"The opposition is of the deadliest sort," she admitted, "because it is silent. It is silent because it knows that its only argument—all this economy talk—is utterly insincere. But Mr. Dayne knows where the opposition is—and the way he goes after it! Never believe any more that ministers can't lobby!"

"Probably the root of the whole matter," offered West, easing himself back into his chair, "is that the machine fellows want this particular hundred thousand dollars in their business."

"Isn't it horrid that men can be so utterly selfish? You don't think they will really venture to do that?"

"I honestly don't know. You see I have turned it all over to Queed, and I confess I haven't studied it with anything like the care he has."

Sharlee, who was never too engrossed in mere subjects to notice people's tones, said at once: "Oh, I am sure they won't dare do it," and immediately changed the subject. "You are going to the German, of course?"

"Oh, surely, unless the office pinches me."

"You mustn't let it pinch you—the last of the year, heigho! Did you hear about Robert Byrd and Miss—no, I won't give you her name—and the visiting girl?"

"Never a word."

"She's a thoroughly nice girl, but—well, not pretty, I should say, and I don't think she has had much fun here. Beverley and Robert Byrd were here the other night. Why will they hunt in pairs, do you know? I told Beverley that he positively must take this girl to the German. He quarreled and complained a good deal at first, but finally yielded like a dear boy. Then he seemed to enter in the nicest way into the spirit of our altruistic design. He said that after he had asked the girl, it would be very nice if Robert should ask her too. He would be refused, of course, but the girl would have the pleasant feeling of getting a rush, and Robert would boost his standing as a philanthropist, all without cost to anybody. Robert was good-natured, and fell in with the plan. Three days later he telephoned me, simply furious. He had asked the girl—you know he hasn't been to a German for five years—and she accepted at once with tears of gratitude."

"But how—?"

"Of course Beverley never asked her. He simply trapped Robert, which he would rather do than anything else in the world."

West shouted. "Speaking of Germans," he said presently, "I am making up my list for next year—the early bird, you know. How many will you give me?"

"Six."

"Will you kindly sign up the papers to-night?"

"No—my mother won't let me. I might sign up for one if you want me to."

"What possible use has your mother for the other five that is better than giving them all to me?"

"Perhaps she doesn't want to spoil other men for me."

West leaned forward, interest fully awakened on his charming face, and Sharlee watched him, pleased with herself.

It had occurred to her, in fact, that Mr. West was tired; and this was the solemn truth. He was a man of large responsibilities, with a day's work behind him and a night's work ahead of him. His personal conception of the way to occupy the precious interval did not include the conscientious talking of shop. Jaded and brain-fagged, what he desired was to be amused, beguiled, soothed, fascinated, even flattered a bit, mayhap. Sharlee's theory of hospitality was that a guest was entitled to any type of conversation he had a mind to. Having dismissed her own troubles, she now proceeded to make herself as agreeable as she knew how; and he has read these pages to little purpose who does not know that that was very agreeable indeed.

West, at least, appeared to think so. He lingered, charmed, until quarter past eleven o'clock, at which hour Mrs. Weyland, in the room above, began to let the tongs and poker fall about with unmistakable significance; and went out into the starlit night radiant with the certainty that his heart, after long wandering, had found its true mate at last.



XXIV

Sharlee's Parlor on Another Evening; how One Caller outsat Two, and why; also, how Sharlee looked in her Mirror for a Long Time, and why.

On the very night after West made his happy discovery, namely on the evening of February 24, at about twenty minutes of nine, Sharlee Weyland's door-bell rang, and Mr. Queed was shown into her parlor.

His advent was a complete surprise to Sharlee. For these nine months, her suggestion that he should call upon her had lain utterly neglected. Since the Reunion she had seen him but four times, twice on the street, and once at each of their offices, when the business of the reformatory had happened to draw them together. The last of these meetings, which had been the briefest, was already six weeks old. In all of her acquaintance with him, extending now over two years and a half, this was the first time that he had ever sought her out with intentions that were, presumably, deliberately social.

The event, Sharlee felt in greeting him, could not have happened, more unfortunately. Queed found the parlor occupied, and the lady's attention engaged, by two young men before him. One of them was Beverley Byrd, who saluted him somewhat moodily. The other was a Mr. Miller—no relation to Miss Miller of Mrs. Paynter's, though a faint something in his ensemble lent plausibility to that conjecture—a newcomer to the city who, having been introduced to Miss Weyland somewhere, had taken the liberty of calling without invitation or permission. It was impossible for Sharlee to be rude to anybody under her own roof, but it is equally impossible to describe her manner to Mr. Miller as exactly cordial. He himself was a cordial man, mustached and anecdotal, who assumed rather more confidence than he actually felt. Beverley Byrd, who did not always hunt in pairs, had taken an unwonted dislike to him at sight. He did not consider him a suitable person to be calling on Sharlee, and he had been doing his best, with considerable deftness and success, to deter him from feeling too much at home.

Byrd wore a beautiful dinner jacket. So did Mr. Miller, with a gray tie, and a gray, brass-buttoned vest, to boot. Queed wore his day clothes of blue, which were not so new as they were the day Sharlee first saw them, on the rustic bridge near the little cemetery. He had, of course, taken it for granted that he would find Miss Weyland alone. Nevertheless, he did not appear disconcerted by the sudden discovery of his mistake, or even by Mr. Miller's glorious waistcoat; he was as grave as ever, but showed no signs of embarrassment. Sharlee caught herself observing him closely, as he shook hands with the two men and selected a chair for himself; she concluded that constant contact with the graces of Charles Gardiner West had not been without its effect upon him. He appeared decidedly more at his ease than Mr. Miller, for instance, and he had another valuable possession which that personage lacked, namely, the face of a gentleman.

But it was too evident that he felt little sense of responsibility for the maintenance of the conversation. He sat back in a chair of exceptionable comfortableness, and allowed Beverley Byrd to discourse with him; a privilege which Byrd exercised fitfully, for his heart was in the talk that Sharlee was dutifully supporting with Mr. Miller. Into this talk he resolutely declined to be drawn, but his ear was alert for opportunities—which came not infrequently—to thrust in a polished oar to the discomfiture of the intruder.

Not that he would necessarily care to do it, but the runner could read Mr. Miller, without a glass, at one hundred paces' distance. He was of the climber type, a self-made man in the earlier and less inspiring stages of the making. Culture had a dangerous fascination for him. He adored to talk of books; a rash worship, it seemed, since his but bowing acquaintance with them trapped him frequently into mistaken identities over which Sharlee with difficulty kept a straight face, while Byrd palpably rejoiced.

"You know Thanatopsis, of course," he would ask, with a rapt and glowing eye—"Lord Byron's beautiful poem on the philosophy of life? Now that is my idea of what poetry ought to be, Miss Weyland...."

And Beverley Byrd, breaking his remark to Queed off short in the middle, would turn to Sharlee with a face of studious calm and say:—

"Will you ever forget, Sharlee, the first time you read the other Thanatopsis—the one by William Cullen Bryant? Don't you remember how it looked—with the picture of Bryant—in the old Fifth Reader?"

Mr. Miller proved that he could turn brick-red, but he learned nothing from experience.

In time, the talk between the two young men, which had begun so desultorily, warmed up. Byrd had read something besides the Fifth Reader, and Queed had discovered before to-night that he had ideas to express. Their conversation progressed with waxing interest, from the President's message to the causes of the fall of Rome, and thence by wholly logical transitions to the French Revolution and Woman's Suffrage. Byrd gradually became so absorbed that he almost, but not quite, neglected to keep Mr. Miller in his place. As for Queed, he spoke in defense of the "revolt of woman" for five minutes without interruption, and his masterly sentences finally drew the silence and attention of Mr. Miller himself.

"Who is that fellow?" he asked in an undertone. "I didn't catch his name."

Sharlee told him.

"He's got a fine face," observed Mr. Miller. "I've made quite a study of faces, and I never saw one just like his—so absolutely on one note, if you know what I mean."

"What note is that?" asked Sharlee, interested by him for the only time so long as they both did live.

"Well, it's not always easy to put a name to it, but I'd call it ... honesty.—If you know what I mean."

Mr. Miller stayed until half-past ten. The door had hardly shut upon him when Byrd, too, rose.

"Oh, don't go, Beverley!" protested Sharlee. "I've hardly spoken to you."

"Duty calls," said Byrd. "I'm going to walk home with Mr. Miller."

"Beverley—don't! You were quite horrid enough while he was here."

"But you spoiled it all by being so unnecessarily agreeable! It is my business, as your friend and well-wisher, to see that he doesn't carry away too jolly a memory of his visit. Take lunch downtown with me to-morrow, won't you, Mr. Queed—at the Business Men's Club? I want to finish our talk about the Catholic nations, and why they're decadent."

Queed said that he would, and Byrd hurried away to overtake Mr. Miller. Or, perhaps that gentleman was only a pretext, and the young man's experienced eye had read that any attempt to outsit the learned assistant editor was foredoomed to failure.

"I'm so glad you stayed," said Sharlee, as Queed reseated himself. "I shouldn't have liked not to exchange a word with you on your first visit here."

"Oh! This is not my first visit, you may remember."

"Your first voluntary visit, perhaps I should have said."

