From which flight he descended with a thud to observe that it was quarter of two o'clock, and the dining-room was cold with the dying down of the Latrobe, and the excellent reading-lamp in the death-throes of going out.

He went upstairs in the dark, annoyed with himself for having overstayed his bedtime. Long experimentation had shown him that the minimum of sleep he could get along with to advantage was six and one-half hours nightly. This meant bed at 1.30 exactly, and he hardly varied it five minutes in a year. To his marrow he was systematic; he was as definite as an adding-machine, as practical as a cash register. But even now, on this exceptional night, he did not go straight to bed. Something still remained to be accomplished: an outrage upon his sacred Schedule.

In the first halcyon days at Mrs. Paynter's, before the board question ever came up at all, the iron-clad Schedule of Hours under which he was composing his great work had stood like this:

8.20 Breakfast 8.40 Evolutionary Sociology 1.30 Dinner 2 Evolutionary Sociology 7 Supper 7.20 to 1.30 Evolutionary Sociology

But the course of true love never yet ran smooth, and this schedule was too ideal to stand. First the Post had come along and nicked a clean hour out of it, and now his Body had unexpectedly risen and claimed yet another hour. And, beyond even this ... some devilish whim had betrayed him to-night into offering his time for the service and uses of the landlady's daughter in the puling matter of algebra.

No ... no! He would not put that in. The girl could not be so selfish as to take advantage of his over-generous impulse. She must understand that his time belonged to the ages and the race, not to the momentary perplexities of a high school dunce.... At the worst it would be only five minutes here and there—say ten minutes a week; forty minutes a month. No, no! He would not put that in.

But the hour of Bodily Exercise could not be so evaded. It must go in. On land or sea there was no help for that. For thirty days henceforward at the least—and a voice within him whispered that it would be for much longer—his Schedule must stand like this:

8.20 Breakfast 8.40 Evolutionary Sociology 1.30 Dinner 2 Evolutionary Sociology 4.45 to 5.15 Open-Air Pedestrianism 5.15 to 6.15 The Post 6.15 to 6.45 Klinker's Exercises for all Parts of the Body 7 Supper 7.20 Evolutionary Sociology

Hand clasped in his hair, Queed stared long at this wreckage with a sense of foreboding and utter despondency. Doubtless Mr. Pat, who was at that moment peacefully pulling a pipe over his last galleys at the Post office, would have been astonished to learn what havoc his accursed fleas had wrought with the just expectations of posterity.



IX

Of Charles Gardiner West, President-Elect of Blaines College, and his Ladies Fair: all in Mr. West's Lighter Manner.

The closing German of the Thursday Cotillon, hard upon the threshold of a late Lent, was a dream of pure delight. Six of them in the heart of every season since 1871, these Germans have become famous wherever the light fantastic toe of aristocracy trips and eke is tripped. They are the badge of quality, and the test of it, the sure scaling-rod by which the frightened debutante may measure herself at last, to ask of her mirror that night, with who can say what tremors: "Am I a success?" Over these balls strangers go mad. They come from immense distances to attend them, sometimes with superciliousness; are instantly captivated; and returning to their homes, wherever they may be, sell out their businesses for a song and move on, to get elected if they can, which does not necessarily follow.

Carriages, in stately procession, disembarked their precious freight; the lift, laden with youth and beauty, shot up and down like a glorious Jack-in-the-Box; over the corridors poured a stream of beautiful maidens and handsome gentlemen, to separate for their several tiring-rooms, and soon to remeet in the palm-decked vestibule. Within the great room, couples were already dancing; Fetzy's Hungarians on a dais, concealed behind a wild thicket of growing things, were sighing out a wonderful waltz; rows of white-covered chairs stood expectantly on all four sides of the room; and the chaperones, august and handsome, stood in a stately line to receive and to welcome. And to them came in salutation Charles Gardiner West and, beside him, the lady whom he honored with his hand that evening, Miss Millicent Avery, late of Maunch Chunk, but now of Ours.

They made their devoirs to the dowagers; silently they chose their seats, which he bound together with a handkerchief in a true lovers' knot; and, Fetzy's continuing its heavenly work, he put his arm about her without speech, and they floated away upon the rhythmic tide.

At last her voice broke the golden silence: "I feel enormously happy to-night. I don't know why."

The observation might seem unnoteworthy to the casual, but it carried them all around the room again.

"Fortune is good to me," said he, as lightly as he could, "to let me be with you when you feel like that."

He had never seen her so handsome; the nearness of her beauty intoxicated him; her voice was indolent, provocative. She was superbly dressed in white, and on her rounded breast nodded his favor, a splendid corsage of orchid and lily-of-the-valley.

"Fortune?" she queried. "Don't you think that men bring these things to pass for themselves?"

They had made the circle on that, too, before West said: "I wonder if you begin to understand what a power you have of bringing happiness to me."

He looked, and indeed, for the transient moment, he felt, like a man who must have his answer, for better or worse, within the hour. She saw his look, and her eyes fell before it, not wholly because she knew how to do that to exactly the best advantage. Few persons would have mistaken Miss Avery for a wholly inexperienced and unsophisticated girl. But how was she to know that that same look had risen in the eyes of West, and that same note, obviously sincere, broken suddenly into his pleasant voice, for many, many of the fair?

The music died in a splendid crash, and they threaded their way to their seats, slowly and often stopped, across the crowded floor. Many eyes followed them as they walked. She was still "new" to us; she was beautiful; she was her own young lady, and something about her suggested that she would be slightly unsafe for boys, the headstrong, and the foolish; rumor made her colossally wealthy. As for him, he was the glass of fashion and the mould of form, and much more than that besides. Of an old name but a scanty fortune, he had won his place by his individual merits; chiefly, perhaps, for so wags the world, by an exterior singularly prepossessing and a manner that was a possession above rubies. His were good looks of the best fashion of men's good looks; not a tall man, he yet gave the effect of tallness, so perfect was his carriage, so handsome his address. And he was as clever as charming; cultured as the world knows culture; literary as the term goes; nor was there any one who made a happier speech than he, whether in the forum or around the festal board. Detractors, of course, he had—as which of those who raise their heads above the dead level have not?—but they usually contented themselves with saying, as Buck Klinker had once said, that his manners were a little too good to be true. To most he seemed a fine type of the young American of the modern South; a brave gentleman; a true Democrat with all his honors; and, though he had not yet been tested in any position of responsibility, a rising man who held the future in his hand.

They took their seats, and at last he freed himself from the unsteadying embarrassment which had shaken him at the first sight of her under the brilliant lights of the ballroom.

"Two things have happened to make this seventh of March a memorable day for me," said he. "Two great honors have come to me. They are both for your ear alone."

She flung upon him the masked battery of her eyes. They were extraordinary eyes, gray and emerald, not large, but singularly long. He looked fully into them, and she slowly smiled.

"The other honor," said Charles Gardiner West, "is of a commoner kind. They want to make me president of Blaines College."

"Oh—really!" said Miss Avery, and paused. "And shall you let them do it?"

He nodded, suddenly thoughtful and serious. "Long before snow flies, Semple & West will be Semple and Something else. They'll elect me in June. I needn't say that no one must know of this now—but you."

"Of course. It is a great honor," she said, with faint enthusiasm. "But why are you giving up your business? Doesn't it interest you?"

He made a large gesture. "Oh, it interests me.... But what does it all come to, at the last? A man aspires to find some better use for his abilities than dollar-baiting, don't you think?"

Miss Avery privately thought not, though she certainly did not like his choice of terms.

"If a man became the greatest stock-jobber in the world, who would remember him after he was gone? Miss Avery, I earnestly want to serve. My deepest ambition is to leave some mark for the better upon my environment, my city, and my State. I am baring my small dream for you to look at, you see. Now this little college ..."

But a daring youth by the name of Beverley Byrd bore Miss Avery away for the figure which was just then forming, and the little college hung in the air for the nonce. Mr. West was so fortunate as to secure the hand of Miss Weyland for the figure, he having taken the precaution to ask that privilege when he greeted her some minutes since. Couple behind couple they formed, the length of the great room, and swung away on a brilliant march.

