"Do you know," said Mr. Queed--so absorbedly as to leave her to clamber up the car steps without a.s.sistance--"if I subscribed to the tenets of your religion, I might believe that my father was merely a mythical instrument of Providence--a tradition created out of air _just to bring me down here_."
"Why," said Sharlee, looking down from the tall platform, as the car whizzed and buzzed and slowly started, "aren"t you _coming_?"
"No, I"m walking," said Mr. Queed, and remembered at the last moment to pluck off his glistening new derby.
Thus they parted, almost precipitately, and, for all of him, might never have met again in this world. Half a mile up the road, it came to the young man that their farewell had lacked that final word of ceremony to which he now aspired. To those who called at his office, to the men he met at the sign of the Mercury, even to Nicolovius when he betook himself from the lamp-lit sitting-room, it was his carefully attained habit to say: "I hope to see you again soon." He meant the hope, with these, only in the most general and perfunctory sense. Why, then, had he omitted this civil tag and postscript in his parting with Miss Weyland, to whom he could have said it--yes, certainly--with more than usual sincerity? Certainly; he really did hope to see her again soon. For she was an intelligent, sensible girl, and knew more about him than anybody in the world except Tim Queed.
Gradually it was borne in upon him that the reason he had failed to tell Miss Weyland that he hoped to see her again soon was exactly the fact that he did hope to see her again soon. Off his guard for this reason, he had fallen into a serious lapse. Looking with untrained eyes into the future, he saw no way in which a man who had failed to tell a lady that he hoped to see her again soon was ever to retrieve his error. It was good-by, Charles Weyland, for sure.
However, Miss Weyland herself resolved all these perplexities by appearing at Mrs. Paynter"s supper-table before the month was out; and this exploit she repeated at least once, and maybe twice, during the swift winter that followed.
On January 14, or February 23, or it might have been March 2, Queed unexpectedly reentered the dining-room, toward eight o"clock, with the grave announcement that he had a piece of news. Sharlee was alone in the room, concluding the post-prandial ch.o.r.es with the laying of the Turkey-red cloth. She was in fickle vein this evening, as it chanced; and instead of respectfully inquiring the nature of his tidings, as was naturally and properly expected of her, she received the young man with a fire of breezy inconsequentialities which puzzled and annoyed him greatly.
She admitted, without pressure, that she had been hoping for his return; had in fact been dawdling over the duties of the dining-room on that very expectation. From there her fancy grew. Audaciously she urged his reluctant attention to the number of her comings to Mrs. Paynter"s in recent months. With an exceedingly stagey counterfeit of a downcast eye, she hinted at gossip lately arising from public observation of these visits: gossip, namely, to the effect that Miss Weyland"s ostensible suppings with her aunt were neither better nor worse than so many bold calls upon Mr. Queed. Her lip quivered alarmingly over such a confession; undoubtedly she looked enormously abashed.
Mr. Queed, for his part, looked highly displeased and more than a shade uncomfortable. He annihilated all such foolishness by a look and a phrase; observed, in a stately opening, that she would hardly trouble to deny empty rumor of this sort, since--
"I can"t deny it, you see! Because," she interrupted, raising her eyes and turning upon him a sudden dazzling yet outrageous smile--"_it"s true_."
She skipped away, smiling to herself, happily putting things away and humming an air. Queed watched her in annoyed silence. His adamantine gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law of averages claimed its innings.
"While you are thinking up what to say," she rattled on, "might I ask your advice on a sociological problem that was just laid before me by Laura?"
"Well," he said impatiently, "who is Laura?"
"Laura is the loyal negress who cooks the food for Mrs. Paynter"s bright young men. Her husband first deserted her, next had the misfortune to get caught while burgling, and is at present doing time, as the saying is. Now a young bright-skin negro desires to marry Laura, and speaks in urgent tones of the divorce court. Her att.i.tude is more than willing, but she learns that a divorce, at the lowest conceivable price, will cost fifteen dollars, and she had rather put the money in a suit and bonnet. But a thought no larger than a man"s hand has crossed her mind, and she said to me just now: "I "clare, Miss Sharly, it do look like, when you got a beau and he want to marry you, and all the time axin" and coaxin" an" beggin" you to get a div-o"ce, it do look like _he_ ought to pay for the div-o"ce." Now what answer has your old science to give to a real heart problem such as that?"
