"I suppose a sudden change of heart in the middle of a fight is always
an unhappy thing. It always means a good deal of pain for somebody.
Still--sometimes they must come, and when they do, I suppose the only
thing to do is to meet them honestly--though, personally, I think I
should always trust my heart against my head. But ... if you had only
come to us that first morning and frankly explained just why you
deserted us--if you had told us all this that you have just told me--"
"That is exactly what I wanted and intended to do," interrupted West. "I
kept silent out of regard for you."
"Out of regard for me?"
"When I started to tell you all about it, that night at Mrs. Byrd's, it
seemed to me that you had brooded over the matter until you had gotten
in an overwrought and--overstrung condition about it. It seemed to me
the considerate thing not to force the unwelcome topic upon you, but
rather to wait--"
"But had you the right to consider my imaginary feelings in such a
matter between yourself and ...? And besides, you did not quite keep
silent, you remember. You said something that led me to think that you
had discharged Mr. Surface for writing that article."
"I did not intend you to think anything of the kind. Anything in the
least like that. If my words were ambiguous, it was because, seeing, as
I say, that you were in an overstrung condition, I thought it best to
let the whole matter rest until you could look at it calmly and
rationally."
She made no reply.
"But why dwell on that part of it?" said West, beseechingly. "It was
simply a wretched misunderstanding all around. I'm sorrier than I can
tell you for my part in it. I have been greatly to blame--I can see that
now. Can't you let bygones be bygones? I have come to you voluntarily
and told you--"
"Yes, after six weeks. Why, I was the best friend he had, Mr. West,
and--Oh, me! How can I bear to remember what I said to him!"
She turned her face hurriedly away from him. West, much moved, struggled
on.
"But don't you see--I didn't know it! I never dreamed of such a thing.
The moment I heard how matters stood--"
"Did it never occur to you in all this time that it might be assumed
that Mr. Surface, having written all the reformatory articles, had
written this one?"
"I did not think of that. I was short-sighted, I own. And of course," he
added more eagerly, "I supposed that he had told you himself."
"You don't know him," said Sharlee.
A proud and beautiful look swept over her face. West rose, looking
wretchedly unhappy, and stood, irresolute, facing her.
"Can't you--forgive me?" he asked presently, in a painful voice.
Sharlee hesitated.
"Don't you know I said that it would only make things worse to talk
about it to-night?" she said gently. "Everything you say seems to put us
further and further apart. Why, there is nothing for me to forgive, Mr.
West. There was a situation, and it imposed a certain conduct on you;
that is the whole story. I don't come into it at all. It is all a matter
between you and--your own-"
"You do forgive me then? But no--you talk to me just as though you had
learned all this from somebody else--as though I had not come to you
voluntarily and told you everything."
Sharlee did not like to look at his face, which she had always seen
before so confident and gay.
"No," said she sadly--"for I am still your friend."
"_Friend!_"
He echoed the word wildly, contemptuously. He was just on the point of
launching into a passionate speech, painting the bitterness of
friendship to one who must have true love or nothing, and flinging his
hand and his heart impetuously at her feet. But looking at her still
face, he checked himself, and just in time. Shaken by passion as he was,
he was yet enough himself to understand that she would not listen to
him. Why should he play the spendthrift and the wanton with his love?
Why give her, for nothing, the sterile satisfaction of rejecting him,
for her to prize, as he knew girls did, as merely one more notch upon
her gun?
Leaving his tempestuous exclamation hanging in mid-air, West stiffly
shook Sharlee's hand and walked blindly out of the room.
He went home, and to bed, like one moving in a horrible dream. That
night, and through all the next day, he felt utterly bereft and
wretched: something, say, as though flood and pestilence had swept
through his dear old town and carried off everything and everybody but
himself. He crawled alone in a smashed world. On the second day
following, he found himself able to light a cigarette; and, glancing
about him with faint pluckings of convalescent interest, began to
recognize some landmarks. On the third day, he was frankly wondering
whether a girl with such overstrained, not to say hysterical ideals of
conduct, would, after all, be a very comfortable person to spend one's
life with.
On the evening of this day, about half-past eight o'clock, he emerged
from his mother's house, light overcoat over his arm in deference to his
evening clothes, and started briskly down the street. On the second
block, as luck had it, he overtook Tommy Semple walking the same way.
"Gardiner," said Semple, "when are you going to get over all this uplift
rot and come back to Semple and West?"
The question fell in so marvelously with West's mood of acute discontent
with all that his life had been for the past two years, that it looked
to him strangely like Providence. The easy ways of commerce appeared
vastly alluring to him; his income, to say truth, had suffered sadly in
the cause of the public; never had the snug dollars drawn him so
strongly. He gave a slow, curious laugh.
"Why, hang it, Tommy! I don't know but I'm ready to listen to your siren
spiel--now!"
In the darkness Semple's eyes gleamed. His receipts had never been so
good since West left him.
"That's the talk! I need you in my business, old boy. By the bye, you
can come in at bully advantage if you can move right away. I'm going to
come talk with you to-morrow."
"Right's the word," said West.
At the end of that block a large house stood in a lawn, half hidden from
the street by a curtain of trees. From its concealed veranda came a
ripple of faint, slow laughter, advertising the presence of charming
society. West halted.
"Here's a nice house, Tommy; I think I'll look in. See you to-morrow."
Semple, walking on, glanced back to see what house it was. It proved to
be the brownstone palace leased for three years by old Mr. Avery,
formerly of Mauch Chunk but now of Ours.