He let his eyes run over the room, and she could see that he was thinking, half-unconsciously, of the last time when he and she had sat here.

"I had no idea of going," he said absently, "till I had the opportunity of speaking to you."

A brief silence followed, which clearly did not embarrass him, at any rate. Sharlee, feeling the necessity of breaking it, still puzzling herself with speculations as to what had put it into his head to come, said at random:—

"Oh, do tell me—how is old Pere Goriot?"

"Pere Goriot? I never heard of him."

"Oh, forgive me! It is a name we used to have, long ago, for Professor Nicolovius."

A shadow crossed his brow. "He is extremely well, I believe."

"You are still glad that you ran off with him to live tete-a-tete in a bridal cottage?"

"Oh, I suppose so. Yes, certainly!"

His frank face betrayed that the topic was unwelcome to him. For he hated all secrets, and this secret, from this girl, was particularly obnoxious to him. And beyond all that part of it, how could he analyze for anybody his periods of strong revolt against his association with Henry G. Surface, followed by longer and stranger periods when, quite apart from the fact that his word was given and regrets were vain, his consciousness embraced it as having a certain positive value?

He rose restlessly, and in rising his eye fell upon the little clock on the mantel.

"Good heavens!" broke from him. "I had no idea it was so late! I must go directly. Directly."

"Oh, no, you mustn't think of it. Your visit to me has just begun—all this time you have been calling on Beverley Byrd."

"Why do you think I came here to-night?" he asked abruptly.

Sharlee, from her large chair, smiled. "I think to see me."

"Oh!—Yes, naturally, but—"

"Well, I think this is the call plainly due me from my Reunion party last year."

"No! Not at all! At the same time, it has been since that day that I have had you on my mind so much."

He said this in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, but a certain nervousness had broken through into his manner. He took a turn up and down the room, and returned suddenly to his seat.

"Oh, have you had me on your mind?"

"Do you remember my saying that day," he began, resolutely, "that I was not sure whether I had got the better of you or you had got the better of me?"

"I remember very well."

"Well, I have come to tell you that—you have won."

He had plucked a pencil from the arsenal of them in his breast-pocket, and with it was beating a noiseless tattoo on his open left palm. With an effort he met her eyes.

"I say you were right," came from him nervously. "Don't you hear?"

"Was I? Won't you tell me just what you mean?"

"Don't you know?"

"Really I don't think I do. You see, when I used that expression that day, I was speaking only of the editorship—"

"But I was speaking of a theory of life. After all, the two things seem to have been bound together rather closely—just as you said."

He restored his pencil to his pocket, palpably pulled himself together, and proceeded:

"Oh, my theory was wholly rational—far more rational than yours; rationally it was perfect. It was a wholly logical recoil from the idleness, the lack of purpose, the slipshod self-indulgence under many names that I saw, and see, everywhere about me. I have work to do—serious work of large importance—and it seemed to me my duty to carry it through at all hazards. I need not add that it still seems so. Yet it was a life's work, already well along, and there was no need for me to pay an excessive price for mere speed. I elected to let everything go but intellect; I felt that I must do so; and in consequence, by the simplest sort of natural law, all the rest of me was shriveling up—had shriveled up, you will say. Yet I knew very well that my intellect was not the biggest part of me. I have always understood that.... Still, it seems that I required you to rediscover it for me in terms of everyday life...."

"No, no!" she interrupted, "I didn't do that. Most of it you did yourself. The start, the first push—don't you know?—it came from Fifi."

"Well," he said slowly, "what was Fifi but you again in miniature?"

"A great deal else," said Sharlee.

Her gaze fell. She sunk her chin upon her hand, and a silence followed, while before the mind's eye of each rose a vision of Fifi, with her wasted cheeks and great eyes.

"As I say, I sacrificed everything to reason," continued Queed, obviously struggling against embarrassment, "and yet pure reason was never my ideal. I have impressed you as a thoroughly selfish person—you have told me that—and so far as my immediate environment is concerned, I have been, and am. So it may surprise you to be told that a life of service has been from the beginning my ambition and my star. Of course I have always interpreted service in the broadest sense, in terms of the world; that was why I deliberately excluded all purely personal applications of it. Yet it is from a proper combination of reason with—the sociologist's 'consciousness of kind'—fellow-feeling, sympathy, if you prefer, that is derived a life of fullest efficiency. I have always understood the truth of this formula as applied to peoples. It seems that I—rather missed its force as to individuals. I—I am ready to admit that an individual life can draw an added meaning—and richness from a service, not of the future, but of the present—not of the race but ... well, of the unfortunate on the doorstep. Do you understand," he asked abruptly, "what I am trying to tell you?"

She assured him that she understood perfectly.

A slow painful color came into his face.

"Then you appreciate the nature and the size of the debt I owe you."

"Oh, no, no, no! If I have done anything at all to help you," said Sharlee, considerably moved, "then I am very glad and proud. But as for what you speak of ... no, no, people always do these things for themselves. The help comes from within—"

"Oh, don't talk like that!" broke from him. "You throw out the idea somehow that I consider that I have undergone some remarkable conversion and transformation. I haven't done anything of the sort. I am just the same as I always was. Just the same.... Only now I am willing to admit, as a scientific truth, that time given to things not in themselves directly productive, can be made to pay a good dividend. If what I said led you to think that I meant more than that, then I have, for once, expressed myself badly. I tell you this," he went on hurriedly, "simply because you once interested yourself in trying to convince me of the truth of these views. Some of the things you said that night managed to stick. They managed to stick. Oh, I give you that. I suppose you might say that they gradually became like mottoes or texts—not scientific, of course ... personal. Therefore, I thought it only fair to tell you that while my cosmos is still mostly Ego—I suppose everybody's is in one way or another—I have—made changes, so that I am no longer wholly out of relation with life."

"I am glad you wanted to tell me," said Sharlee, "but I have known it for—oh, the longest time."

"In a certain sense," he hurried on—"quite a different sense—I should say that your talk—the only one of the kind I ever had—did for me the sort of thing ... that most men's mothers do for them when they are young."

She made no reply.

"Perhaps," he said, almost defiantly, "you don't like my saying that?"

"Oh, yes! I like it very much."

"And yet," he said, "I don't think of you as I fancy a man would think of his mother, or even of his sister. It is rather extraordinary. It has become clear to me that you have obtained a unique place in my thought—in my regard. Well, good-night."

She looked up at him, without, however, quite meeting his eyes.

"Oh! Do you think you must go?"

"Well—yes. I have said everything that I came to say. Did you want me to stay particularly?"

"Not if you feel that you shouldn't. You've been very good to give me a whole evening, as it is."

"I'll tell you one more thing before I go."

He took another turn up and down the room, and halted frowning in front of her.

"I am thinking of making an experiment in practical social work next year. What would be your opinion of a free night-school for working boys?"

Sharlee, greatly surprised by the question, said that the field was a splendid one.

He went on at once: "Technical training, of course, would be the nominal basis of it. I could throw in, also, boxing and physical culture. Buck Klinker would be delighted to help there. By the way, you must know Klinker: he has some first-rate ideas about what to do for the working population. Needless to say, both the technical and physical training would be only baits to draw attendance, though both could be made very valuable. My main plan is along a new line. I want to teach what no other school attempts—only one thing, but that to be hammered in so that it can never be forgotten."

"What is that?"

"You might sum it all up as the doctrine of individual responsibility."

She echoed his term inquiringly, and he made a very large gesture.

"I want to see if I can teach boys that they are not individuals—not unrelated atoms in a random universe. Teach them that they live in a world of law—of evolution by law—that they are links, every one of them, in a splendid chain that has been running since life began, and will run on to the end of time. Knock into their heads that no chain is stronger than its weakest link, and that this means them. Don't you see what a powerful socializing force there is in the sense of personal responsibility, if cultivated in the right direction? A boy may be willing to take his chances on going to the bad—economically and socially, as well as morally—if he thinks that it is only his own personal concern. But he will hesitate when you once impress upon him that, in doing so, he is blocking the whole magnificent procession. My plan would be to develop these boys' social efficiency by stamping upon them the knowledge that the very humblest of them holds a trusteeship of cosmic importance."

"I understand.... How splendid—not to practice sociology on them, but to teach it to them—"

"But could we get the boys?"

She felt that the unconsciousness with which he took her into partnership was one of the finest compliments that had ever been paid her.

"Oh, I think so! The Department has all sorts of connections, as well as lots of data which would be useful in that way. How Mr. Dayne will welcome you as an ally! And I, too. I think it is fine of you, Mr. Queed, so generous and kind, to—"

"Not at all! Not in the least! I beg you," he interrupted, irritably, "not to go on misunderstanding me. I propose this simply as an adjunct to my own work. It is simply in the nature of a laboratory exercise. In five years the experiment might enable me to check up some of my own conclusions, and so prove very valuable to me."

"In the meantime the experiment will have done a great deal for a certain number of poor boys—unfortunates on your doorstep...."

"That," he said shortly, "is as it may be. But—"

"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, "why are you honest in every way but one? Why won't you admit that you have thought of this school because you would like to do something to help in the life of this town?"