"It's going to be a delicious German—can't you tell by the feel?" began Sharlee, doing the march with a deux-temps step. "I'm so glad to see you, for it seems ages since we met, though, you know, it was only last week. Is not that a nice speech for greeting? Only I must tell you that I've said it to four other men already, and the evening is yet young."

"Is there nothing in all the world that you can say, quite new and special, for me?"

"Oh, yes! For one thing your partner to-night is altogether the loveliest thing I ever saw. And for another—"

"I am listening."

"For another, her partner to-night is quite the nicest man in all this big, big room."

"And how many men have you said that to to-night, here in the youth of the evening?"

But the figure had reached that point where the paths of partners must diverge for a space, and at this juncture Sharlee whirled away from him. Around and up the room swept the long file of low-cut gowns and pretty faces, and step for step across the floor moved a similar line of swallow-tail and masculinity. At the head of the room the two lines curved together again, round meeting round, and here, in good time, the lovely billow bore on Sharlee, who slipped her little left hand into West's expectant right with the sweetest air in the world.

"Nobody but you, Charles Gardiner West," said she.

The whistle blew; the music changed; and off they went upon the dreamy valse.

There are dancers in this world, and other dancers; but Sharlee was the sort that old ladies stop and watch. Of her infinite poetry of motion it is only necessary to say that she could make even "the Boston" look graceful; as witness her now. In that large room, detectives could have found men who thought Sharlee decidedly prettier than Miss Avery. Her look was not languorous; her voice was not provocative; her eyes were not narrow and tip-tilted; they did not look dangerous in the least, unless you so regard all extreme pleasure derived from looking at anything in the nature of eyes. Nor was there anything in the least businesslike, official, or stenographic about her manner. If her head bulged with facts about the treatment of the deficient classes, no hint of that appeared in her talk at parties. Few of the young men she danced with thought her clever, and this shows how clever she really was. For there are men in this world who will run ten city blocks in any weather to avoid talking to a woman who knows more than they do, and knows it, and shows that she knows that she knows it.

Charles Gardiner West looked down at Sharlee; and the music singing in his blood, and the measure that they trod together, was all a part of something splendid that belonged to them alone in the world. Another man at such a moment would have contented himself with a pretty speech, but West gave his sacred confidence. He told Sharlee about the presidency of Blaines College.

Sharlee did not have to ask what he would do with such an offer. She recognized at sight the opportunity for service he had long sought; and she so sincerely rejoiced and triumphed in it for him that his heart grew very tender toward her, and he told her all his plans; how he meant to make of Blaines College a great enlightened modern institution which should turn out a growing army of brave young men for the upbuilding of the city and the state.

"They elect me the first of June. Of course I am supposed to know nothing about it yet, and you must keep it as a great secret if you please. I give up my business in April. The next month goes to my plans, arranging and laying out a great advertising campaign for the September opening. Early in June I shall sail for Europe, nominally for a little rest, but really to study the school systems of the old world. The middle of August will find me at my new desk, oh, so full of enthusiasms and high hopes!"

"It's splendid.... Oh, how fine!" paeaned she.

Upon the damask wrapping of Sharlee's chair lay a great armful of red, red roses, the gift of prodigal young Beverley Byrd, and far too large to carry. She lifted them up; scented their fragrance; selected and broke a perfect flower from its long stem; and held it out with a look.

"The Assistant Secretary of the State Department of Charities presents her humble duty to President West."

"Ah! Then the president commands his minion to place it tenderly in his buttonhole."

"Look at the sea of faces ... lorgnettes, too. The minion dassen't."

"Oh, that we two were Maying!"

"You misread our announcement," said Beverley Byrd, romping up. "No opening for young men here, Gardy! Butt out."

West left her, his well-shaped head in something of a whirl. In another minute he was off with Miss Avery upon a gallant two-step.

Fetzy's played on; the dancers floated or hopped according to their nature; and presently a waltz faded out and in a breath converted itself into the march for supper, the same air always for I don't know how many years.

Miss Avery rose slowly from her seat, a handsome siren shaped, drilled, fitted, polished from her birth for nothing else than the beguiling of lordly man. From the heart of her beautiful bouquet she plucked a spray of perfect lily-of-the-valley, and, eyes upon her own flowers, held it out to West.

"They are beautiful," she said in her languorous voice. "I hadn't thanked you for them, had I? Wear this for me, will you not?" She looked up and her long eyes fell—we need not assume for the first time—upon the flower in his lapel. "I beg your pardon," she said, with the slightest change of expression and voice. "I see that you are already provided. Shall we not go up?"

Laughing, he plucked a red, red rose from his buttonhole and jammed it carelessly in his pocket.

"Give it to me."

"Why, it's of no consequence. Flowers quickly fade."

"Won't you understand?... you maddening lady. I've known all these girls since they were born. When they offer me flowers, shall I hurt their feelings and refuse? Give it to me."

She shook her head slowly.

"Don't you know that I'll prize it—and why?" said he in a low voice. "Give it to me."

Their eyes met; hers fluttered down; but she raised them suddenly and put the flower in his buttonhole, her face so close that he felt her breath on his cheek.

Beside him at supper, she took up the thread of their earlier talk.

"If you must give up your business, why shouldn't it be for something bigger than the college—public life for instance?"

"I may say," West answered her, "that as yet there has not been that sturdy demand from the public, that uproarious insistence from the honest voter ..."

"At dinner the other evening I met one of your fine old patriarchs, Colonel Cowles. He told us that the new Mayor of this city, if he was at all the right sort, would go from the City Hall to the Governorship. And do you know who represents his idea of the right sort of Mayor?"

West, picking at a bit of duck, said that he hadn't the least idea.

"So modest—so modest! He said that the city needed a young progressive man of the better class and the highest character, and that man was—you. No other, by your leave! The Mayoralty, the Governorship, the Senate waiting behind that, perhaps—who knows? Is it wise to bottle one's self up in the blind alley of the college?"

Thus Delilah: to which Samson replied that a modern college is by no means a blind alley; that from the presidential retreat he would keep a close eye upon the march of affairs, doubtless doing his share toward moulding public opinion through contributions to the Post and the reviews; that, in fact, public life had long had an appeal for him, and that if at any time a cry arose in the land for him to come forward ...

"For a public career," said Delilah, with a sigh, "I should think you had far rather be editor of the Post, for example, than head of this college."

Samson made an engaging reply that had to do with Colonel Cowles. The talk ran off into other channels, but somehow Delilah's remark stuck in the young man's head.

Soul is not all that flows at the Thursday German, and it has frequently been noticed that the dance becomes gayest after supper. But it becomes, too, sadly brief, and Home Sweet Home falls all too soon upon the enthralled ear. Now began the movement toward that place, be it never so humble, like which there is none; and amid the throng gathered in the vestibule before the cloak-rooms, West again found himself face to face with Miss Weyland with whom he had stepped many a measure that evening.

"I've been thinking about it lots, President West," said she; "it grows better all the time. Won't you please teach all your boys to be very good, and to work hard, and never to grow up to make trouble for the State Department of Charities."

She had on a carriage-robe of light blue, collared and edged with white fur, and her arms were as full of red roses as arms could be.

"But if I do that too well," said he, "what would become of you? Blaines College shall never blot out the Department of Charities. I nearly forgot a bit of news. Gloomy news. The Post is going to fire your little Doctor."

"Ah—no!"

"It looks that way. The directors will take it up definitely in April. Colonel Cowles is going to recommend it. He says the Doc has more learning than society requires."

"But don't you think his articles give a—a tone to the paper—and—?"

"I do; a sombre, awful, majestic tone, if you like, but still one that ought to be worth something."

Sharlee looked sad, and it was one of her best looks.

"Ah, me! I don't know what will become of him if he is turned adrift. Could you, could you do anything?"

"I can, and will," said he agreeably. "I think the man's valuable, and you may count on it that I shall use my influence to have him kept."

So the Star and the Planet again fought in their courses for Mr. Queed. West, gazing down at her, overcoat on arm, looked like a Planet who usually had his way. The Star, too, had strong inclinations in the same direction. For example, she had noted at supper the lily-of-the-valley in the Planet's buttonhole, and she had not been able to see any good reason for that.

