
fashioned to tickle tired epicures; there was vintage champagne such as
kings quaff to pledge the comity of nations; Wissner's little band of
artists, known to command its own price, divinely mingled melody with
the rose-sweetness of the air. West, having dined beautifully, and
lingered over coffee in the smoking-room among the last, emerged to find
the polished floors crowded with an influx of new guests, come to
enliven the dance. His was, as ever, a Roman progress; he stopped and
was stopped everywhere; like a happy opportunist, he plucked the flowers
as they came under his hand, and gayly whirled from one measure to
another. So the glorious evening was half spent before, in an
intermission, he found himself facing Sharlee Weyland, who was
uncommonly well attended, imploring her hand for the approaching waltz.
Without the smallest hesitation, Sharlee drew her ornamental pencil
through the next name on her list, and ordered her flowers and fan
transferred from the hands of Mr. Beverley Byrd to those of Mr. Charles
Gardiner West.
"Only," said she, thinking of her partners, "you'll have to hide me
somewhere."
With a masterful grace which others imitated, indeed, but could not
copy, West extricated his lady from her gallants, and led her away to a
pretty haven; not indeed, to a conservatory, since there was none, but
to a bewitching nook under the wide stairway, all banked about with palm
and fern and pretty flowering shrub. There they sat them down, unseeing
and unseen, near yet utterly remote, while in the blood of West beat the
intoxicating strains of Straus, not to mention the vintage champagne, to
which he had taken a very particular fancy.
All night, while the roses heard the flute, violin, bassoon, none in all
the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee. Past many heads in the
dining-room, West had watched her, laughing, radiant, sparkling as the
wine itself, a pretty little lady of a joyous sweetness that never knew
a care. In the dance, for he had watched her there, too, wondering, as
she circled laughing by, whether she felt any lingering traces of pique
with him, she had been the same: no girl ever wore a merrier heart. But
a sudden change came now. In the friendly freedom of the green-banked
alcove, Sharlee's gayety dropped from her like a painted mask, which,
having amused the children, has done its full part. Against the back of
the cushioned settle where they sat she leaned a weary head, and frankly
let her fringed lids droop.
At another time West might have been pleased by such candid evidences of
confidence and intimacy, but not to-night. He felt that Sharlee, having
advertised a delightful gayety by her manner, should now proceed to
deliver it: it certainly was not for tired sweetness and disconcerting
silences that he had sought this _tête-à-tête_. But at last his failure
to arouse her on indifferent topics became too marked to be passed
over; and then he said in a gentle voice:--
"Confess, Miss Weyland. You're as tired as you can be."
She turned her head, and smiled a little into his eyes. "Yes--you don't
mind, do you?"
"Indeed I do, though! You're going altogether too hard--working like a
Trojan all day and dancing like a dryad all night. You'll break yourself
down--indeed you will!"
Hardly conscious of it herself, Sharlee had been waiting with a tense
anxiety of which her face began to give signs, for him to speak. And now
she understood that he would not speak; and she knew why.... How her
heart warmed to him for his honorable silence in defense of his unworthy
friend.
But she herself was under no such restraint. "It isn't that," she said
quickly. "It's the reformatory--I've worried myself sick over it."
West averted his gaze; he saw that it had come, and in a peculiarly
aggravated form. He recognized at once how impossible it would be to
talk the matter over, in a calm and rational way, under such conditions
as these. This little girl had brooded over it till the incident had
assumed grotesque and fantastic proportions in her mind. She was seeing
visions, having nightmares. In a soothing, sympathetic voice, he began
consoling her with the thought that a postponement for two brief years
was really not so serious, and that--
"It isn't that!" she corrected him again, in the same voice. "That was
pretty bad, but--what I have minded so much was M---- was the _Post's_
desertion."
West's troubled eyes fell. But some hovering imp of darkness instantly
popped it into his head to ask: "Have you seen Queed?"
"No," said Sharlee, colorlessly. "Not since--"
"You--didn't know, then, that he has left the _Post?_"
"Left the _Post!_" she echoed, with a face suddenly rigid. "No! Did he?
Won't you tell me--?"
West looked unhappily at the floor. "Well--I'd much rather not go into
this now. But the fact is that he left because ... well, we had a
difference of opinion as to that reformatory article."
Sharlee turned hastily away, pretending to look for her fan. The sudden
shutting of that tiny door had shot her through with unexpected pain.
The last doubt fell now; all was plain. Mr. Queed had been discharged
for writing an article which outraged his chief's sense of honor, that
knightly young chief who still would not betray him by a word. The
little door clicked; Sharlee turned the key upon it and threw away the
key. And then she turned upon West a face so luminous with pure trust
that it all but unsteadied him.
To do West justice, it was not until his words had started caroming down
the eternal halls of time, that their possible implication dawned upon
him. His vague idea had been merely to give a non-committal summary of
the situation to ease the present moment; this to be followed, at a more
suitable time, by the calm and rational explanation he had always
intended. But the magical effect of his chance words, entirely
unexpected by him, was quite too delightful to be wiped out. To erase
that look from the tired little lady's face by labored exposition and
tedious statistic would be the height of clumsy unkindness. She had been
unhappy; he had made her happy; that was all that was vital just now. At
a later time, when she had stopped brooding over the thing and could see
and discuss it intelligently, he would take her quietly and straighten
the whole matter out for her.
For this present, there was a look in her eyes which made a trip-hammer
of his heart. Never had her face--less of the mere pretty young girl's
than he had ever seen it, somewhat worn beneath its color, a little
wistful under her smile--seemed to him so immeasurably sweet. In his
blood Straus and the famous Verzenay plied their dizzying vocations.
Suddenly he leaned forward, seeing nothing but two wonderful blue eyes,
and his hand fell upon hers, with a grip which claimed her out of all
the world.
"Sharlee" he said hoarsely. "Don't you know that--"
But he was, alas, summarily checked. At just that minute, outraged
partners of Miss Weyland's espied and descended upon them with loud
reproachful cries, and Charles Gardiner West's moment of superb
impetuosity had flowered in nothing.
* * * * *
At a little earlier hour on the same evening, in a dining-room a mile
away, eight men met "without political significance" to elect a new set
of officers for the city. A bit of red-tape legislation permitted the
people to ratify the choices at a "primary," to be held some months
later; but the election came now. Unanimously, and with little or no
discussion, the eight men elected one of their own number, Mr. Meachy T.
Bangor by name, to the office of Mayor of the City.
One of them then referred humorously to Mr. Bangor as just the sort of
progressive young reformer that suited _him_. Another suggested, more
seriously, that they might have to allow for the genuine article some
day. Plonny Neal, who sat at the head of the table, as being the wisest
of them, said that the organization certainly must expect to knuckle to
reform some day; perhaps in eight years, perhaps in twelve years,
perhaps in sixteen.
"Got your young feller all picked out, Plonny?" queried the Mayor elect,
Mr. Bangor, with a wink around the room.
Plonny denied that he had any candidate. Under pressure, however, he
admitted having his eye on a certain youth, a "dark horse" who was
little known at present, but who, in his humble judgment, was a coming
man. Plonny said that this man was very young just now, but would be
plenty old enough before they would have need of him.
Mr. Bangor once more winked at the six. "Why, Plonny, I thought you were
rooting for Charles Gardenia West."
"Then there's two of ye," said Plonny, dryly, "he being the other one."
He removed his unlighted cigar, and spat loudly into a tall brass
cuspidor, which he had taken the precaution to place for just such
emergencies.
"Meachy," said Plonny, slowly, "I wouldn't give the job of dog-catcher
to a man you couldn't trust to stand by his friends."