"Because I am not doing anything of the sort! Why will you harp on that one string? Good heavens! Aren't you yourself the author of the sentiment that a sociologist ought to have some first-hand knowledge of the problems of society?"

Standing, he gazed down at her, frowning insistently, bent upon staring her out of countenance; and she looked up at him with a Didymus smile which slowly grew. Presently his eyes fell.

"I cannot undertake," he said, in his stiffest way, "to analyze all my motives at all times for your satisfaction. They have nothing whatever to do with the present matter. The sole point up for discussion is the practical question of getting such a school started. Keep it in mind, will you? Give some thought as to ways and means. Your experience with the Department should be helpful to me in getting the plan launched."

"Certainly I will. If you don't object, I'll talk with Mr. Dayne about it, too. He—"

"All right. I don't object. Well, good-night."

Sharlee rose and held out her hand. His expression, as he took and shook it, suddenly changed.

"I suppose you think I have acquired the habit," he said, with an abrupt recurrence of his embarrassment, "of coming to you for counsel and assistance?"

"Well, why shouldn't you?" she answered seriously. "I have had the opportunity and the time to learn some things—"

"You can't dismiss your kindness so easily as that."

"Oh, I don't think I have been particularly kind."

"Yes, you have. I admit that. You have."

He took the conversation with such painful seriousness that she was glad to lighten it with a smile.

"If you persist in thinking so, you might feel like rewarding me by coming to see me soon again."

"Yes, yes! I shall come to see you soon again. Certainly. Of course," he added hastily, "it is desirable that I should talk with you more at length about my school."

He was staring at her with a conflict of expressions in which, curiously enough, pained bewilderment seemed uppermost. Sharlee laughed, not quite at her ease.

"Do you know, I am still hoping that some day you will come to see me, not to talk about anything definite—just to talk."

"As to that," he replied, "I cannot say. Good-night."

Forgetting that he had already shaken hands, he now went through with it again. This time the ceremony had unexpected results. For now at the first touch of her hand, a sensation closely resembling chain-lightning sprang up his arm, and tingled violently down through all his person. It was as if his arm had not merely fallen suddenly asleep, but was singing uproariously in its slumbers.

"I'm so glad you came," said Sharlee.

He retired in a confusion which he was too untrained to hide. At the door he wheeled abruptly, and cleared himself, with a white face, of evasions that were torturing his conscience.

"I will not say that a probable benefit to the boys never entered into my thoughts about the school. Nor do I say that my next visit will be wholly to talk about definite things, as you put it. For part of the time, I daresay I should like—just to talk."

Sharlee went upstairs, and stood for a long time gazing at herself in the mirror. Vainly she tried to glean from it the answer to a most interesting conundrum: Did Mr. Queed still think her very beautiful?



XXV

Recording a Discussion about the Reformatory between Editor West and his Dog-like Admirer, the City Boss; and a Briefer Conversation between West and Prof. Nicolovius's Boarder.

About one o'clock the telephone rang sharply, and Queed, just arrived for the afternoon work and alone in the office, answered it. It was the Rev. Mr. Dayne, Secretary of the Department of Charities; he had learned that the reformatory bill was to be called up in the house next day. The double-faced politicians of the machine, said Mr. Dayne, with their pretended zeal for economy, were desperately afraid of the Post. Would Mr. Queed be kind enough to hit a final ringing blow for the right in to-morrow's paper?

"That our position to-day is as strong as it is," said the kind, firm voice, "is due largely to your splendid work, Mr. Queed. I say this gladly, and advisedly. If you will put your shoulder to the wheel just once more, I am confident that you will push us through. I shall be eternally grateful, and so will the State. For it is a question of genuine moral importance to us all."

Mr. Dayne received assurance that Mr. Queed would do all that he could for him. He left the telephone rather wishing that the assistant editor could sometimes be inspired into verbal enthusiasm. But of his abilities the Secretary did not entertain the smallest doubt, and he felt that day that his long fight for the reformatory was as good as won.

Hanging up the receiver, Queed leaned back in his swivel chair and thoughtfully filled a pipe, which he smoked nowadays with an experienced and ripened pleasure. At once he relapsed into absorbed thought. Though he answered Mr. Dayne calmly and briefly according to his wont, the young man's heart was beating faster with the knowledge that he stood at the crisis of his longest and dearest editorial fight. He expected to win it. The whole subject, from every conceivable point of view, was at his fingers' ends. He knew exactly what to say; his one problem was how to say it in the most irresistible way possible.

Yet Queed, tilted back in his chair, and staring out over the wet roofs, was not thinking of the reformatory. He was thinking, not of public matters at all, but of the circumstances of his curious life with Henry G. Surface; and his thoughts were not agreeable in the least.

Not that he and the "old professor" did not get along well together. It was really surprising how well they did get along. Their dynamic interview of last June had at once been buried out of sight, and since then their days had flowed along with unbroken smoothness. If there had been times when the young man's thought recoiled from the compact and the intimacy, his manner never betrayed any sign of it. On the contrary, he found himself mysteriously answering the growing dependence of the old man with a growing sense of responsibility toward him, and discovering in the process a curious and subtle kind of compensation.

What troubled Queed about Nicolovius—as the world called him—was his money. He, Queed, was in part living on this money, eating it, drinking it, sleeping on it. Of late the old man had been spending it with increasing freedom, constantly enlarging the comforts of the joint menage. He had reached, in fact, a scale of living which constantly thrust itself on Queed's consciousness as quite beyond the savings of a poor old school teacher. And if this appearance were true, where did the surplus come from?

The question had knocked unpleasantly at the young man's mind before now. This morning he faced it, and pondered deeply. A way occurred to him by which, possibly, he might turn a little light upon this problem. He did not care to take it; he shrank from doing anything that might seem like spying upon the man whose bread he broke thrice daily. Yet it seemed to him that a point had now been reached where he owed his first duty to himself.

"Come in," he said, looking around in response to a brisk knock upon his shut door; and there entered Plonny Neal, whom Queed, through the Mercury, knew very well now.

"Hi there, Doc! Playin' you was Horace Greeley?"

Mr. Neal opened the connecting door into West's office, glanced through, found it empty, and shut the door again. Whether he was pleased or the reverse over this discovery, his immobile countenance gave no hint; but the fact was that he had called particularly to see West on a matter of urgent private business.

"I was on the floor and thought I'd say howdy," he remarked pleasantly. "Say, Doc, I been readin' them reformatory drools of yours. Me and all the boys."

"I'm glad to hear it. They are certain to do you good."

Queed smiled. He had a genuine liking for Mr. Neal, which was not affected by the fact that their views differed diametrically on almost every subject under the sun.

Mr. Neal smiled, too, more enigmatically, and made a large gesture with his unlighted cigar.

"I ain't had such good laughs since Tommy Walker, him that was going to chase me out of the city f'r the tall timber, up and died. But all the same, I hate to see a likely young feller sittin' up nights tryin' to make a laughin' stock of himself."

"The last laughs are always the best, Mr. Neal. Did you ever try any of them?"

"You're beat to a pappyer mash, and whistlin' to keep your courage."

"Listen to my whistle day after to-morrow—"

But the door had shut on Mr. Neal, who had doubtless read somewhere that the proper moment to terminate a call is on some telling speech of one's own.

"I wonder what he's up to," mused Queed.

He brought his chair to horizontal and addressed himself to his reformatory article. He sharpened his pencil; tangled his great hand into his hair; and presently put down an opening sentence that fully satisfied him, his own sternest critic. Then a memory of his visitor returned to his mind, and he thought pleasurably:

"Plonny knows he is beaten. That's what's the matter with him."

Close observers had often noted, however, that that was very seldom the matter with Plonny, and bets as to his being beaten were always to be placed with diffidence and at very long odds. Plonny had no idea whatever of being beaten on the reformatory measure: on the contrary, it was the reformatory measure which was to be beaten. Possibly Mr. Neal was a white-souled patriot chafing under threatened extravagance in an economy year. Possibly he was impelled by more machine-like exigencies, such as the need of just that hundred thousand dollars to create a few nice new berths for the "organization." The man's motives are an immaterial detail. The sole point worth remembering is that Plonny Neal had got it firmly in his head that there should be no reformatory legislation that year.

It was Mr. Neal's business to know men, and he was esteemed a fine business man. Leaving the assistant editor, he sallied forth to find the editor. It might have taken Queed an hour to put his hand on West just then. Plonny did it in less than six minutes.

West was at Semple's (formerly Semple & West's), where he looked in once a day just to see what the market was doing. This was necessary, as he sometimes explained, in order that the Post's financial articles might have that authoritativeness which the paper's position demanded. West enjoyed the good man-talk at Semple's; the atmosphere of frank, cheery commercialism made a pleasant relief from the rarer altitudes of the uplift. He stood chatting gayly with a group of habitues, including some of the best known men of the town. All greeted Plonny pleasantly, West cordially. None of our foreign critics can write that the American man is a moral prude. On two occasions, Plonny had been vindicated before the grand jury by the narrow margin of one vote. Yet he was much liked as a human sinner who had no pretenses about him, and who told a good story surpassingly well.