Her eyes became dreamy. "How shall I say thank you?... I know. I must give you one of my pretty flowers for your buttonhole." She began pulling out one of the glorious roses, but suddenly checked herself and gazed off pensively into space, a finger at her lip. "Ah! I thought this gesture seemed strangely familiar, and now I remember. I gave him a flower once before, and ah, look!... the president of the college has tossed it away."

West glanced hastily down at his buttonhole. The lily-of-the-valley was gone; he had no idea where he had lost it, nor could he now stay to inquire. The rose he took with tender carefulness from the upper pocket of his waistcoat.

"What did Mademoiselle expect?" said he, with a courtly bow. "The president wears it over his heart."

Sharlee's smile was a coronation for a man.

"That one was for the president. This new one," said she, plucking it out, "is for the director and—the man."

This new one, after all, she put into his buttonhole with her own hands, while he held her great bunch of them. As she turned away from the dainty ceremony, her color faintly heightened, Sharlee looked straight into the narrow eyes of Miss Avery, who, talking with a little knot of men some distance away, had been watching her closely. The two girls smiled and bowed to each other with extraordinary sweetness.



X

Of Fifi on Friendship, and who would be sorry if Queed died; of Queed's Mad Impulse, sternly overcome; of his Indignant Call upon Nicolovius, the Old Professor.

Could I interrupt you for just a minute, Mr. Queed?"

"No. It is not time yet."

"Cicero's so horrid to-night."

"Don't scatter your difficulties, as I've told you before. Gather them all together and have them ready to present to me at the proper time. I shall make the usual pause," said Mr. Queed, "at nine sharp."

Fifi, after all, had been selfish enough to take the little Doctor at his word. He had both given her the freedom of his dining-room and ordered her to bring her difficulties to him, instead of sitting there and noisily crying over them. And she had done his bidding, night after night. For his part he had stuck manfully by his moment of reckless generosity, no matter how much he may have regretted it. He helped Fifi, upon her request, without spoken protest or censure. But he insisted on doing it after an iron-clad schedule: Absolute silence until nine o'clock; then an interlude for the solving of difficulties; absolute silence after that; then at 9.45 a second interlude for the solving of the last difficulties of the night. The old rule of the dining-room, the Silence sign, had been necessarily suspended, but the young man enforced his schedule of hours far more strictly than the average railroad.

"Nine o'clock," he announced presently. "Bring me your difficulties."

Fifi's brain was at low ebb to-night. She came around with several books, and he jabbed his pencil at her open Cicero with some contempt.

"You have a fundamental lack of acquaintance with Latin grammar, Miss—Miss Fifi. You badly need—"

"Why don't you call me Fifi, Mr. Queed? That's what all my friends call me."

He stared at her startled; she thought his eyes looked almost terrified. "My dear young lady! I'm not your friend."

A rare color sprang into Fifi's pallid cheeks: "I—I thought you liked me—from your being so good about helping me with my lessons—and everything."

Queed cleared his throat. "I do like you—in a way. Yes—in that way—I like you very well. I will call you F—Fifi, if you wish. But—friends! Oh, no! They take up more time than such a man as I can afford."

"I don't think I would take up one bit more time as your friend than I do now," said Fifi, in a plaintive voice.

Queed, uncomfortably aware of the flying minutes, felt like saying that that was impossible.

"Oh, I know what I'm talking about, I assure you," said the possessor of two friends in New York. "I have threshed the whole question out in a practical way."

"Suppose," said Fifi, "your book came out and you were very famous, but all alone in the world, without a friend. And you died and there was not one single person to cry and miss you—would you think that was a—a successful life?"

"Oh, I suppose so! Yes, yes!"

"But don't—don't you want to have people like you and be your friend?"

"My dear young lady, it is not a question of what I want. I was not put here in the world to frivol through a life of gross pleasure. I have serious work to do in the service of humankind, and I can do it only by rigid concentration and ruthless elimination of the unessential. Surely you can grasp that?"

"But—if you died to-morrow," said Fifi, fearfully fascinated by this aspect of the young man's majestic isolation,—"don't you know of anybody who'd be really and truly sorry?"

"Really, I've never thought of it, but doubtless my two friends in New York would be sorry after their fashion. They, I believe, are all."

"No they aren't! There's somebody else!"

Queed supposed she was going to say God, but he dutifully inquired, "Who?"

Fifi looked decidedly disappointed. "I thought you knew," she said, gazing at him with childlike directness. "Me."

Queed's eyes fell. There was a brief silence. The young man became aware of a curious sensation in his chest which he did not understand in the least, but which he was not prepared to describe as objectionable. To pass over it, and to bring the conversation to an immediate close, he rapped the open book austerely with his pencil.

"We must proceed with the difficulties. Let me hear you try the passage. Come! Quam ob rem, Quirites...."

The nine o'clock difficulties proceeded with, and duly cleared up, Fifi did not stay for the second, or 9.45, interlude. She closed M.T. Ciceronis Orationes Selectae, gathered together her other paraphernalia, and then she said suddenly:—

"I may leave school next week, Mr. Queed. I—don't think I'm going to graduate."

He looked up, surprised and displeased. "Why on earth do you think that?"

"Well, you see, they don't think I'm strong enough to keep up the work right now. The Doctor was here to-day, and that's what he says. It's silly, I think—I know I am."

Queed was playing the devil's tattoo with his pencil, scowling somewhat nervously. "Did you want to graduate particularly?"

A look of exquisite wistfulness swept the child's face, and was gone. "Yes, I wanted to—lots. But I won't mind so much after I've had time to get used to it. You know the way people are."

There was a silence, during which the young man wrestled with the sudden mad idea of offering to help Fifi with all her lessons each night—not merely with the difficulties—thus enabling her to keep up with her class with a minimum of work. Where such an impulse came from he could not conjecture. He put it down with a stern hand. Personally, he felt, he might be almost willing to make this splendid display of altruism; but for the sake of posterity and the common good, he could not dream of stealing so much time from the Magnum Opus.

"Well!" he said rather testily. "That is too bad."

"I know you'll be glad not to have me bothering you any more with my lessons, and all."

"I will not say that."

He looked at Fifi closely, examined her face in a searching, personal manner, which he had probably never before employed in reviewing a human countenance.

"You don't look well—no, not in the least. You are not well. You are a sick girl, and you ought to be in bed at this moment."

Fifi colored with pleasure. "No," she said, "I am not well."

Indeed Fifi was not well. Her cheek spoke of the three pounds she had lost since he had first helped her with her difficulties, and the eleven pounds before that. The hand upon the Turkey-red cloth was of such transparent thinness that you were sure you could see the lamplight shining through. Her eyes were startling, they were so full of other-worldly sweetness and so ringed beneath with shadows.

"And if I stopped coming down here to work nights," queried Fifi shamelessly, "would you—miss me?"

"Miss you?"

"You wouldn't—you wouldn't! You'd only be glad not to have me around—"

"I can truthfully say," said the little Doctor, glancing at his watch, "that I am sorry you are prevented from graduating."

Fifi retired in a fit of coughing. She and her cough had played fast and loose with Queed's great work that evening, and, moreover, it took him a minute and a half to get her out of his mind after she had gone. Not long afterwards, he discovered that the yellow sheet he wrote upon was the last of his pad. That meant that he must count out time to go upstairs and get another one.

Count out time! Why, that was what his whole life had come down to now! What was it but a steady counting out of ever more and more time?

The thirty days of hours ceded to Klinker were up, and instead of at once bringing the prodigal experiment to a close, Doctor Queed found himself terribly tempted to listen to his trainer's entreaties and extend by fifty per centum the time allotted to the gymnasium and open-air pedestrianism. He could not avoid the knowledge that he felt decidedly better since he had begun the exercises, especially during these last few days. For a week "the" headache and he had been strangers. Much more important, he was conscious of bringing to his work, not indeed a livelier interest, for that would have been impossible, but an increasing vitality and an enlarged capacity. He kept the most careful sort of tabs upon himself, and his records seemed to show, at least for the past week or two, that his net volume of work had not been seriously lowered by the hour per day wrung from the Schedule. The exercises, then, seemed to be paying their own freight. And besides all this, they were clearly little mile-stones on the path which led men to physical competency and the ability to protect their articles from public affront.

