"I"m awfully sorry," said Sharlee--"awfully! But after all, you want only some routine hack-work--any routine hack-work--to establish a little income. It will not be very hard to find something else, as good or even better."
"You do not appear to grasp the fact that, apart from any considerations of that sort, this is an unpleasant, a most offensive thing to have happen--"
"Oh, but that is just what it isn"t, Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, who quite failed to appreciate his morbid tenderness for even the least of his intellectual offspring. "You have taken no pride in the newspaper work; you look down on it as altogether beneath you. You cannot mind this in any personal way--"
"I mind it," said he, "like the devil."
The word fell comically from his lips, but Sharlee, leaning against the shut door, looked at him with grave sympathy in her eyes.
"Mr. Queed, if you had tried to write nursery rhymes and--failed, would you have taken it to heart?"
"Never mind arguing it. In fact, I don"t know that I could explain it to you in a thoroughly logical and convincing way. The central fact, the concrete thing, is that I do object most decidedly. I have spent too much time in equipping myself to express valuable ideas in discriminating language to be kicked out of a second-rate newspaper office like an incompetent office-boy. Of course I shall not submit to it."
"Do you care to tell me what you mean to do?"
"Do!" He hit the door-post a sudden blow with an unexpectedly large hand. "I shall have myself elected editor of the _Post_."
"But--but--but--" said the girl, taken aback by the largeness of this order--"But you don"t expect to oust Colonel Cowles?"
"We are not necessarily speaking of to-morrow or next day. An actuary will tell you that I am likely to outlive Colonel Cowles. I mean, first, to have my dismissal recalled, and, second, to be made regular a.s.sistant editor at three times my present salary. That is my immediate reply to the directors of the Post. I am willing to let the editorship wait till old Cowles dies."
"Tell me," said Sharlee, "would you personally like to be editor of the _Post?_"
"_Like it!_ I"ll resign the day after they elect me. Call it sheer wounded vanity--anything you like! The name makes no difference. I know only that I will have the editorship for a day--and all for the worthless pleasure of pitching it in their faces." He looked past her out of the window, and his light gray eyes filled with an indescribable bitterness. "And to have the editorship," he thought out loud, "I must unlearn everything that I know about writing, and deliberately learn to write like a demagogic a.s.s."
Sharlee tapped the calcimine with her pointed fingernails. He spoke, as ever, with overweening confidence, but she knew that he would never win any editorship in this spirit. He was going at the quest with a new burst of intellectual contempt, though it was this very intellectual contempt that had led to his downfall.
"But your own private work?"
"Don"t speak of it, I beg!" He flinched uncontrollably; but of his own accord he added, in carefully repressed tones: "To qualify for the editorship of course means--a terrible interruption and delay. It means that _I must side-track My Book for two months or even longer!_"
Two months! It would take him five years and probably he would not be qualified then.
Sharlee hesitated. "Have you fully made up your mind to--to be editor?"
He turned upon her vehemently. "May I ask you never to waste my time with questions of that sort. I never--_never_--say anything until I have fully made up my mind about it. Good-morning."
"No, no, no! Don"t go yet! Please--I want to speak to you a minute."
He stopped and turned, but did not retrace the three steps he had taken.
Sharlee leaned against the door and looked away from him, out into the park.
The little Doctor was badly in need of a surgical operation. Somebody must perform it for him, or his whole life was a dusty waste. That he still had glimmerings, he had shown this very hour, in wanting to make a gift to his sick little fellow-lodger. His resentment over his dismissal from the _Post_, too, was an unexpectedly human touch in him. But in the same breath with these things the young man had showed himself at his worst: the glimmerings were so overlaid with an incredible sn.o.bbery of the mind, so encrusted with the rankest and grossest egotism, that soon they must flutter and die out, leaving him stone-blind against the sunshine and the morning. No scratch could penetrate that Achilles-armor of self-sufficiency. There must be a shock to break it apart, or a vicious stabbing to cut through it to such spark as was still alive.
Somebody must administer that shock or do that stabbing. Why not she? He would hate the sight of her forevermore, but ...