Ten minutes later Mr. Neal and Mr. West met in a private room at Berringer's, having arrived thither by different routes. Over a table, the door shut against all-comers, Mr. Neal went at once to the point, apologizing diffidently for a "butting in" which Mr. West might resent, but which he, Mr. West's friend, could no longer be restrained from. The Post, he continued, had been going along splendidly—"better'n under Cowles even—everybody says so—" and then, to the sorrow and disappointment of the new editor's admirers, up had come this dashed old reformatory business and spoiled everything.

West, whose thoughts had unconsciously run back to his last private talk with Plonny—the talk about getting in line—good-naturedly asked his friend if he was really lined up with the wire-pulling moss-backs who were fighting the reformatory bill.

"You just watch me and see," said Plonny, with humorous reproachfulness. "No charge f'r lookin', and rain checks given in case of wet grounds."

"Then for once in your life, anyhow, you've called the turn wrong, Plonny. This institution is absolutely necessary for the moral and social upbuilding of the State. It would be necessary if it cost five times one hundred thousand dollars, and it's as sure to come as judgment day."

"Ain't it funny!" mused Plonny. "Take a man like you, with fine high ideas and all, and let anything come up and pass itself off f'r a maw'l question and he'll go off half-cocked ten times out of ten."

"Half-cocked!" laughed West. "We've been studying this question three years."

"Yes, and began your studies with your minds all made up."

Plonny fastened upon the young man a gaze in which superior wisdom struggled unsuccessfully with overwhelming affection. "You know what it is, Mr. West? You've been took in, you've bit on a con game like a hungry pike. Excuse my speaking so plain, but I told you a long time ago I was mightily interested in you."

"Speak as plain as you like, Plonny. In fact, my only request at the moment is that you will speak plainer still. Who is it that has taken me in, and who is working this little con game you mention?"

"Rev. George Dayne of the Charities," said Plonny at once. "You mentioned wire-pulling just now. Lemme tell you that in the Rev. George you got the champeen wire-puller of the lot, the king politician of them all—the only one in this town, I do believe, could have thrown a bag as neat over your head, Mr. West."

"Why, Plonny! Much learning has made you mad! I know Dayne like a book, and he's as straightforward a fellow as ever lived."

Mr. Neal let his eyes fall to the table-top and indulged in a slow smile, which he appeared to be struggling courteously, but without hope, to suppress.

"O' course you got a right to your opinion, Mr. West."

A brief silence ensued, during which a tiny imp of memory whispered into West's ear that Miss Weyland herself had commented on the Rev. Mr. Dayne's marvelous gifts as a lobbyist.

"I'm a older man than you," resumed Neal, with precarious smilelessness, "and mebbe I've seen more of practical poltix. It would be a strange thing, you might say, if at my time of life, I didn't know a politician when I passed him in the road. Still, don't you take my word for it. I'm only repeating what others say when I tell you that Parson Dayne wants to be Governor of this State some day. That surprises you a little, hey? You was kind of thinking that 'Rev.' changed the nature of a man, and that ambition never thought of keeping open f'r business under a high-cut vest, now wasn't you? Well, I've seen funny things in my time. I'd say that the parson wants this reformatory some f'r the good of the State, and mostly f'r the good of Mr. Dayne. Give it to him, with the power of appointing employees—add this to what he's already got—and in a year he'll have the prettiest little private machine ever you did see. I don't ask you to believe me. All I ask is f'r you to stick a pin in what I say, and see 'f it don't come true."

West mused, impressed against his will. "You're wrong, Plonny, in my opinion, and if you were ten times right, what of it? You seem to think that the Post is advocating this reformatory because Dayne has asked for it. The Post is doing nothing of the sort. It is advocating the reformatory because it has studied this question to the bottom for itself, because it knows—"

"Right! Good f'r you!" exclaimed Mr. Neal, much gratified. "That's just what I tell the boys when they say you're playin' poltix with the little dominie. And that," said he, briskly, "is just why I'm for the reformatory, in spite of Rev. Dayne's little games."

"You're for it! You said just now that you were opposed to it."

"Not to the reformatory, Mr. West. Not at all. I'm only opposed to spending a hundred thousand dollars for it in a poverty year."

"Oh! You want the reformatory, but you don't want it now. That's where you stand, is it?"

"Yes, and everybody else that understands just what the situation is. I believe in this reformatory—the Post converted me, that's a fact—and if you'll only let her stand two years, take my word for it, she'll go through with a whoop. But if you're going to hurry the thing—"

"What's your idea of hurry exactly? The war has been over forty years—"

"And look how splendid we've got along these forty years without the reformatory! Will you care to say, Mr. West, that we couldn't make it forty-two without bringing great danger to the State?"

"No, certainly not. But the point is—"

"The point is that if we spend all this money now, the people will kick the party out at the next election. I wouldn't admit this to many, 'cause I'm ashamed of it, but it's gospel truth. Mr. West," said Plonny, earnestly, "I know you want the Post to stand for the welfare of the party—"

"Certainly. And it has been my idea that evidence of sane interest in public morals was a pretty good card for—"

"So it would be at any ordinary time. But it's mighty different when the people from one end of the State to the other are howling economy and saying that all expenses must go to bed-rock or they'll know the reason why. There's the practical side of it—look at it f'r a minute. The legislature was elected by these people on a platform promising strictest economy. They're tryin' to carry out their promise faithfully. They turn down and postpone some mighty good plans to advance the progress of the State. They rejuice salaries in various departments"—(one was the exact number)—"heelers come up lookin' f'r jobs, and they send 'em away empty-handed and sore. Old-established institutions, that have been doin' grand work upbuildin' the State f'r years, are told that they must do with a half or three quarters of their appropriations f'r the next two years. You've seen all this happen, Mr. West?"

West admitted that he had.

"Well, now when everything is goin' smooth and promisin', you come along and tell 'em they got to shell out a hundred thousand dollars right away f'r a brand-new institution, with an annual appropriation to keep it up. Now s'pose they do what you tell 'em. What happens? You think there's no poltix at all in this reformatory business, but I can tell you the Republicans won't take such a view as that. They'll say that the party spent a hundred thousand dollars of the people's money in a hard times year, just to make a few more jobs f'r favorites. They'll throw that up at us from every stump in the State. And when our leaders explain that it was done for the maw'l good of the State, they'll give us the laugh—same as they did when we established the Foundling Hospital in '98. Now I tell you the party can't stand any talk of that kind this year. We're on shaky ground right now f'r the same reason that we're all so proud of—spendin' money f'r the maw'l uplift of the State. We either got to slow up f'r awhile or take a licking. That's what all the talk comes down to—one simple question: Will we hold off this big expense f'r just two years, or will we send the old party down to defeat?"

West laughed, not quite comfortably.

In all this dialogue, Mr. Neal had over him the enormous advantage of exact and superior knowledge. To tell the truth, West knew very little about the reformatory situation, and considered it, among the dozens of matters in which he was interested, rather a small issue. Having turned the campaign over to his assistant, he had dismissed it from his mind; and beyond his general conviction that the reformatory would be a good thing for the State, he had only the sketchiest acquaintance with the arguments that were being used pro and con. Therefore Plonny Neal's passionate earnestness surprised him, and Plonny's reasoning, which he knew to be the reasoning of the thoroughly informed State leaders, impressed him very decidedly. Of the boss's sincerity he never entertained a doubt; to question that candid eye was impossible. That Plonny had long been watching him with interest and admiration, West knew very well. It began to look to him very much as though Queed, through excess of sociological zeal, had allowed himself to be misled, and that the paper's advanced position was founded on theory without reference to existing practical conditions.

West keenly felt the responsibility of his post. To safeguard and promote the welfare of the Democratic party had long been a cardinal principle of the paper whose utterances he now controlled. Still, it must be true that Neal was painting the situation in colors altogether too black.

"You're a pretty good stump performer yourself, Plonny. Don't you know that exactly the same argument will be urged two years from now?"

"I know it won't," said Plonny with the calmness of absolute conviction. "A fat legislature always follows a lean one. They come in strips, same as a shoulder of bacon."

"Well! I wouldn't think much of a party whose legs were so weak that a little step forward—everybody knows it's forward—would tumble it over in a heap."

"The party! I ain't thinking of the party, Mr. West. I'm thinking," said Neal, the indignation in his voice giving way to a sudden apologetic softness, "of you."

"Me? What on earth have I got to do with it?" asked West, rather touched by the look of dog-like affection in the other's eyes.

"Everything. If the party gets let in for this extravagance, you'll be the man who did it."

There was a silence, and then West said, rather nobly:

"Well, I suppose I will have to stand that. I must do what I think is right, you know, and take the consequences."

"Two years from now," said Mr. Neal, gently, "there wouldn't be no consequences."

"Possibly not," said West, in a firm voice.

"While the consequences now," continued Mr. Neal, still more gently, "would be to put you in very bad with the party leaders. Fine men they are, but they never forgive a man who puts a crimp into the party. You'd be a marked man to the longest day you lived!"

"Well, Plonny! I'm not asking anything of the party leaders—"

"But suppose some of your friends wanted to ask something for you?"

Suddenly Plonny leaned over the table, and began speaking rapidly and earnestly.