Still, an hour out was an hour out—three hundred and sixty-five hours a year—three months' delay in finishing his book. Making allowance for increased productivity, a month and a half's delay. And that was only a beginning. The Post—Klinker's Exercises for All Parts of the Body—Klinker himself, who called frequently—now Fifi (eighteen minutes this very evening)—who could say where the mad dissipation would end? On some uncharted isle in the far South Seas, perchance, a man might be let alone to do his work. But in this boarding-house, it was clear now, the effort was foredoomed and hopeless. Once make the smallest concession to the infernal ubiquity of the race, once let the topmost bar of your gate down never so little, and the whole accursed public descended with a whoop to romp all over the premises. What, oh, what was the use of trying?...

"Ah, Mr. Queed—well met! Won't you stop in and see me a little while? You're enormously busy, I know—but possibly I can find something to interest you in my poor little collection of books."

Nicolovius, coming up the stairs, had met Queed coming down, pad in hand. The impertinence of the old professor's invitation fitted superbly with the bitterness of the little Doctor's humor. It pressed the martyr's crown upon his brow till the perfectness of his grudge against a hateful world lacked nor jot nor tittle.

"Oh, certainly! Certainly!" he replied, with the utmost indignation.

Nicolovius, bowing courteously, pushed open the door.

It was known in the boarding-house that the remodeling of the Second Hall Back into a private bathroom for Nicolovius had been done at his own expense, and rumor had it that for his two rooms—his "suite," as Mrs. Paynter called it—he paid down the sum of eighteen dollars weekly. The bed-sitting-room into which he now ushered his guest was the prettiest room ever seen by Mr. Queed, who had seen few pretty rooms in his life. Certainly it was a charming room of a usual enough type: lamp-lit and soft-carpeted; brass fittings about the fireplace where a coal fire glowed; a large red reading-table with the customary litter of books and periodicals; comfortable chairs to sit in; two uncommonly pretty mahogany bookcases with quaint leaded windows. The crude central identity about all bedrooms that had hitherto come within Queed's ken, to wit, the bed, seemed in this remarkable room to be wanting altogether. For how was he, with his practical inexperience, to know that the handsome leather lounge in the bay-window had its in'ards crammed full of sheets, and blankets, and hinges and collapsible legs?

The young man gravitated instinctively toward the bookcases. His expert eye swept over the titles, and his gloom lightened a little.

"You have some fair light reading here, I see," he said, plucking out a richly bound volume of Lecky's History of European Morals.

Nicolovius, who was observing him closely, smiled to himself. "Ah, yes. I'm the merest dilettante, without your happiness of being a specialist of authority."

The old professor was a tall man, though somewhat stooped and shrunken, and his head was as bare of hair as the palm of your hand; which of course was why he wore the black silk skull cap about the house. On the contrary his mustaches were singularly long and luxuriant, they, and the short, smart goatee, being of a peculiar deep auburn shade. His eyes were dark, brilliant, and slightly sardonic; there were yellow pouches under them and deep transverse furrows on his forehead; his nose, once powerfully aquiline, appeared to have been broken cleanly across the middle. Taken all in all, he was a figure to be noticed in any company.

He came forward on his rubber heels and stood at his guest's elbow.

"Your field is science, I believe? This Spencer was bound for me years ago, by a clever devil in Pittsburg, of all places; Huxley, too. My Darwin is hit and miss. Mill is here; Hume; the American John Fiske. By chance I have The Wealth of Nations. Here is a fine old book, Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law. You know it, of course?"

"All—all! I know them all," murmured the little Doctor, standing with two books under his arm and plucking out a third. "I look back sometimes and stand amazed at the immensity of my reading. Benjamin Kidd—ha! He won't be in so many libraries when I get through with him. You are rather strong on political economy, I see. Alfred Marshall does very well. Nothing much in philosophy. The Contrat Social—absurd."

"Do you care for these?" asked Nicolovius, pointing to a row of well-worn works of Bible criticism. "Of course the Germans are far in the lead in this field, and I am unhappily compelled to rely on translations. Still I have—"

"Here! Look here! I must have this! I must take this book from you!" interrupted Queed, rather excitedly dragging a fat blue volume from a lower shelf. "Crozier's Civilization and Progress. What a find! I need it badly. I'll just take it with me now, shall I not? Eh?"

"I shall be only too happy to have you take it," said Nicolovius, blandly, "and as many others as you care for."

"I'll have another look and see," said Queed. "My copy of Crozier disappeared some time before I left New York, and so far I have been unable to replace it. I am showing him up completely.... Why, this is singular—extraordinary! There's not a history among all these books—not a volume!"

Nicolovius's expression oddly changed; his whole face seemed to tighten. "No," he said slowly, "I have some reason to dislike history."

The young man straightened sharply, horrified. "Why don't you say at once that you hate Life—Man—the Evolution of the Race—and be done with it?"

"Would that seem so dreadful to you?" The old man's face wore a sad smile. "I might say even that, I fear. Try one of those chairs by the fire. I shall not mind telling you how I came by this feeling. You don't smoke, I believe! You miss a good deal, but since you don't know it, how does it matter?"

Nicolovius's haughty aloofness, his rigid uncommunicativeness, his grand ducal bearing and the fact that he paid eighteen dollars a week for a suite had of course made him a man of mark and mystery in the boarding-house, and in the romancings of Miss Miller he had figured as nearly everything from a fugitive crown prince to a retired counterfeiter. However, Queed positively refused to be drawn away from the book-shelves to listen to his story, and the old professor was compelled to turn away from the fire and to talk, at that, to the back of the young man's head.

Nicolovius, so he told Queed, was not an American at all, but an Irishman, born at Roscommon, Connaught. His grandfather was a German, whence he got his name. But the lad grew up in the image of his mother's people. He became an intense patriot even for Ireland, an extremist among extremists, a notorious firebrand in a land where no wood glows dully. Equipped with a good education and natural parts, he had become a passionate leader in the "Young Ireland" movement; was a storm-centre all during the Home Rule agitations; and suddenly outgrew Ireland overnight during the "Parnellism and Crime" era. He got away to the coast, disguised as a coster, and once had the pleasure of giving a lift in his cart to the search-party who wanted him, dead or alive. This was in the year 1882.

"You were mixed up in the Phoenix Park murders, I daresay?" interjected Queed, in his matter-of-fact way.

"You will excuse my preference for a certain indefiniteness," said Nicolovius, with great sweetness.

On this side, he had drifted accidentally into school-teaching, as a means of livelihood, and stuck at it, in New York, St. Paul, and, for many years, in Chicago. The need of a warmer climate for his health's sake, he said, had driven him South, and some three years before an appointment at Milner's Collegiate School had brought him to the city which he and the young man now alike called their own.

Queed, still sacking the shelves for another find, asked if he had never revisited Ireland.

"Ah, no," said Nicolovius, "there was no gracious pardon for my little peccadillo, no statute of limitations to run after me and pat me on the head. I love England best with the sea between us. You may fancy that a refugee Irishman has no fondness for reading history."

He flicked the fire-ash from his cigar and looked at Queed. All the time he talked he had been watching the young man, studying him, conning him over....

"My life ended when I was scarcely older than you. I have been dead while I was alive.... God pity you, young man, if you ever taste the bitter misery of that!"

Queed turned around surprised at the sudden fierceness of the other's tone. Nicolovius instantly sprang up and went over to poke the fire; he came back directly, smiling easily and pulling at his long cigar.

"Ah, well! Forgive the saddening reminiscences of an old man—not a common weakness with me, I assure you. May I say, Mr. Queed, how much your intellect, your culture, your admirable—ah—poise—amazing they seem to me in so young a man—have appealed to me among a population of Brookes, Bylashes, and Klinkers? You are the first man in many a day that has inspired me with an impulse toward friendship and confidence. It would be a real kindness if you'd come in sometimes of an evening."

At the word "friendship" the young man flinched uncontrollably. Was the whole diabolical world in league to spring out and make friends with him?

"Unfortunately," he said, with his iciest bow, "my time is entirely engrossed by my work."

But as his eye went round the pretty, dim-lit room, he could not help contrasting it with the bleak Scriptorium above, and he added with a change of tone and a sigh:—

"You appear wonderfully comfortable here."

Nicolovius shrugged. "So-so," he said indifferently. "However, I shall make a move before long."

"Indeed?"

