Queed Part 45

_Henry G. Surface, Esq., 36 Washington Street._

There was a dead silence: a silence that from matter-of-fact suddenly became unendurable.

Queed handed the envelope to Nicolovius. Nicolovius glanced at it, while pretending not to, and his eyelash flickered; his face was about the color of cigar ashes. Queed walked away, waiting.

He expected that the old man would immediately demand whether he had seen that name and address, or at least would immediately say something.

But he did nothing of the sort. When Queed turned at the end of the room, Nicolovius was fluttering the pages of his book again, apparently absorbed in it, apparently quite forgetting that he had just laid it aside. Then Queed understood. Nicolovius did not mean to say or do anything. He meant to pa.s.s over the little incident altogether.

However, the pretense had now reached a point when Queed could no longer endure it.

"Perhaps, after all," said Nicolovius, in his studiously bland voice, "I am a little sweeping--"

Queed stood in front of him, interrupting, suddenly not at ease.

"Professor Nicolovius."

"Yes?"

"I must say something that will offend you, I'm afraid. For some time I have found myself unable to believe the--story of your life you were once good enough to give me."

"Ah, well," said Nicolovius, engrossed in his book, "it is not required of you to believe it. We need have no quarrel about that."

Suddenly Queed found that he hated to give the stab, but he did not falter.

"I must be frank with you, professor. I saw whom that envelope was addressed to just now."

"Nor need we quarrel about that."

But Queed's steady gaze upon him presently grew unbearable, and at last the old man raised his head.

"Well? Whom was it addressed to?"

Queed felt disturbingly sorry for him, and, in the same thought, admired his iron control. The old professor's face was gray; his very lips were colorless; but his eyes were steady, and his voice was the voice of every day.

"I think," said Queed, quietly, "that it is addressed to you."

There was a lengthening silence while the two men, motionless, looked into each other's eyes. The level gaze of each held just the same look of faint horror, horror subdued and controlled, but still there. Their stare became fascinated; it ran on as though nothing could ever happen to break it off. To Queed it seemed as if everything in the world had dropped away but those brilliant eyes, frightened yet unafraid, boring into his.

Nicolovius broke the silence. The triumph of his intelligence over his emotions showed in the fact that he attempted no denial.

"Well?" he said somewhat thickly. "Well?--Well?"

Under the look of the younger man, he was beginning to break. Into the old eyes had sprung a deadly terror, a look as though his immortal soul might hang on what the young man was going to say next. To answer this look, a blind impulse in Queed bade him strike out, to say or do something; and his reason, which was always detached and impersonal, was amazed to hear his voice saying:--

"It's all right, professor. Not a thing is going to happen."

The old man licked his lips. "You ... will stay on here?"

And Queed's voice answered: "As long as you want me."

Nicolovius, who had been born Surface, suffered a moment of collapse. He fell back in his chair, and covered his face with his hands.

The dying efforts of the June sun still showed in the pretty sitting-room, though the town clocks were striking seven. From without floated in the voices of merry pa.s.sers; eddies of the day's celebration broke even into this quiet street. Queed sat down in a big-armed rocker, and looked out the window into the pink west.

So, in a minute's time and by a wholly chance happening, the mystery was out at last. Professor Nicolovius, the bland recluse of Mrs. Paynter's, and Henry G. Surface, political arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of false friends, were one and the same man.

The truth had been instantly plain to Queed when the name had blazed up at him from the envelope on the floor. It was as though Fate herself had tossed that envelope under his eyes, as the answer to all his questionings. Not an instant's doubt had troubled him; and now a score of memories were marshaling themselves before him to show that his first flashing certainty had been sound. As for the book, it was clearly from the library of the old man's youth, kept and hidden away for some reason, when nearly everything else had been destroyed. Between the musty pages the accusing letter had lain forgotten for thirty years, waiting for this moment.

He turned and glanced once at the silent figure, huddled back in the chair with covered eyes; the unhappy old man whom n.o.body had ever trusted without regretting it. _Henry G. Surface_--whose name was a synonym for those traits and things which honest men of all peoples and climes have always hated most, treachery, perfidy, base betrayal of trust, shameful dishonesty--who had crowded the word _infamy_ from the popular lexicon of politics with the keener, more biting epithet, _Surfaceism_. And here--wonder of wonders--sat Surface before him, drawn back to the scene of his fall like a murderer to the body and the scarlet stain upon the floor, caught, trapped, the careful mask of many years plucked from him at a sudden word, leaving him no covering upon earth but his smooth white hands. And he, Queed, was this man's closest, his only friend, chosen out of all the world to live with him and minister to his declining years....