"Listen here, Mr. West. I understand your feelings and your position just like they was print, and I was reading them over your shoulder. You're walking with y'r eyes on the skies, and you don't like to look at the ground to see that you don't break nothing as you go forward. Your mind's full of the maw'l idea and desire to uplift the people, and it's kind of painful to you to stop and look at the plain practical way by which things get done. But I tell you that everybody who ever got anything big done in this world, got it done in a practical way. All the big men that you and I admire—all the public leaders and governors and reform mayors and so on—got where they have by doing practical good in a practical way. Now, you don't like me to say that if you do so-and-so, you'll be in bad with the State leaders, f'r that looks to you as if I thought you could be infloonced by what would be your personal advantage. And I honor you f'r them feelin's which is just what I knew you'd had, or I wouldn't be here talkin' to you now. But you mustn't blame others if they ain't as partic'lar, mebbe, as to how things might look. You mustn't blame y'r friends—and you've got a sight more of them than you have any idea of—if they feel all broke up to see you get in bad, both for your own sake and f'r the sake of the party."

Plonny's voice trembled with earnestness; West had had no idea that the man admired him so much.

"You want to serve the people, Mr. West? How could you do it better than in public orf'ce. Lemme talk to you straight f'r once—will you? Or am I only offendin' you by buttin' in this way, without having ever been asked?"

West gave his admirer the needed assurance.

"I'm glad of it, f'r I can hardly keep it in my system any longer. Listen here, Mr. West. As you may have heard, there's to be a primary f'r city orf'cers in June. Secret ballot or no secret ballot, the organization's going to win. You know that. Now, who'll the organization put up f'r Mayor? From what I hear, they dassen't put up any old machine hack, same's they been doin' f'r years. They might want to do it, but they're a-scared the people won't stand f'r it. From what little I hear, the feelin's strong that they got to put up some young progressive public-spirited man of the reformer type. Now s'posin' the friends of a certain fine young man, sittin' not a hundred miles from this table, had it in their minds to bring him forward f'r the nomination. This young man might say he wasn't seekin' the orf'ce and didn't want it, but I say public orf'ce is a duty, and no man that wants to serve the people can refuse it, partic'larly when he may be needed to save the party. And now I ask you this, Mr. West: What show would the friends of this young man have, if he had a bad spot on his record? What chance'd there be of namin' to lead the party in the city the man who had knifed the party in the State?"

West's chin rested upon his hand; his gaze fell dreamily upon the table-top. Before his mind's eye there had unrolled a favorite vision—a white meadow of faces focussed breathlessly upon a great orator. He recalled himself with a start, a stretch, and a laugh.

"Aren't you wandering rather carelessly into the future, Plonny?"

"If I am," said Mr. Neal, solemnly, "it's because you stand at the crossroads to-day."

* * * * *

West found the office deserted, his assistant being gone for lunch. He finished two short articles begun earlier in the day, and himself departed with an eye to food. Later, he had to attend a couple of board meetings, which ran off into protracted by-talk, and the rainy twilight had fallen before his office knew him again.

Not long after, Queed, already hatted and overcoated to go, pushed open the connecting door and entered. The two chatted a moment of the make-up of next day's "page." Presently West said: "By the bye, written anything about the reformatory?"

"Anything!" echoed Queed, with a faint smile. "You might say that I've written everything about it—the best article I ever wrote, I should say. It's our last chance, you know."

Queed thought of Eva Bernheimer, and a light crept into his ordinarily impassive eye. At the same time, West's ordinarily buoyant face fell a little.

"That so? Let me see how you've handled it, will you?"

"Certainly," said Queed, showing no surprise, though it was many a day since any composition of his had undergone supervision in that office.

It was on the tip of West's tongue to add, "I rather think we've been pressing that matter too hard," but he checked himself. Why should he make any explanation to his assistant? Was it not the fact that he had trusted the young man too far already?

Queed brought his article and laid it on West's desk, his face very thoughtful now. "If there is any information I can give you about the subject, I'll wait."

West hardly repressed a smile. "Thank you, I think I understand the situation pretty well."

Still Queed lingered and hesitated, most unlike himself. Presently he strolled over to the window and looked down unseeingly into the lamp-lit wetness of Centre Street. In fact, he was the poorest actor in the world, and never pretended anything, actively or passively, without being unhappy.

"It's raining like the mischief," he offered uncomfortably.

"Cats and dogs," said West, his fingers twiddling with Queed's copy.

"By the way," said Queed, turning with a poorly done air of casualness, "what is commonly supposed to have become of Henry G. Surface? Do people generally believe that he is dead?"

"Bless your heart, no!" said West, looking up in some surprise at the question. "That kind never die. They invariably live to a green old age—green like the bay-tree."

"I—have gotten very much interested in his story," said Queed, which was certainly true enough. "Where do people think that he is now?"

"Oh, in the West somewhere, living like a fat hog off Miss Weyland's money."

Queed's heart lost a beat. An instinct, swift as a reflex, turned him to the window again; he feared that his face might commit treason. A curious contraction and hardening seemed to be going on inside of him, a chilling petrifaction, and this sensation remained; but in the next instant he felt himself under perfect control, and was calmly saying:—

"Why, I thought the courts took all the money he had."

"They took all they could find. If you've studied high finance you'll appreciate the distinction." Amiably West tapped the table-top with the long point of his pencil, and wished that Queed would restore him his privacy. "Everybody thought at the time, you know, that he had a hundred thousand or so put away where the courts never got hold of it. The general impression was that he'd somehow smuggled it over to the woman he'd been living with—his wife", he said. "She died, I believe, but probably our friend Surface, when he got out, hadn't the slightest trouble in putting his hands on the money."

"No, I suppose not. An interesting story, isn't it? You'll telephone if you need anything to-night?"

"Oh, I shan't need anything. The page is shaping up very satisfactorily, I think. Good-night, my dear fellow."

Left alone, West picked up Queed's closely-written sheets, and leaning back in his chair read them with the closest attention. Involuntarily, his intellect paid a tribute to the writer as he read. The article was masterly. The argument was close and swift, the language impassioned, the style piquant. "Where did he learn to write like that!" wondered West. Here was the whole subject compressed into half a column, and so luminous a half column that the dullest could not fail to understand and admire. Two sarcastic little paragraphs were devoted to stripping the tatters from the nakedness of the economy argument, and these Mr. Queed's chief perused twice.

"The talk of a doctrinaire," mused he presently. "The closet philosopher's ideas. How far afield from the real situation ..."

It was a most fortunate thing, he reflected, that he himself had means of getting exact and accurate information at first hand. Suppose that he had not, that, like some editors, he had simply passed this article in without examination and correction. It would have made the Post ridiculous, and decidedly impaired its reputation for common sense and fair play. Whatever should or should not be said, this was certainly no way to talk of honest men, who were trying to conserve the party and who differed from the Post only on an unimportant question of detail.

West leaned back in his chair and stared at the farther wall.... For that was exactly what it was—an unimportant detail. The important thing, the one thing that he himself had insisted on, was that the State should have a reformatory. Whether the State had it now or two years from now, made relatively little difference, except to those who, like his editorial assistant, had sunk themselves in the question till their sense of proportion had deserted them. Was not that a fair statement of the case? Whatever he did, he must not let his views be colored by probable effects upon his own future.... Surely, to wait two brief years for the institution, with the positive assurance of it then, could be no hardship to a State which had got along very well without it for all the years of its lifetime. Surely not. Plonny Neal, whose sharp horse sense he would back against any man in the State, was absolutely sound there.

He tried to consider the question with chill judiciality, and believed that he was doing so. But the fervor which Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for Plonny's knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least resistance.... Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the party was facing a great crisis; and it was in his hand to save or to wreck it. All eyes were anxiously on the Post, which wielded the decisive power. The people had risen with the unreasonable demand that progress be checked for a time, because of the cost of it. The leaders had responded to the best of their ability, but necessary expenses were so great that it was going to be a narrow shave at best—so narrow that another hundred thousand spent would land the whole kettle of fish in the fire. The grand old party would go crashing down the precipice. Was not that a criminal price to pay for getting a reformatory institution two years before the people were ready to pay for it? There was the whole question in a nutshell.

The one unpleasant aspect of this view was Sharlee Weyland, the dearest girl in the world. She would be much disappointed, and, for the first moment, would possibly be somewhat piqued with him personally. He knew that women were extremely unreasonable about these things; they looked at affairs from the emotional point of view, from the point of view of the loose, large "effect." But Sharlee Weyland was highly intelligent and sensible, and he had not the smallest doubt of his ability to make her understand what the unfortunate situation was. He could not tell her everything—Plonny had cautioned secrecy about the real gravity of the crisis—but he would tell her enough to show her how he had acted, with keen regrets, from his sternest sense of public duty. It was a cruel stroke of fate's that his must be the hand to bring disappointment to the girl he loved, but after all, would she not be the first to say that he must never put his regard for her preferences above the larger good of City and State? He could not love her, dear, so well, loved he not honor more.