"I want more space and independence, more quiet—surcease from meeting fellow-boarders at every step. I plan to move into an apartment, or perhaps a modest little house, if I can manage it. For I am not rich, unhappily, though I believe the boarders think I am, because I make Emma a present of a dollar each year at the anniversary of the birth of our Lord."

Queed ignored his little pleasantry. He was struck with the fact that Nicolovius had described exactly the sort of living arrangement that he himself most earnestly desired.

"I should have made the move last year," continued Nicolovius, pulling at his auburn mustaches, "except that—well, I am more sensitive to my loneliness as I grow older, and the fact was that I lacked a congenial companion to share a pleasanter home with."

The eyes of the two men met, and they moved away from each other as by common consent. Apparently the same thought popped simultaneously into both their minds. Queed dallied with his thought, frankly and with the purest unaltruism.

Though this was the first time he had ever been in the old professor's pretty room, it was the third or fourth time he had been invited there. Nothing could be clearer than that Nicolovius liked him enormously,—where on earth did he get his fatal gift for attracting people?—nothing than that he was exactly the sort of congenial companion the old man desired. Why shouldn't he go and live with Nicolovius in his new home, the home of perfect quiet and immunity from boarders? And unbroken leisure, too, for of course Nicolovius would bear all expenses, and he himself would fly from all remunerative work as from the Black Death. Nay more, the old chap would very likely be willing to pay him a salary for his society, or at least, see that he was kept well supplied with everything he needed—books to demolish like this one under his arm, and ...

He looked up and found the sardonic Italian eyes of the old professor fixed on him with a most curious expression.... No, no! Better even Mrs. Paynter's than solitude shared with this stagey old man, with his repellent face and his purring voice which his eyes so belied.

"I must be going," said Queed hastily.

His host came forward with suave expressions of regret. "However, I feel much complimented that you came at all. Pray honor me again very soon—"

"I'll return this book sometime," continued the young man, already at the door. "You won't mind if I mark it, of course?"

"My dear sir—most certainly not. Indeed I hoped that you would consent to accept it for your own, as a—"

"No, I'll return it. I daresay you will find," he added with a faint smile, but his grossest one, "that my notes have not lessened its value exactly!"

In the hall Queed looked at his watch; ten minutes to ten. Twenty-five minutes to his visit upon the old professor!

However, let us be calm and just about it. The twenty-five minutes was not a flat loss: he had got Crozier by it. Crozier was worth twenty-five minutes; thirty-five, if it came to that—fifty!... But how to fit such a thing as this into the Schedule—and Klinker's visits—and the time he had given to Fifi to-night and very likely would have to give through an endless chain of to-morrows? Here was the burning crux. Was it endurable that the Schedule must be corrupted yet again?

So far as little Fifi was concerned, it turned out that these agonies were superfluous; he had helped her with her lessons for the last time. She did not appear in the dining-room the next night, or the next, or the next. Inquiries from the boarders drew from Mrs. Paynter the information that the child's cough had pulled her down so that she had been remanded to bed for a day or two to rest up. But resting up appeared not to prove so simple a process as had been anticipated, and the day or two was soon running into weeks.

Halcyon nights Queed enjoyed in the dining-room in Fifi's absence, yet faintly marred in a most singular way by the very absence which alone made them halcyon. It is a fact that you cannot give to any person fifteen minutes of valuable time every night, and not have your consciousness somewhat involved in that person's abrupt disappearance from your horizon. Messages from Fifi on matters of most trivial import came to Queed occasionally, and these served to keep alive his subtle awareness of her absence. But he never took any notice of the messages, not even of the one which said that he could look in and see her some afternoon if he wanted to.



XI

Concerning a Plan to make a Small Gift to a Fellow-Boarder, and what it led to in the Way of Calls; also touching upon Mr. Queed's Dismissal from the Post, and the Generous Resolve of the Young Lady, Charles Weyland.

The State Department of Charities was a rudimentary affair in those days, just as Queed had said. Its appropriation was impossibly meager, even with the niggard's increase just wrung from the legislature. The whole Department fitted cozily into a single room in the Capitol; it was small as a South American army, this Department, consisting, indeed, of but the two generals. But the Secretary and the Assistant Secretary worked together like a team of horses. They had already done wonders, and their hopes were high with still more wonders to perform. In especial there was the reformatory. The legislature had adjourned without paying any attention to the reformatory, exactly as it had been meant to do. But a bill had been introduced, at all events, and the Post had carried a second editorial, expounding and urging the plan; several papers in the smaller cities of the State had followed the Post's lead; and thus the issue had been fairly launched, with the ground well broken for a successful campaign two years later.

The office of the Department was a ship-shape place, with its two desks, a big one and a little one; the typewriter table; the rows and rows of letter-files on shelves; a sectional bookcase containing Charities reports from other States, with two shelves reserved for authoritative books by such writers as Willoughby, Smathers, and Conant. Here, doubtless, would some day stand the colossal work of Queed. At the big desk sat the Rev. Mr. Dayne, a practical idealist of no common sort, a kind-faced man with a crisp brown mustache. At the typewriter-table sat Sharlee Weyland, writing firm letters to thirty-one county almshouse keepers. It was hard upon noon. Sharlee looked tired and sad about the eyes. She had not been to supper at Mrs. Paynter's for months, but she went there nearly every afternoon from the office to see Fifi, who had been in bed for four weeks.

The Department door opened, with no premonitory knock, and in walked, of all people, Mr. Queed.

Sharlee came forward very cordially to greet the visitor, and at once presented him to the Secretary. However Queed dismissed Mr. Dayne very easily, and gazing at Sharlee sharply through his spectacles, said:

"I should like to speak to you in private a moment."

"Certainly," said Sharlee.

"I'll step into the hall," said kind-faced Mr. Dayne.

"No, no. Indeed you mustn't. We will."

Sharlee faced the young man in the sunlit hail with sympathetic expectancy and some curiosity in her eyes.

"There is," he began without preliminaries, "a girl at the house where I board, who has been confined to her bed with sickness for some weeks. It appears that she has grown thin and weak, so that they will not permit her to graduate at her school. This involves a considerable disappointment to her."

"You are speaking of Fifi," said Sharlee, gently.

"That is the girl's name, if it is of any interest to you—"

"You know she is my first cousin."

"Possibly so," he replied, as though to say that no one had the smallest right to hold him responsible for that. "In this connection, a small point has arisen upon which advice is required, the advice of a woman. You happen to be the only other girl I know. This," said Queed, "is why I have called."

Sharlee felt flattered. "You are most welcome to my advice, Mr. Queed."

He frowned at her through glasses that looked as big and as round as butter-saucers, with an expression in which impatience contended with faint embarrassment.

"As her fellow-lodger," he resumed, precisely, "I have been in the habit of assisting this girl with her studies and have thus come to take an interest in her—a small interest. During her sickness, it seems, many of the boarders have been in to call upon her. In a similar way, she has sent me several messages inviting me to call, but I have not been in position to accept any of these invitations. It does not follow that, because I gave some of my time in the past to assisting her with her lessons, I can afford to give more of it now for purposes of—of mere sociability. I make the situation clear to you?"

Sharlee, to whom Fifi had long since made the situation clear, puckered her brow like one carefully rehearsing the several facts. "Yes, I believe that is all perfectly clear, Mr. Queed."

He hesitated visibly; then his lips tightened and, gazing at her with a touch of something like defiance, he said: "On the other hand, I do not wish this girl to think that I bear her ill-will for the time I have given her in the past. I—ahem—have therefore concluded to make her a present, a small gift."

Sharlee stood looking at him without a reply.

"Well?" said he, annoyed. "I am not certain what form this small gift had best take."

She turned away from him and walked to the end of the hall, where the window was. To Queed's great perplexity, she stood there looking out for some time, her back toward him. Soon it came into his mind that she meant to indicate that their interview was over, and this attitude seemed extremely strange to him. He could not understand it at all.

"I fear that you have failed to follow me, after all," he called after her, presently. "This was the point—as to what form the gift should take—upon which I wanted a woman's advice."

"I understand." She came back to him slowly, with bright eyes. "I know it would please Fifi very much to have a gift from you. Had you thought at all, yourself, what you would like to give?"

"Yes," he said, frowning vaguely, "I examined the shop windows as I came down and pretty well decided on something. Then at the last minute I was not altogether sure."