Sharlee, too, retired from her painful interview with West with a sense
of irreparable loss. Her idol of so many years had, at a word, toppled
off into the dust, and not all the king's horses could ever get him back
again. It was like a death to her, and in most ways worse than a death.
She lay awake a long time that night, thinking of the two men who, for
she could not say how long, had equally shared first place in her
thoughts. And gradually she read them both anew by the blaze lit by one
small incident.
She could not believe that West was deliberately false; she was certain
that he was not deliberately false. But she saw now, as by a sudden
searchlight flung upon him, that her one-time paladin had a fatal
weakness. He could not be honest with himself. He could believe anything
that he wanted to believe. He could hypnotize himself at will by the
enchanting music of his own imaginings. He had pretty graces and he told
himself they were large, fine abilities; dim emotions and he thought
they were ideals; vague gropings of ambition, and when he had waved the
hands of his fancy over them, presto, they had become great dominating
purposes. He had fluttered fitfully from business to Blaines College;
from the college to the _Post_; before long he would flutter on from the
_Post_ to something else--always falling short, always secretly
disappointed, everywhere a failure as a man, though few might know it
but himself. West's trouble, in fact, was that he was not a man at all.
He was weakest where a real man is strongest. He was merely a chameleon
taking his color from whatever he happened to light upon; a handsome
boat which could never get anywhere because it had no rudder; an
ornamental butterfly driving aimlessly before the nearest breeze. He
meant well, in a general way, but his good intentions proved descending
paving-stones because he was constitutionally incapable of meaning
anything very hard.
West had had everything in the beginning except money; and he had the
faculty of making all of that he wanted. Queed--she found that name
still clinging to him in her thoughts--had had nothing in the beginning
except his fearless honesty. In everything else that a man should he, he
had seemed to her painfully destitute. But because through everything he
had held unflinchingly to his honesty, he had been steadily climbing the
heights. He had passed West long ago, because their faces were set in
opposite directions. West had had the finest distinctions of honor
carefully instilled into him from his birth. Queed had deduced his, raw,
from his own unswerving honesty. And the first acid test of a real
situation showed that West's honor was only burnished and decorated
dross, while Queed's, which he had made himself, was as fine gold. In
that test, all superficial trappings were burned and shriveled away; men
were made to show their men's colors; and the "queer little man with the
queer little name" had instantly cast off his resplendent superior
because contact with his superior's dishonesty was degrading to him. Yet
in the same breath, he had allowed his former chief to foist off that
dishonesty upon his own clean shoulders, and borne the detestable burden
without demand for sympathy or claim for gratitude. And this was the
measure of how, as Queed had climbed by his honesty, his whole nature
had been strengthened and refined. For if he had begun as the most
unconscious and merciless of egoists, who could sacrifice little Fifi to
his comfort without a tremor, he had ended with the supreme act of
purest altruism: the voluntary sacrifice of himself to save a man whom
in his heart he must despise.
But was that the supreme altruism? What had it cost him, after all, but
her friendship? Perhaps he did not regard that as so heavy a price to
pay.
Sharlee turned her face to the wall. In the darkness, she felt the color
rising at her throat and sweeping softly but resistlessly upward. And
she found herself feverishly clinging to all that her little Doctor had
said, and looked, in all their meetings which, remembered now, gave her
the right to think that their parting had been hard for him, too.
Yet it was not upon their parting that her mind busied itself most, but
upon thoughts of their remeeting. The relations which she had thought to
exist between them had, it was clear, been violently reversed. The one
point now was for her to meet the topsy-turveyed situation as swiftly,
as generously, and as humbly as was possible.
If she had been a man, she would have gone to him at once, hunted him up
this very night, and told him in the most groveling language at her
command, how infinitely sorry and ashamed she was. Lying wide-eyed in
her little white bed, she composed a number of long speeches that she,
as a man, would have made to him; embarrassing speeches which he, as a
man, or any other man that ever lived, would never have endured for a
moment. But she was not a man, she was a girl; and girls were not
allowed to go to men, and frankly and honestly say what was in their
hearts. She was not in the least likely to meet him by accident; the
telephone was unthinkable. There remained only to write him a letter.
Yes, but what to say in the letter? There was the critical and crucial
question. No matter how artful and cajoling an apology she wrote, she
knew exactly how he would treat it. He would write a civil, formal
reply, assuring her that her apology was accepted, and there the matter
would stand forever. For she had put herself terribly in the wrong; she
had betrayed a damning weakness; it was extremely probable that he would
never care to resume friendship with one who had proved herself so
hatefully mistrustful. Then, too, he was evidently very angry with her
about the money. Only by meeting for a long, frank talk could she ever
hope to make things right again; but not to save her life could she
think of any form of letter which would bring such a meeting to pass.
Pondering the question, she fell asleep. All next day, whenever she had
a minute and sometimes when she did not, she pondered it, and the next,
and the next. Her heart smote her for the tardiness of her reparation;
but stronger than this was her fear of striking and missing fire. And at
last an idea came to her; an idea so big and beautiful that it first
startled and dazzled her, and then set her heart to singing; the perfect
idea which would blot away the whole miserable mess at one stroke. She
sat down and wrote Mr. Surface five lines, asking him to be kind enough
to call upon her in regard to the business matter about which he had
written her a few weeks before.
She wrote this note from her house, one night; she expected, of course,
that he would come there to see her; she had planned out exactly where
they were each to sit, and even large blocks of their conversation. But
the very next morning, before 10 o'clock, there came a knock upon the
Departmental door and he walked into her office, looking more
matter-of-fact and businesslike than she had ever seen him.