He picked up Queed's article and glanced again at the astonishing words, words which, invested with the Post's enormous prestige, simply kicked and cuffed the party to its ruin. A wave of resentment against his assistant swept through the editor's mind. This was what came of trusting anything to anybody else. If you wanted to be sure that things were done right, do them yourself. Because he had allowed Queed a little rope, that young man had industriously gathered in almost enough to hang, not himself, for he was nothing, but the Post and its editor. However, there was no use crying over spilt milk. What was done was done. Fortunately, the Post's general position was sound; had not the editor himself dictated it? If the expression of that position in cold type had been gradually carried by a subordinate to a more and more violent extreme, to an intemperance of utterance which closely approached insanity, what was it the editor's duty to do? Obviously to take charge himself and swing the position back to a safe and sane mean, exactly where he had placed it to begin with. That was all that was asked of him—to shift back the paper's position to where he had placed it in the beginning, and by so doing to save the party from wreck. Could a sensible man hesitate an instant? And in return....

West's gaze wandered out of the window, and far on into the beyond.... His friends were watching him, silently but fearfully. Who and what these friends were his swift thought did not stay to ask. His glamorous fancy saw them as a great anxious throng, dominant men, yet respectful, who were trembling lest he should make a fatal step—to answer for it with his political life. Public life—he rejected the term political life—was of all things what he was preeminently fitted for. How else could a man so fully serve his fellows?—how so surely and strongly promote the uplift? And Plonny Neal had served notice on him that he stood to-day on the crossroads to large public usefulness. The czar of them all, the great Warwick who made and unmade kings by the lifting of his finger, had told him, as plain as language could speak, that he, West, was his imperial choice for the mayoralty, with all that that foreshadowed.... Truly, he had served his apprenticeship, and was meet for his opportunity. For eight long months he had stood in line, doing his duty quietly and well, asking no favor of anybody. And now at last Warwick had beckoned him and set the mystic star upon his forehead....

Iridescent visionry enwrapped the young man, and he swam in it goldenly. In time his spirit returned to his body, and he found himself leaning back in a very matter-of-fact chair, facing a very plain question. How could the shifting back, the rationalizing, of the paper's position be accomplished with the minimum of shock? How could he rescue the party with the least possible damage to the Post's consistency?

West went to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, pulled out a large folder marked, Reformatory, and, returning to his seat, ran hurriedly through the Post's editorials on this subject during the past twelvemonth. Over some of the phrases he ground his teeth. They floated irritatingly in his head as he once more leaned back in his chair and frowned at the opposite wall.

Gradually there took form in his mind a line of reasoning which would appear to grow with some degree of naturalness out of what had gone before, harmonizing the basic continuity of the Post's attitude, and minimizing the change in present angle or point of view. His fertile mind played about it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and perfecting; and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon with fluent ease.



XXVI

In which Queed forces the Old Professor's Hand, and the Old Professor takes to his Bed.

Raincoat buttoned to his throat, Queed set his face against the steady downpour. It was a mild, windless night near the end of February, foreshadowing the early spring already nearly due. He had no umbrella, or wish for one: the cool rain in his face was a refreshment and a vivifier.

So the worst had come to the worst, and he had been living for nearly a year on Sharlee Weyland's money, stolen from her by her father's false friend. Wormwood and gall were the fruits that altruism had borne him. Two casual questions had brought out the shameful truth, and these questions could have been asked as easily a year ago as now.

Bitterly did the young man reproach himself now, for his criminal carelessness in regard to the sources of Surface's luxurious income. For the better part of a year he had known the old man for an ex-convict whose embezzlings had run high into six figures. Yet he had gone on fatuously swallowing the story that the money of which the old rogue was so free represented nothing but the savings of a thrifty schoolteacher. A dozen things came back to him now to give the lie to that tale. He thought of the costly books that Surface was constantly buying; the expensive repairs he had made in his rented house; the wine that stood on the dinner-table every night; the casual statement from the old man that he meant to retire from the school at the end of the present session. Was there ever a teacher who could live like this after a dozen years' roving work? And the probability was that Surface had never worked at all until, returning to his own city, he had needed a position as a cover and a blind.

Mathematical computations danced through the young man's brain. He figured that their present scale of living must run anywhere from $3500 to $5000 a year. Surface's income from the school was known to be $900 a year. His income from his lodger was $390 a year. This difference between, say $4000 and $1290, was $2710 a year, or 4 per cent on some $70,000. And this tidy sum was being filched from the purse of Charlotte Lee Weyland, who worked for her living at an honorarium of $75 a month.

Queed walked with his head lowered, bent less against the rain than his own stinging thoughts. At the corner of Seventh Street a knot of young men, waiting under a dripping awning for a car that would not come, cried out gayly to the Doc; they were Mercuries; but the Doc failed to respond to their greetings, or even to hear them. He crossed the humming street, northerly, with an experienced sureness acquired since his exploit with the dog Behemoth; and so came into his own section of the town.

He was an apostle of law who of all things loved harmony. Already his mind was busily at work seeking to restore order out of the ruins of his house. Obviously the first thing to do, the one thing that could not wait an hour, was to get his sense of honesty somehow back again. He must compel Surface to hand over to Miss Weyland immediately every cent of money that he had. The delivery could be arranged easily enough, without any sensational revelations. The letter to Miss Weyland could come from a lawyer in the West; in Australia, if the old man liked; that didn't matter. The one thing that did matter was that he should immediately make restitution as fully as lay within the power of them both.

Surface, of course, would desperately resist such a suggestion. Queed knew of but one club which could drive him to agree to it, one goad which could rowel him to the height. This was his own continued companionship. He could compel Surface to disgorgement only at the price of a new offering of himself to the odious old man who had played false with him as with everybody else. Queed did not hesitate. At the moment every cost seemed small to clear his dearest belonging, which was his personal honesty, of this stain. As for Surface, nothing could make him more detestable in a moral sense than he had been all along. He had been a thief and a liar from the beginning. Once the cleansing storm was over, their unhappy domestic union could go on much as it had done before.

For his part, he must at once set about restoring his half of the joint living expenses consumed during the past nine months. This money could be passed in through the lawyer with the rest, so that she would never know. Obviously, he would have to make more money than he was making now, which meant that he would have to take still more time from his book. There were his original tax articles in the Post, which a publisher had asked him at the time to work over into a primer for college use. There might be a few hundreds to be made there. He could certainly place some articles in the reviews. If for the next twelve months he ruthlessly eliminated everything from his life that did not bring in money, he could perhaps push his earnings for the next year to three thousand dollars, which would be enough to see him through....

And busy with thoughts like these, he came home to Surface's pleasant little house, and was greeted by the old man with kindness and good cheer.

It was dinner-time—for they dined at night now, in some state—and they sat down to four dainty courses, cooked and served by the capable Henderson. The table was a round one, so small that the two men could have shaken hands across it without the smallest exertion. By old Surface's plate stood a gold-topped bottle, containing, not the ruddy burgundy which had become customary of late, but sparkling champagne. Surface referred to it, gracefully, as his medicine; doctors, he said, were apparently under the delusion that schoolmasters had bottomless purses. To this pleasantry Queed made no reply. He was, indeed, spare with his remarks that evening, and his want of appetite grieved old Henderson sorely.

The servant brought the coffee and retired. He would not be back again till he was rung for: that was the iron rule. The kitchen was separated from the dining-room by a pantry and two doors. Thus the diners were as private as they were ever likely to be in this world, and in the breast of one of them was something that would brook no more delay.

"Professor," said this one, with a face which gave no sign of inner turmoil, "I find myself obliged to refer once more to—an unwelcome subject."

Surface was reaching for his coffee cup; he was destined never to pick it up. His hand fell; found the edge of the table; his long fingers gripped and closed over it.

"Ah?" he said easily, not pretending to doubt what subject was meant. "I'm sorry. I thought that we had laid the old ghosts for good."

"I thought so, too. I was mistaken, it seems."

Across the table, the two men looked at each other. To Surface, the subject must indeed have been the most unwelcome imaginable, especially when forced upon him with so ominous a directness. Yet his manner was the usual bland mask; his face, rather like a bad Roman senator's in the days of the decline, had undergone no perceptible change.

"When I came here to live with you," said Queed, "I understood, of course, that you would be contributing several times as much toward our joint expenses as I. To a certain degree, you would be supporting me. Naturally, I did not altogether like that. But you constantly assured me, you may remember, that you would rather put your savings into a home than anything else, that you could not manage it without my assistance, and that you considered my companionship as fully offsetting the difference in the money we paid. So I became satisfied that the arrangement was honorable to us both."

Surface spoke with fine courtesy. "All this is so true, your contribution toward making our house a home has been so much greater than my own, that I feel certain nothing can have happened to disturb your satisfaction."

"Yes," said Queed. "I have assumed all the time that the money you were spending here was your own."

There was a silence. Queed looked at the table-cloth. He had just become aware that his task was hateful to him. The one thing to do was to get it over as swiftly and decisively as possible.

"I am at a loss," said the old man, dryly, "to understand where the assumption comes in, in view of the fact that I have stated, more than once—"

"I am forced to tell you that I cannot accept these statements."

For a moment the brilliant eyes looked dangerous. "Are you aware that your language is exceedingly offensive?"

"Yes. I'm very sorry. Nevertheless, this tooth must come out. It has suddenly become apparent to me that you must be spending here the income on hardly less than seventy-five thousand dollars. Do you seriously ask me to believe, now that I directly bring up the matter, that you amassed this by a few years of school-teaching?"