"Yes? Tell me what."

"I thought I would give her a pair of silk mitts."

Sharlee's eyes never left his, and her face was very sweet and grave.

"White silk ones," said he—"or black either, for that matter, for the price is the same."

"Well," said she, "why did you select mitts, specially?"

"What first attracted me to them," he said simply, "was that they came to precisely the sum I had planned to spend: seventy-five cents."

The little corrugation in Sharlee's brow showed how carefully she was thinking over the young man's suggestion from all possible points of view. You could easily follow her thought by her speaking sequence of expressions. Clearly it ran like this: "Mitts—splendid! Just the gift for a girl who's sick in bed. The one point to consider is, could any other gift possibly be better? No, surely none.... Wait a minute, though! Let's take this thing slowly and be absolutely sure we're right before we go ahead.... Run over carefully all the things that are ever used as gifts. Anything there that is better than mitts? Perhaps, after all ... Mitts ... Why, look here, isn't there one small objection, one trifling want of the fulness of perfection to be raised against the gift of mitts?"

"There's this point against mitts," said Sharlee slowly. "Fifi's in bed now, and I'm afraid she's likely to be there for some time. Of course she could not wear the mitts in bed. She would have to tuck them away in a drawer somewhere. Don't you think it might be a good idea to give her something that she could enjoy at once—something that would give her pleasure now and so help to lighten these tedious hours while she must be in her room?"

The mitts were the child of Queed's own brain. Unconsciously he had set his heart on them; but his clock-like mind at once grasped the logic of this argument, and he met it generously.

"Your point is well taken. It proves the wisdom of getting the advice of a woman on such a matter. Now I had thought also of a book—"

"I'll tell you!" cried Sharlee, nearly bowled over by a brilliant inspiration. "A great many men that I know make it a rule to send flowers to girls that are sick, and—"

"Flowers!"

"It does seem foolish—such a waste, doesn't it?—but really you've no idea how mad girls are about flowers, or how much real joy they can bring into a sick-room. And, by changing the water often, and—so on, they last a long time, really an incredible time—"

"You recommend flowers, then? Very well," he said resolutely—"that is settled then. Now as to the kind. I have only a botanical knowledge of flowers—shall we say something in asters, perhaps, chrysanthemums or dahlias? What is your advice as to that?"

"Well, I advise roses."

"Roses—good. I had forgotten them for the moment. White roses?"

A little shiver ran through her. "No, no! Let them be the reddest you can find."

"Next, as to the cost of red roses."

"Oh, there'll be no trouble about that. Simply tell the florist that you want seventy-five cents' worth, and he will give you a fine bunch of them. By the way, I'd better put his name and address down on a piece of paper for you. Be sure to go to this one because I know him, and he's extremely reliable."

He took the slip from her, thanked her, bowed gravely, and turned to go. A question had risen involuntarily to the tip of her tongue; it hung there for a breath, its fate in the balance; and then she released it, casually, when another second would have been too late.

"How is your work on the Post going?"

He wheeled as though she had struck him, and looked at her with a sudden odd hardening of the lower part of his face.

"The Post discharged me this morning."

"Oh—"

It was all that she could say, for she knew it very well. She had had it from Colonel Cowles two days before it happened, which was three days after the April meeting of the directors. Charles Gardiner West, who was to have raised his voice in behalf of Mr. Queed on that occasion, happened not to be present at all. Having effected the dissolution of Semple and West, he had gone to the country for a month's rest, in preparation for that mapping out of collegiate plans which was to precede his tour of Europe. Hence the directors, hearing no protests from intercessors, unanimously bestowed discretion upon the Colonel to replace the transcendental scientist with a juicier assistant at a larger salary.

"At least," the young man qualified, with a curious mixture of aggressiveness and intense mortification, "the Post will discharge me on the 15th day of May unless I show marked improvement. I believe that improvement was exactly the word the estimable Colonel employed."

"I'm awfully sorry," said Sharlee—"awfully! But after all, you want only some routine hack-work—any routine hack-work—to establish a little income. It will not be very hard to find something else, as good or even better."

"You do not appear to grasp the fact that, apart from any considerations of that sort, this is an unpleasant, a most offensive thing to have happen—"

"Oh, but that is just what it isn't, Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, who quite failed to appreciate his morbid tenderness for even the least of his intellectual offspring. "You have taken no pride in the newspaper work; you look down on it as altogether beneath you. You cannot mind this in any personal way—"

"I mind it," said he, "like the devil."

The word fell comically from his lips, but Sharlee, leaning against the shut door, looked at him with grave sympathy in her eyes.

"Mr. Queed, if you had tried to write nursery rhymes and—failed, would you have taken it to heart?"

"Never mind arguing it. In fact, I don't know that I could explain it to you in a thoroughly logical and convincing way. The central fact, the concrete thing, is that I do object most decidedly. I have spent too much time in equipping myself to express valuable ideas in discriminating language to be kicked out of a second-rate newspaper office like an incompetent office-boy. Of course I shall not submit to it."

"Do you care to tell me what you mean to do?"

"Do!" He hit the door-post a sudden blow with an unexpectedly large hand. "I shall have myself elected editor of the Post."

"But—but—but—" said the girl, taken aback by the largeness of this order—"But you don't expect to oust Colonel Cowles?"

"We are not necessarily speaking of to-morrow or next day. An actuary will tell you that I am likely to outlive Colonel Cowles. I mean, first, to have my dismissal recalled, and, second, to be made regular assistant editor at three times my present salary. That is my immediate reply to the directors of the Post. I am willing to let the editorship wait till old Cowles dies."

"Tell me," said Sharlee, "would you personally like to be editor of the Post?"

"Like it! I'll resign the day after they elect me. Call it sheer wounded vanity—anything you like! The name makes no difference. I know only that I will have the editorship for a day—and all for the worthless pleasure of pitching it in their faces." He looked past her out of the window, and his light gray eyes filled with an indescribable bitterness. "And to have the editorship," he thought out loud, "I must unlearn everything that I know about writing, and deliberately learn to write like a demagogic ass."

Sharlee tapped the calcimine with her pointed fingernails. He spoke, as ever, with overweening confidence, but she knew that he would never win any editorship in this spirit. He was going at the quest with a new burst of intellectual contempt, though it was this very intellectual contempt that had led to his downfall.

"But your own private work?"

"Don't speak of it, I beg!" He flinched uncontrollably; but of his own accord he added, in carefully repressed tones: "To qualify for the editorship of course means—a terrible interruption and delay. It means that I must side-track My Book for two months or even longer!"

Two months! It would take him five years and probably he would not be qualified then.

Sharlee hesitated. "Have you fully made up your mind to—to be editor?"

He turned upon her vehemently. "May I ask you never to waste my time with questions of that sort. I never—never—say anything until I have fully made up my mind about it. Good-morning."

"No, no, no! Don't go yet! Please—I want to speak to you a minute."

He stopped and turned, but did not retrace the three steps he had taken. Sharlee leaned against the door and looked away from him, out into the park.

The little Doctor was badly in need of a surgical operation. Somebody must perform it for him, or his whole life was a dusty waste. That he still had glimmerings, he had shown this very hour, in wanting to make a gift to his sick little fellow-lodger. His resentment over his dismissal from the Post, too, was an unexpectedly human touch in him. But in the same breath with these things the young man had showed himself at his worst: the glimmerings were so overlaid with an incredible snobbery of the mind, so encrusted with the rankest and grossest egotism, that soon they must flutter and die out, leaving him stone-blind against the sunshine and the morning. No scratch could penetrate that Achilles-armor of self-sufficiency. There must be a shock to break it apart, or a vicious stabbing to cut through it to such spark as was still alive.

Somebody must administer that shock or do that stabbing. Why not she? He would hate the sight of her forevermore, but ...

"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, turning toward him, "you let me see, from what you are doing this morning, that you think of Fifi as your friend. I'd like to ask if you think of me in that way, too."

O Lord, Lord! Here was another one!

"No," he said positively. "Think of you as I do of Fifi! No, no! No, I do not."

"I don't mean to ask if you think of me as you do of Fifi. Of course I am sure you don't. I only mean—let me put it this way: Do you believe that I have your—interests at heart, and would like to do anything I could to help you?"