"It's true!" now broke through the concealing hands. "I am that man....

G.o.d help me!"

Queed looked unseeingly out of the window, where the sun was couching in a bed of copper flame stippled over with brightest azure. Why had he done it? What crazy prompting had struck from him that promise to yoke his destiny forever with this terrible old man? If Nicolovius, the Fenian refugee, had never won his liking, Surface, the Satan apostate, was detestable to him. What devil of impulse had trapped from him the mad offer to spend his days in the company of such a creature, and in the shadow of so odious an ill-fame?

As on the day when Fifi had asked him her innocent question about altruism, a sudden tide swept the young man's thoughts inward. And after them, this time, groped the blundering feet of his spirit.

Here was he, a mature man, who, in point of work, in all practical and demonstrable ways, was the millionth man. He was a great editorial writer, which was a minor but genuine activity. He was a yet greater writer on social science, which was one of the supreme activities. On this side, then, certainly the chief side, there could be no question about the successfulness of his life. His working life was, or would be before he was through, brilliantly successful. But it had for some time been plain to him that he stopped short there. He was a great workman, but that was all. He was a superb rationalist; but after that he did not exist.

Through the science of Human Intercourse, he saw much more of people now than he had ever done before, and thus it had become driven home upon him that most people had two lives, their outer or practical lives, and their inner or personal lives. But he himself had but one life. He was a machine; a machine which turned out matchless work for the enlightenment of the world, but after all a machine. He was intellect. He was Pure Reason. Yet he himself had said, and written, that intellectual supremacy was not the true badge of supremacy of type. There was nothing sure of races that was not equally sure of the individuals which make up those races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of thought, feeling, and conduct, in which the people around him spent so much of their time, were entirely closed to him. He had no personal life at all.

That part of him had atrophied from lack of use, like the eyes of the mole and of those sightless fishes men take from the waters of caverns.

And now this part of him, which had for some time been stirring uneasily, had risen suddenly without bidding of his and in defiance of his reason, and laid hold of something in his environment. In doing so, it appeared to have thrust upon him an inner, or personal, life from this time forward. That life lay in being of use to the old man before him: he who had never been of personal use to anybody so far, and the miserable old man who had no comfort anywhere but in him.

He knew the scientific name of this kind of behavior very well. It was altruism, the irrational force that had put a new face upon the world.

Fifi, he remembered well, had a.s.sured him that in altruism he would find that fiercer happiness which was as much better than content as being well was better than not being sick. But ... could this be happiness, this whirling confusion that put him to such straits to keep a calm face above the tumult of his breast? If this was happiness, then it came to him for their first meeting wearing a strange face....

"You know the story?"

Queed moved in his chair. "Yes. I--have heard it."

"Of course," said Nicolovius. "It is as well known as Iscariot's. By G.o.d, how they've hounded me!"

Evidently he was recovering fast. There was bitterness, rather than shame, in his voice. He took his hands from his eyes, adjusted his cap, stiffened up in his chair. The sallow tints were coming back into his face; his lips took on color; his eye and hand were steady. Not every man could have pa.s.sed through such a cataclysm and emerged so little marked. He picked up his cigarette from the table; it was still going.

This fact was symbolic: the great shock had come and pa.s.sed within the smoking of an inch of cigarette. The pretty room was as it was before.

Pale sunshine still flickered on the swelling curtain. The leather desk-clock gayly ticked the pa.s.sing seconds. The young man's clean-cut face looked as quiet as ever.

Upon Queed the old man fastened his fearless black eyes.

"I meant to tell you all this some day," he said, in quite a natural voice. "Now the day has come a little sooner than I had meant--that is all. I know that my confidence is safe with you--till I die."

"I think you have nothing to fear by trusting me," said Queed, and added at once: "But you need tell me nothing unless you prefer."

A kind of softness shone for a moment in Surface's eyes. "n.o.body could look at your face," he said gently, "and ever be afraid to trust you."

The telephone rang, and Queed could answer it by merely putting out his hand. It was West, from the office, asking that he report for work that night, as he himself was compelled to be away.

Presently Surface began talking; talking in s.n.a.t.c.hes, more to himself than to his young friend, rambling backward over his broken life in pa.s.sionate reminiscence. He talked a long time thus, while the daylight faded and dusk crept into the room, and then night; and Queed listened, giving him all the rein he wanted and saying never a word himself.