Surface lit a cigarette, and, taking a slow puff, looked unwinkingly into the young man's eyes, which looked as steadily back into his own. "You are mistaken in assuming," he said sternly, "that, in giving you my affection, I have given you any right to cross-examine me in—"

"Yes, you gave it to me when you invited me to your house as, in part, your guest—"

"I am behind the times, indeed, if it is esteemed the privilege of a guest to spy upon his host."

"That," said Queed, quietly, "is altogether unjust. You must know that I am not capable of spying on you. I have, on the contrary, been culpably short-sighted. Never once have I doubted anything you told me until you yourself insisted on rubbing doubts repeatedly into my eyes. Professor," he went on rapidly, "are you aware that those familiar with your story say that, when you—that, after your misfortune, you started life again with a bank account of between one and two hundred thousand dollars?"

The black eyes lit up like two shoe-buttons in the sunlight. "That is a wicked falsehood, invented at the time by a lying reporter—"

"Do you assert that everything you have now has been earned since your misfortune?"

"Precisely that."

The voice was indignantly firm, but Queed, looking into the old man's face, read there as plain as day that he was lying.

"Think a moment," he said sorrowfully. "This is pretty serious, you see. Are you absolutely sure that you carried over nothing at all?"

"In the sight of God, I did not. But let me tell you, my friend—"

A chair-leg scraped on the carpeted floor, and Queed was standing, playing his trump card with a grim face.

"We must say good-by, Professor—now. I'll send for my things in the morning."

"What do you mean, you—"

"That you and I part company to-night. Good-by."

"Stop!" cried Surface. He rose, greatly excited and leaned over the table. A faint flush drove the yellow from his cheek; his eyes were blazing. He shook a menacing finger at close range in Queed's face, which remained entirely unmoved by the demonstration.

"So this is the reward of my kindness and affection! I won't endure it, do you understand? I won't be kicked into the gutter like an old shoe, do you hear? Sit down in that chair. I forbid you to leave the house."

Queed's gaze was more formidable than his own. "Mr. Surface," he said, in a peculiarly quiet voice, "you forget yourself strangely. You are in no position to speak to me like this."

Surface appeared suddenly to agree with him. He fell back into his chair and dropped his face into his hands.

Queed, standing where he was, watched him across the tiny dinner-table and, against his reason, felt very sorry. How humiliating this ripping up of old dishonor was to the proud old man, rogue though he was, he understood well enough. From nobody in the world but him, he knew, would Surface ever have suffered it to proceed as far as this, and this knowledge made him want to handle the knife with as little roughness as possible.

"I—was wrong," said the muffled voice. "I ask your forgiveness for my outbreak."

"You have it."

Surface straightened himself up, and, by an obvious effort, managed to recapture something like his usual smoothness of voice and manner.

"Will you be good enough to sit down? I will tell you what you wish."

"Certainly. Thank you."

Queed resumed his seat. His face was a little pale, but otherwise just as usual. Inwardly, after the moment of critical uncertainty, he was shaken by a tempest of fierce exultation. His club, after all, was going to be strong enough; the old man would give up the money rather than give up him.

Surface picked up his cigarette. All his storm signals had disappeared as by magic.

"I did manage," began the old man, flicking off his ash with an admirable effect of calm, "to save a small nest-egg from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old age. I did not wish to tell you this because, with your lack of acquaintance with business methods, the details would only confuse, and possibly mislead, you. I had, too, another reason for wishing to keep it a surprise. You have forced me, against my preferences, to tell you. As to this small pittance," he said, without the flicker of an eye-lash, "any court in the country would tell you that it is fairly and honorably mine."

"Thank you. I appreciate your telling me this." Queed leaned over the table, and began speaking in a quiet, brisk voice. "Now, then, here is the situation. You have a certain sum of money put away somewhere, estimated to be not less than a hundred thousand dollars—"

"Nothing of the sort! Far less than that! A few beggarly thousands, which—"

"Very well—a few thousands. Of course your books will readily show the exact figures. This money was withheld at the time your affairs were settled, and therefore was not applied to reducing the—the loss on the trustee account. Of course, if its existence had been known, it would have been so applied. In other words, the Weyland estate has been deprived to the exact extent of the sum withheld. Fortunately, it is never too late to correct an error of this sort. My idea is that we should make the restitution without the loss of an unnecessary day."

Doubtless the old man had seen it coming; he heard the galling proposal with a face which showed nothing stronger than profound surprise. "Restitution! My dear boy, I owe no restitution to any one."

"You hardly take the position that you have acquired a title to the Weyland trustee funds?"

"Ah, there it is!" purred Surface, making a melancholy gesture. "You see why I did not wish to open up this complicated subject. Your ignorance, if you will pardon me, of modern business procedure, makes it very difficult for you to grasp the matter in its proper bearings. Without going into too much detail, let me try to explain it to you. This settlement of my affairs that you speak of was forcibly done by the courts, in the interest of others, and to my great injury. The rascals set out to cut my throat—was it required of me to whet the knife for them? They set out to strip me of the last penny I had, and they had every advantage, despotic powers, with complete access to all my private papers. If the robbers overlooked something that I had, a bagatelle I needed for the days of my adversity, was it my business to pluck them by the sleeve and turn traitor to myself? Why, the law itself gave me what they passed over. I was declared a bankrupt. Don't you know what that means? It means that the courts assumed responsibility for my affairs, paid off my creditors, and, as a small compensation for having robbed me, wiped the slate clean and declared me free of all claims. And this was twenty-five years ago. My dear boy! Read the Bankruptcy Act. Ask a lawyer, any lawyer—"

"Let us not speak of lawyers—now," interrupted Queed, stirring in his chair. "Let their opinion wait as a last alternative, which, I earnestly hope, need never be used at all. I am not bringing up this point to you now as a legal question, but as a moral one."

"Ah! You do not find that the morals provided by the law are good enough for you, then?"

"If your reading of the law is correct—of which I am not so certain as you are, I fear—it appears that they are not. But—"

"It is my misfortune," interrupted the old man, his hand tightening on the table-edge, "that your sympathies are not with me in the matter. Mistaken sentiment, youthful Quixotism, lead you to take an absurdly distorted view of what—"

"No, I'm afraid not. You see, when stripped of all unnecessary language, the repulsive fact is just this: we are living here on money that was unlawfully abstracted from the Weyland estate. No matter what the law may say, we know that this money morally belongs to its original owners. Now I ask you—"

"Let me put it another way. I can show you exactly where your misapprehension is—"

Queed stopped him short by a gesture. "My mind is so clear on this point that discussion only wastes our time."

The young man's burst of exultation was all but stillborn; already despair plucked chilly at his heart-strings. For the first time the depth of his feeling broke through into his voice: "Say, if you like that I am unreasonable, ignorant, unfair. Put it all down to besotted prejudice.... Can't you restore this money because I ask it? Won't you do it as a favor to me?"

Surface's face became agitated. "I believe there is nothing else in the world—that I wouldn't do for you—a thousand times over—but—"

Then Queed threw the last thing that he had to offer into the scales, namely himself. He leaned over the table and fixed the old man with imploring eyes.

"I'd do my best to make it up to you. I'll—I'll live with you till one or the other of us dies. You'll have somebody to take care of you when you are old, and there will never be any talk of the poorhouse between you and me. It can all be arranged quietly through a lawyer, Professor—and nobody will guess your secret. You and I will find quiet lodgings somewhere, and live together—as friends—live cleanly, honorably, honestly—"

"For God's sake, stop!" said Surface, in a broken-voice. "This is more than I can bear."

So Queed knew that it was hopeless, and that the old man meant to cling to his dishonored money, and let his friend go. He sank back in his chair, sick at heart, and a painful silence fell.

"If I refuse," Surface took up the theme, "it is for your sake as well as mine. My boy, you don't know what you ask. It is charity, mere mad charity to people whom I have no love for, who—"

"Then," said Queed, "two things must happen. First, I must lay the facts before Miss Weyland."

Surface's manner changed; his eyes became unpleasant.

"You are not serious. You can hardly mean to repeat to anybody what I have told you in sacred confidence."

Queed smiled sadly. "No, you have not told me anything in confidence. You have never told me anything until I first found it out for myself, and then only because denial was useless."

"When I told you my story last June, you assured me—"

"However, you have just admitted that what you told me last June was not the truth."

Again their eyes clashed, and Surface, whose face was slowly losing all its color, even the sallowness, found no sign of yielding in those of the younger man.

Queed resumed: "However, I do not mean that I shall tell her who you are, unless you yourself compel me to. I shall simply let her know that you are known to be alive, within reach of the courts, and in possession of a certain sum of money withheld from the trustee funds. This will enable her to take the matter up with her lawyers and, as I believe, bring it before the courts. If her claim is sustained, she would doubtless give you the opportunity to make restitution through intermediaries, and thus sensational disclosures might be avoided. However, I make you no promises about that."

Surface drew a breath; he permitted his face to show signs of relief. "Since my argument and knowledge carry so little weight with you," he said with a fine air of dignity, "I am willing to let the courts convince you, if you insist. But I do beg—"

Queed cut him short; he felt that he could not bear one of the old man's grandiloquent speeches now. "There is one other thing that must be mentioned," he said in a tired voice. "You understand, of course, that I can live here no longer."