He thought this over warily. Doubtless doomed Smathers would have smiled to note the slowness with which his great rival's mind threshed out such a question as this.

"If you state your proposition in that way, I reply, tentatively, yes."

"Then can you spare me half an hour to-night after supper?"

"For what purpose?"

"For you and me," she smiled. "I'd like you to come and see me, at my house, where we could really have a little talk. You see, I know Colonel Cowles very well indeed, and I have read the Post for oh, many, many years! In this way I know something about the kind of articles people here like to read, and about—what is needed to write such articles. I think I might make a suggestion or two that—would help. Will you come?"

After somewhat too obvious a consideration, Queed consented. Sharlee thanked him.

"I'll put my address down on the back of that paper, shall I? And I think I'll put my name, too, for I don't believe you have the faintest idea what it is."

"Oh, yes. The name is Miss Charlie Weyland. It appears that you were named after a boy?"

"Oh, it's only a silly nickname. Here's your little directory back. I'll be very glad to see you—at half-past eight, shall we say? But, Mr. Queed—don't come unless you feel sure that I really want to help. For I'm afraid I'll have to say a good deal that will make you very mad."

He bowed and walked away. Sharlee went to the telephone and called Bartlett's, the florist. She told Mr. Bartlett that a young man would come in there in a few minutes—full description of the young man—asking for seventy-five cents' worth of red roses; Mr. Bartlett would please give him two dozen roses, and charge the difference to her, Miss Weyland; the entire transaction to be kept discreetly quiet.

However the transaction was not kept entirely quiet. The roses were delivered promptly, and became the chief topic of conversation at Mrs. Paynter's dinner-table. Through an enforced remark of Mr. Queed's, and the later discursive gossip of the boarders, it became disseminated over the town that Bartlett's was selling American Beauties at thirty-seven and a half cents a dozen, and the poor man had to buy ten inches, double column, in the Post next morning to get himself straightened out and reestablish Bartlett's familiar quotations.



XII

More Consequences of the Plan about the Gift, and of how Mr. Queed drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fifi on Men, and how they do; Second Corruption of The Sacred Schedule.

Queed's irrational impulse to make Fifi a small gift cost him the heart of his morning. A call would have been cheaper, after all. Nor was the end yet. In this world it never is, where one event invariably hangs by the tail of another in ruthless concatenation. Starting out for Open-air Pedestrianism at 4.45 that afternoon, the young man was waylaid in the hail by Mrs. Paynter, at the very door of the big bedroom into which Fifi had long since been moved. The landlady, backing Queed against the banisters, told him how much her daughter had been pleased by his beautiful remembrance. The child, she said, wanted particularly to thank him herself, and wouldn't he please come in and see her just a moment?

As Mrs. Paynter threw open the door in the act of making the extraordinary request, escape was impossible. Queed found himself inside the room before he knew what he was doing. As for Mrs. Paynter, she somewhat treacherously slipped away to consult with Laura as to what for supper.

It was a mild sunny afternoon, with a light April wind idly kicking at the curtains. Fifi sat over by the open window in a tilted-back Morris chair, a sweet-faced little thing, all eyes and pallor. From her many covers she extricated a fragile hand, frilled with the sleeve of a pretty flowered kimono.

"Look at them! Aren't they glorious!"

On a table at her elbow his roses nodded from a wide-lipped vase, a gorgeous riot of flame and fragrance. Gazing at them, the young man marvelled at his own princely prodigality.

"I don't know how to thank you for them, Mr. Queed, They are so, so sweet, and I do love roses so!"

Indeed her joy in them was too obvious to require any words. Queed decided to say nothing about the mitts.

"I'm glad that they please you," said he, pulling himself together for the ordeal of the call. "How are you getting along up here? Very well, I trust?"

"Fine. It's so quiet and nice.... And I don't mind about graduating a bit any more. Isn't that funny?"

"You must hurry up and get well and return to the dining-room again, F—F—Fifi—, and to the algebra lessons—"

"Don't," said Fifi. "I can't bear it."

But she whisked at her eyes with a tiny dab of a handkerchief, and when she looked at him she was smiling, quite clear and happy.

"Have you missed me since I stopped coming?"

"Missed you?" he echoed, exactly as he had done before.

But this time Fifi said, shamelessly, "I'll bet you have!—Haven't you?"

Come, Mr. Queed, be honest. You are supposed to have the scientist's passion for veracity. You mercilessly demand the truth from others. Now take some of your own medicine. Stand out like a man. Have you or have you not missed this girl since she stopped coming?

"Yes," said the little Doctor, rather hollowly, "I ... have missed you."

Fifi's smile became simply brazen. "Do you know what, Mr. Queed? You like me lots more than you will say you do."

The young man averted his eyes. But for some time there had been in his mind the subtle consciousness of something left undone, an occasion which he had failed to meet with the final word of justice. Since he had been in the room, a vague, unwelcome resolve had been forming in his mind, and at Fifi's bold words, it hardened into final shape. He drew a deep breath.

"You referred to me as your friend once, F—Fifi. And I said that I was not."

"I know."

"I was—mistaken"—so he drained his medicine to the dregs. "I ... am your friend."

Now the child's smile was the eternal motherly. "Lor', Mr. Queed, I knew it all the time."

Queed looked at the floor. The sight of Fifi affected him most curiously to-day. He felt strangely ill at ease with her, only the more so because she was so amazingly at home with him. She wore her reddish-brown hair not rounded up in front as of old, but parted smoothly in the middle, and this only emphasized the almost saintly purity of her wasted little face. Her buoyant serenity puzzled and disconcerted him.

Meantime Fifi was examining Queed carefully. "You've been doing something to yourself, Mr. Queed! What is it? Why, you look ten times better than even four weeks ago!"

"I think," he said drearily, "it must be Klinker's Exercises. I give them," broke from him, "one hour and twenty minutes a day!"

But he pulled himself together, conscientiously determined to take the cheery view with Fifi.

"It is an extraordinary thing, but I am feeling better, physically and mentally, than I ever felt before, and this though I never had a really sick day in my life. It must be the exercises, for that is the only change I have made in my habits. Yet I never supposed that exercise had any such practical value as that. However," he went on slowly, "I am beginning to believe that there are several things in this world that I do not understand."

Here, indeed, was a most humiliating, an epoch-making, confession to come from the little Doctor. It was accompanied with a vague smile, intended to be cheering and just the thing for a sick-room. But the dominant note in this smile was bewildered and depressed helplessness, and at it the maternal instinct sprang full-grown in Fifi's thin little bosom. A passionate wish to mother the little Doctor tugged at her heart.

"You know what you need, Mr. Queed? Friends—lots of good friends—"

He winced as from a blow. "I assure you—"

"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. After-wards, 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?



XIII

"Taking the Little Doctor Down a Peg or Two": as performed for the First and Only Time by Sharlee Weyland.

The Star that fought in its course for men through Sharlee Weyland was of the leal and resolute kind. It did not swerve at a squall. Sharlee had thought the whole thing out, and made up her mind. Gentle raillery, which would do everything necessary in most cases, would be wholly futile here. She must doff all gloves and give the little Doctor the dressing-down of his life. She must explode a mine under that enormously exaggerated self-esteem which swamped the young man's personality like a goitre. Sharlee did not want to do this. She liked Mr. Queed, in a peculiar sort of way, and yet she had to make it impossible for him ever to speak to her again. Her nature was to give pleasure, and therefore she was going to do her utmost to give him pain. She wanted him to like her, and consequently she was going to insult him past forgiveness. And she was not even sure that it was going to do him any good.

When her guest walked into her little back parlor that evening, Sharlee was feeling very self-sacrificing and noble. However, she merely looked uncommonly pretty and tremendously engrossed in herself. She was in evening dress. It was Easter Monday, and at nine, as it chanced, she was to go out under the escortage of Charles Gardiner West to some forgathering of youth and beauty. But her costume was so perfectly suited to the little curtain-raiser called Taking the Little Doctor Down a Peg or Two, that it might have been appointed by a clever stage-manager with that alone in mind. She was the haughty beauty, the courted princess, graciously bestowing a few minutes from her crowding fetes upon some fourth-rate dependant. And indeed the little Doctor, with his prematurely old face and his shabby clothes, rather looked the part of the dependant. Sharlee's greeting was of the briefest.