"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, turning toward him, "you let me see, from what you are doing this morning, that you think of Fifi as your friend.
I"d like to ask if you think of me in that way, too."
O Lord, _Lord!_ Here was another one!
"No," he said positively. "Think of you as I do of Fifi! No, no! No, I do not."
"I don"t mean to ask if you think of me as you do of Fifi. Of course I am sure you don"t. I only mean--let me put it this way: Do you believe that I have your--interests at heart, and would like to do anything I could to help you?"
He thought this over warily. Doubtless doomed Smathers would have smiled to note the slowness with which his great rival"s mind threshed out such a question as this.
"If you state your proposition in that way, I reply, tentatively, yes."
"Then can you spare me half an hour to-night after supper?"
"For what purpose?"
"For you and me," she smiled. "I"d like you to come and see me, at my house, where we could really have a little talk. You see, I know Colonel Cowles very well indeed, and I have read the _Post_ for oh, many, many years! In this way I know something about the kind of articles people here like to read, and about--what is needed to write such articles. I think I might make a suggestion or two that--would help. Will you come?"
After somewhat too obvious a consideration, Queed consented. Sharlee thanked him.
"I"ll put my address down on the back of that paper, shall I? And I think I"ll put my name, too, for I don"t believe you have the faintest idea what it is."
"Oh, yes. The name is Miss Charlie Weyland. It appears that you were named after a boy?"
"Oh, it"s only a silly nickname. Here"s your little directory back. I"ll be very glad to see you--at half-past eight, shall we say? But, Mr.
Queed--don"t come unless you feel sure that I really want to help. For I"m afraid I"ll have to say a good deal that will make you very mad."
He bowed and walked away. Sharlee went to the telephone and called Bartlett"s, the florist. She told Mr. Bartlett that a young man would come in there in a few minutes--full description of the young man--asking for seventy-five cents" worth of red roses; Mr. Bartlett would please give him two dozen roses, and charge the difference to her, Miss Weyland; the entire transaction to be kept discreetly quiet.
However the transaction was not kept entirely quiet. The roses were delivered promptly, and became the chief topic of conversation at Mrs.
Paynter"s dinner-table. Through an enforced remark of Mr. Queed"s, and the later discursive gossip of the boarders, it became disseminated over the town that Bartlett"s was selling American Beauties at thirty-seven and a half cents a dozen, and the poor man had to buy ten inches, double column, in the _Post_ next morning to get himself straightened out and reestablish Bartlett"s familiar quotations.
XII
_More Consequences of the Plan about the Gift, and of how Mr. Queed drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fifi on Men, and how they do; Second Corruption of The Sacred Schedule._
Queed"s irrational impulse to make Fifi a small gift cost him the heart of his morning. A call would have been cheaper, after all. Nor was the end yet. In this world it never is, where one event invariably hangs by the tail of another in ruthless concatenation. Starting out for Open-air Pedestrianism at 4.45 that afternoon, the young man was waylaid in the hail by Mrs. Paynter, at the very door of the big bedroom into which Fifi had long since been moved. The landlady, backing Queed against the banisters, told him how much her daughter had been pleased by his beautiful remembrance. The child, she said, wanted particularly to thank him herself, and wouldn"t he please come in and see her just a moment?
As Mrs. Paynter threw open the door in the act of making the extraordinary request, escape was impossible. Queed found himself inside the room before he knew what he was doing. As for Mrs. Paynter, she somewhat treacherously slipped away to consult with Laura as to what for supper.
It was a mild sunny afternoon, with a light April wind idly kicking at the curtains. Fifi sat over by the open window in a tilted-back Morris chair, a sweet-faced little thing, all eyes and pallor. From her many covers she extricated a fragile hand, frilled with the sleeve of a pretty flowered kimono.
"Look at them! Aren"t they glorious!"
On a table at her elbow his roses nodded from a wide-lipped vase, a gorgeous riot of flame and fragrance. Gazing at them, the young man marvelled at his own princely prodigality.
"I don"t know _how_ to thank you for them, Mr. Queed, They are so, so sweet, and I do love roses so!"