Queed Part 52

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 pa.s.sively, 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 impa.s.sioned, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistant, 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 inst.i.tution, with the positive a.s.surance 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 n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution two years before the people were ready to pay for it? There was the whole question in a nutsh.e.l.l.

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 a.s.sistant 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_ att.i.tude, 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 b.u.t.toned 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 rest.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed 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 appet.i.te 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sistance, 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."