"Ah, Mr. Queed.... Sit down."

Her negligent nod set him away at an immense distance; even he was aware that Charles Weyland had undergone some subtle but marked change since the morning. The colored maid who had shown him in was retained to button her mistress' long gloves. It proved to be a somewhat slow process. Over the mantel hung a gilt-framed mirror, as wide as the mantel itself. To this mirror, the gloves buttoned, Miss Weyland passed, and reviewed her appearance with slow attention, giving a pat here, making a minor readjustment there. But this survey did not suffice for details, it seemed; a more minute examination was needed; over the floor she trailed with leisurely grace, and rang the bell.

"Oh, Mary—my vanity-box, please. On the dressing-table."

Seating herself under the lamp, she produced from the contrivance the tiniest little mirror ever seen. As she raised it to let it perform its dainty function, her glance fell on Queed, sitting darkly in his rocking-chair. A look of mild surprise came into her eye: not that it was of any consequence, but plainly she had forgotten that he was there.

"Oh ... You don't mind waiting a few minutes?"

"I do m—"

"You promised half an hour I think? Never fear that I shall take longer—"

"I did not promise half an hour for such—"

"It was left to me to decide in what way the time should be employed, I believe. What I have to say can be said briefly, but to you, at least, it should prove immensely interesting." She stifled a small yawn with the gloved finger-tips of her left hand. "However, of course don't let me keep you if you are pressed for time."

The young man made no reply. Sharlee completed at her leisure her conference with the vanity-box; snapped the trinket shut; and, rising, rang the bell again. This time she required a glass of water for her good comfort. She drank it slowly, watching herself in the mantel mirror as she did so, and setting down the glass, took a new survey of her whole effect, this time in a long-distance view.

"Now, Mr. Queed!"

She sat down in a flowered arm-chair so large that it engulfed her, and fixed him with a studious, puckering gaze as much as to say: "Let's see. Now, what was his trouble?"

"Ah, yes!—the Post."

She glanced at the little clock on the mantel, appeared to gather in her thoughts from remote and brilliant places, and addressed the dingy youth briskly but not unkindly.

"Unfortunately, I have an engagement this evening and can give you very little time. You will not mind if I am brief. Here, then, is the case. A man employed in a minor position on a newspaper is notified that he is to be discharged for incompetence. He replies that, so far from being discharged, he will be promoted at the end of a month, and will eventually be made editor of the paper. Undoubtedly this is a magnificent boast, but to make it good means a complete transformation in the character of this man's work—namely, from entire incompetence to competence of an unusual sort, all within a month's time. You are the man who has made this extraordinary boast. To clear the ground before I begin to show you where your trouble is, please tell me how you propose to make it good."

Not every man feeling inside as the little Doctor felt at that moment would have answered with such admirable calm.

"I purpose," he corrected her, "to take the files of the Post for the past few years and read all of Colonel Cowles's amusing articles. He, I am informed, is the editorial mogul and paragon. I purpose to study those articles scientifically, to analyze them, to take them apart and see exactly how they are put together. I purpose to destroy my own style and build up another one precisely like the Colonel's—if anything, a shade more so. In short I purpose to learn to write like an ass, of asses, for asses."

"That is your whole programme?"

"It is more than enough, I think."

"Ah?" She paused a moment, looking at him with faint, distant amusement. "Now, as my aunt's business woman, I, of course, take an interest in the finances of her boarders. Therefore I had better begin at once looking about for a new place for you after May 15th. What other kinds of work do you think yourself qualified to do, besides editorial writing and the preparation of thesauruses?"

He looked at her darkly. "You imagine that the Post will discharge me on May 15th?"

"There is nothing in the world that seems to me so certain."

"And why?"

"Why will the Post discharge you? For exactly the same reason it promises to discharge you now. Incompetence."

"You agree with Colonel Cowles, then? You consider me incompetent to write editorials for the Post?"

"Oh, totally. And it goes a great deal deeper than style, I assure you. Mr. Queed, you're all wrong from the beginning."

Her eyes left his face; went first to the clock; glanced around the room. Sharlee's dress was blue, and her neck was as white as a wave's foamy tooth. Her manner was intended to convey to Mr. Queed that he was the smallest midge on all her crowded horizon. It did not, of course, have that effect, but it did arrest and pique his attention most successfully. It was in his mind that Charles Weyland had been of some assistance to him in first suggesting work on the Post; and again about the roses for Fifi. He was still ready to believe that she might have some profitable suggestion about his new problem. Was she not that "public" and that "average reader" which he himself so despised and detested? Yet he could not imagine where such a little pink and white chit found the hardihood to take this tone with one of the foremost scientists of modern times.

"You interest me. I am totally incompetent now; I will be totally incompetent on May 15th; this because I am all wrong from the beginning. Pray proceed."

Sharlee, her thoughts recalled, made a slight inclination of her head. "Forgive my absent-mindedness. First, then, as to why you are a failure as an editorial writer. You are quite mistaken in supposing that it is a mere question of style, though right in regarding your style as in itself a fatal handicap. However, the trouble has its root in your amusing attitude of superiority to the work. You think of editorial writing as small hack-work, entirely beneath the dignity of a man who has had one or two articles accepted by a prehistoric magazine which nobody reads. In reality, it is one of the greatest and most splendid of all professions, fit to call out the very best of a really big man. You chuckle and sneer at Colonel Cowles and think yourself vastly his superior as an editorial writer, when, in the opinion of everybody else, he is in every way your superior. I doubt if the Post has a single reader who would not prefer to read an article by him, on any subject, to reading an article by you. I doubt if there is a paper in the world that would not greatly prefer him as an editor to you—"

"You are absurdly mistaken," he interrupted coldly. "I might name various papers—"

"Yes, the Political Science Quarterly and the Journal of the Anthropological Institute." Sharlee smiled tolerantly, and immediately resumed: "When you sit down at the office to write an article, whom do you think you are writing for? A company of scientists? An institute of gray-bearded scholars? An academy of fossilized old doctors of laws? There are not a dozen people of that sort who read the Post. Has it never occurred to you to call up before your mind's eye the people you actually are writing for? You can see them any day as you walk along the street. Go into a street car at six o'clock any night and look around at the faces. There is your public, the readers of the Post—shop-clerks, stenographers, factory-hands, office-men, plumbers, teamsters, drummers, milliners. Look at them. Have you anything to say to interest them? Think. If they were to file in here now and ask you to make a few remarks, could you, for the life of you, say one single thing that would interest them?"

"I do not pretend, or aspire," said Mr. Queed, "to dispense frothy nothings tricked out to beguile the tired brick-layer. My duty is to give forth valuable information and ripened judgment couched in language—"

"No, your duty is to get yourself read; if you fail there you fail everywhere. Is it possible that you don't begin to grasp that point yet? I fancied that your mind was quicker. You appear to think that the duty of a newspaper is to back people up against a wall and ram helpful statistics into them with a force-pump. You are grotesquely mistaken. Your ideal newspaper would not keep a dozen readers in this city: that is to say, it would be a complete failure while it lasted and would bankrupt Mr. Morgan in six months. A dead newspaper is a useless one, the world over. At the same time, every living and good newspaper is a little better, spreads a little more sweetness and light, gives out a little more valuable information, ripened judgment, et cetera, than the vast majority of its readers want or will absorb. The Post is that sort of newspaper. It is constantly tugging its readers a little higher than they—I mean the majority, and not the cultured few—are willing to go. But the Post always recognizes that its first duty is to get itself read: if it does not succeed in that, it lacks the principle of life and dies. Perhaps the tired bricklayer you speak of, the middle-class, commonplace, average people who make up nearly all of the world, ought to be interested in John Stuart Mill's attitude toward the single-tax. But the fact is that they aren't. The Post wisely deals with the condition, and not a theory: it means to get itself read. It is your first duty, as a writer for it, to get yourself read. If you fail to get yourself read, you are worse than useless to the Post. Well, you have completely failed to do this, and that is why the Post is discharging you. Come, free yourself from exaggerated notions about your own importance and look at this simple point with the calm detachment of a scientist. The Post can save money, while preserving just the same effect, by discharging you and printing every morning a half-column from the Encyclopedia Britannica."