"My God! Don't say that! Aren't you satisfied with what you've done to me without that!"

"I haven't done anything to you. Whatever has been done, you have deliberately done to yourself. I have no desire to hurt or injure you. But—what are you thinking about, to imagine that I could continue to live here—on this money?"

"You contradict yourself twice in the same breath! You just said that you would let the courts settle that question—"

"As to the Weyland estate's claim, yes. But I do not let the courts regulate my own sense of honor."

Surface, elbows on the table, buried his face in his hands. Queed slowly rose, a heart of lead in his breast. He had failed. He had offered all that he had, and it had been unhesitatingly kicked aside. And, unless long litigation was started, and unless it ultimately succeeded, Henry G. Surface would keep his loot.

He glanced about the pleasant little dining-room, symbol of the only home he had ever known, where, after all, he had done great work, and been not unhappy. Personally, he was glad to leave it, glad to stand out from the shadow of the ruin of Henry G. Surface. Nevertheless it was a real parting, the end of an epoch in his life, and there was sadness in that. Sadness, too, he saw, deeper than his repugnance and anger, in the bowed figure before him, the lost old man whom he was to leave solitary henceforward. Saddest of all was the consciousness of his own terrible failure.

He began speaking in a controlled voice.

"This interview is painful to us both. It is useless to prolong it. I—have much to thank you for—kindness which I do not forget now and shall not forget. If you ever reconsider your decision—if you should ever need me for anything—I shall be within call. And now I must leave you ... sorrier than I can say that our parting must be like this." He paused: his gaze rested on the bent head, and he offered, without hope, the final chance. "Your mind is quite made up? You are sure that—this—is the way you wish the matter settled?"

Surface took his face from his hands and looked up. His expression was a complete surprise. It was neither savage nor anguished, but ingratiating, complacent, full of suppressed excitement. Into his eyes had sprung an indescribable look of cunning, the look of a broken-down diplomat about to outwit his adversary with a last unsuspected card.

"No, no! Of course I'll not let you leave me like this," he said, with a kind of trembling eagerness, and gave a rather painful laugh. "You force my hand. I had not meant to tell you my secret so soon. You can't guess the real reason why I refuse to give my money to Miss Weyland, even when you ask it, now can you? You can't guess, now can you?"

"I think I can. You had rather have the money than have me."

"Not a bit of it. Nothing of the kind! Personally I care nothing for the money. I am keeping it," said the old man, lowering his voice to a chuckling whisper, "for you!" He leaned over the table, fixing Queed with a gaze of triumphant cunning. "I'm going to make you my heir! Leave everything I have in the world to you!"

A wave of sick disgust swept through the young man, momentarily engulfing his power of speech. Never had the old man's face looked so loathsome to him, never the man himself appeared so utterly detestable.

Surface had risen, whispering and chuckling. "Come up to the sitting-room, my dear boy. I have some papers up there that may open your eyes. You need never work—"

"Stop!" said Queed, and the old man stopped in his tracks. "Can't I make you understand?" he went on, fighting hard for calmness. "Isn't it clear to you that nothing could induce me to touch another penny of this money?"

"Ah!" said Surface, in his softest voice. "Ah! And might I inquire the reason for this heroic self-restraint?"

"You choose your words badly. It is no restraint to honest men to decline to take other people's money."

"Ah, I see. I see. I see," said Surface, nodding his shining hairless head up and down.

"Good-by."

"No, no," said the old man, in an odd thick voice. "Not quite yet, if you please. There is still something that I want to say to you."

He came slowly around the tiny table, and Queed watched his coming with bursts of fierce repugnance which set his hard-won muscles to twitching. An elemental satisfaction there might be in throwing the old man through the window. Yet, in a truer sense, he felt that the necessity of manhandling him would be the final touch in this degrading interview.

"You value your society too high, my dear boy," said Surface with a face of chalk. "You want too big a price. I must fork over every penny I have, to a young trollop who happens to have caught your fancy—"

"Stand away from me!" cried Queed, with a face suddenly whiter than his own. "You will tempt me to do what I shall be sorry for afterwards."

But Surface did not budge, and to strike, after all, was hardly possible; it would be no better than murder. The two men stood, white face to white face, the two pairs of fearless eyes scarcely a foot apart. And beyond all the obvious dissimilarity, there appeared a curious resemblance in the two faces at that moment: in each the same habit of unfaltering gaze, the same high forehead, the same clean-cut chin, the same straight, thin-lipped mouth.

"Oh, I see through you clearly enough," said Surface. "You're in love with her! You think it is a pretty thing to sacrifice me to her, especially as the sacrifice costs you nothing—"

"Stop! Will you force me in the name of common decency—"

"But I'll not permit you to do it, do you hear?" continued Surface, his face ablaze, his lower lip trembling and twitching, as it does sometimes with the very old. "You need some discipline, my boy. Need some discipline—and you shall have it. You will continue to live with me exactly as you have heretofore, only henceforward I shall direct your movements and endeavor to improve your manners."

He swayed slightly where he stood, and Queed's tenseness suddenly relaxed. Pity rose in his heart above furious resentment; he put out his hand and touched the old man's arm.

"Control yourself," he said in an iron voice. "Come—I will help you to bed before I go."

Surface shook himself free, and laughed unpleasantly. "Go! Didn't you hear me tell you that you were not going? Who do you think I am that you can flout and browbeat and threaten—"

"Come! Let us go up to bed—"

"Who do you think I am!" repeated Surface, bringing his twitching face nearer, his voice breaking to sudden shrillness. "Who do you think I am, I say?"

Queed thought the old man had gone off his head, and indeed he looked it. He began soothingly: "You are—"

"I'm your father! Your father, do you hear!" cried Surface. "You're my son—Henry G. Surface, Jr.!"

This time, Queed, looking with a wild sudden terror into the flaming eyes, knew that he heard the truth from Surface at last. The revelation broke upon him in a stunning flash. He sprang away from the old man with a movement of loathing unspeakable.

"Father!" he said, in a dull curious whisper. "O God! Father!"

Surface gazed at him, his upper lip drawn up into his old purring sneer.

"So that is how you feel about it, my son?" he inquired suavely, and suddenly crumpled down upon the floor.

* * * * *

The young man shook him by the shoulder, but he did not stir. Henderson came running at the sound of the fall, and together they bore the old man, breathing, but inert as the dead, to his room. In an hour, the doctor had come and gone. In two hours, a trained nurse was sitting by the bed as though she had been there always. The doctor called it a "stroke," superinduced by a "shock." He said that Professor Nicolovius might live for a week, or a year, but was hardly likely to speak again on this side the dark river that runs round the world.



XXVII

Sharlee Weyland reads the Morning Post; of Rev. Mr. Dayne's Fight at Ephesus and the Telephone Message that never came; of the Editor's Comment upon the Assistant Editor's Resignation, which perhaps lacked Clarity; and of how Eight Men elect a Mayor.

Next morning, in the first moment she had, Sharlee Weyland read the Post's editorial on the reformatory. And as she read she felt as though the skies had fallen, and the friendly earth suddenly risen up and smitten her.

It was a rainy morning, the steady downpour of the night before turned into a fine drizzle; and Sharlee, who nearly always walked, took the car downtown. She was late this morning; there had been but flying minutes she could give to breakfast; not a second to give to anything else; and therefore she took the Post with her to read on the ride to "the" office. And, seating herself, she turned immediately to the editorial page, in which the State Department of Charities felt an especial interest this morning.

Both the name and the position of the editorial were immediately disappointing to her. It was not in the leading place, and its caption was simply "As to the Reformatory," which seemed to her too colorless and weak. Subconsciously, she passed the same judgment upon the opening sentences of the text, which somehow failed to ring out that challenge to the obstructionists she had confidently expected. As she read further, her vague disappointment gave way to a sudden breathless incredulity; that to a heartsick rigidity of attention; and when she went back, and began to read the whole article over, slowly and carefully, from the beginning, her face was about the color of the pretty white collar she wore. For what she was looking on at was, so it seemed to her, not simply the killing of the chief ambition of her two years' work, but the treacherous murder of it in the house of its friends.

As she reread "As to the Reformatory," she became impressed by its audacious cleverness. It would have been impossible to manage a tremendous shift in position with more consummate dexterity. Indeed, she was almost ready to take the Post's word for it that no shift at all had been made. From beginning to end the paper's unshakable loyalty to the reformatory was everywhere insisted upon; that was the strong keynote; the ruinous qualifications were slipped in, as it were, reluctantly, hard-wrung concessions to indisputable and overwhelming evidence. But there they were, scarcely noticeable to the casual reader, perhaps, but to passionate partisans sticking up like palm-trees on a plain. In a backhanded, sinuous but unmistakable way, the Post was telling the legislature that it had better postpone the reformatory for another two years. It was difficult to say just what phrase or phrases finally pushed the odious idea out into the light; but Sharlee lingered longest on a passage which, after referring to the "list of inescapable expenditures published elsewhere," said:

Immediacy, of course, was never the great question; but it was a question; and the Post has therefore watched with keen regret the rolling up of absolutely unavoidable expenses to the point where the spending of another dollar for any cause, however meritorious in itself, must be regarded as of dubious wisdom.