"May I ask that you will put the napkins away, or at the least remain stationary? It is impossible for me to talk with you while you flutter about in this way."
At last she came and sat down meekly at the table, her hands clasped before her in rather a devotional att.i.tude, while he, standing, fixed her with his unwavering gaze.
"I speak to you," he began, uncompromisingly, "as to Mrs. Paynter"s agent. Professor Nicolovius is going to move in the spring and take an apartment or small house. He has invited me to share such apartment or house with him."
"What! But you declined?"
"On the contrary, I accepted at once."
Mrs. Paynter"s agent was much surprised and interested by this news, and said so. "But how in the world," she went on, puzzled, "did you make him like you so? I always supposed that he hated everybody he does me, I know."
"I believe he does hate everybody but me."
"Strange--extraordinary!" said Sharlee, picturing the two scholars alone together in their flat, endeavoring to soft-boil eggs on one of those little fixtures over the gas.
"I can see nothing in the least extraordinary in the refusal of a cultured gentleman to hate me."
"I don"t mean it that way at all-not at all! But Professor Nicolovius must know cultured gentlemen, congenial roomers, who are nearer his own age--"
"Oh, not necessarily," said Queed, and sat down in the chair by her, Major Brooke"s chair. "He is a most unsocial sort of man,"--this from the little Doctor!--"and I doubt if he knows anybody better than he knows me. That he knows me so well is due solely to the fact that we have been forced on each other three times a day for over a year. For the first month or so after I came here, we remained entire strangers, I remember, and pa.s.sed each other on the stairs without speaking.
Gradually, however, he has come to take a great fancy to me."
"And is that why you are going off to a honeymoon cottage with him?"
"Hardly. I am going because it will be the best sort of arrangement for me."
"Oh!"
"I will pay, you see," said Queed, "no more than I am paying here; for that matter, I have no doubt that I could beat him down to five dollars a week, if I cared to do so. In return I shall have decidedly greater comforts and conveniences, far greater quiet and independence, and complete freedom from interruptions and intrusions. The arrangement will be a big gain in several ways for me."
"And have you taken a great fancy to Professor Nicolovius, too?"
"Oh, no!--not at all. But that has very little to do with it. At least he has the great gift of silence."
Sharlee looked at his absorbed face closely. She thought that his head in profile was very fine, though certainly his nose was too prominent for beauty. But what she was wondering was whether the little Doctor had really changed so much after all.
"Well," said she, slowly, "I"m sorry you"re going."
"Sorry--why? It would appear to me that under the tenets of your religion you ought to be glad. You ought to compliment me for going."
"I don"t find anything in the tenets of my religion that requires you to go off and room-keep with Professor Nicolovius."
"You do not? It is a tremendous kindness to him, I a.s.sure you. To have a place of his own has long been his dream, he tells me; but he cannot afford it without the financial a.s.sistance I would give. Again, even if he could finance it, he would not venture to try it alone, because of his health. It appears that he is subject to some kind of attacks--heart, I suppose--and does not want to be alone. I have heard him walking his floor at 3 o"clock in the morning. Do you know anything about his life?"
"No. Nothing."
"I know everything."
He paused for her to ask him questions, that he might have the pleasure of refusing her. But instead of prying, Sharlee said: "Still I"m sorry that you are going."
"Well? Why?"
"Because," said Sharlee.
"Proceed."
"Because I don"t like his eyes."
"The question, from your point of view," said Mr. Queed, "is a moral--not an optic one. These acts which confer benefits on others," he continued, "so peculiarly commended by your religion, are conceived by it to work moral good to the doer. The _eyes_ (which you use synecdochically to represent the _character_) of the person to whom they are done, have nothing--"
"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, briskly interrupting his exegetical words, "I believe you are going off with Professor Nicolovius chiefly because--you think he needs you!"
He looked up sharply, much surprised and irritated. "That is absolutely foolish and absurd. I have nothing in the world to do with what Professor Nicolovius needs. You must always remember that I am not a subscriber to the tenets of your religion."
"It is not too late. I always remember that too."
"But I must say frankly that I am much surprised at the way you interpret those tenets. For if--"
"Oh, you should never have tested me on such a question! Don"t you see that I"m the judge sitting in his or her own case? Two boarders gone at one swoop! How shall I break the news to Aunt Jennie?"