Queed

Sharlee, her thoughts recalled, made a slight inclination of her head.

"Forgive my absent-mindedness. First, then, as to why you are a failure as an editorial writer. You are quite mistaken in supposing that it is a mere question of style, though right in regarding your style as in itself a fatal handicap. However, the trouble has its root in your amusing att.i.tude of superiority to the work. You think of editorial writing as small hack-work, entirely beneath the dignity of a man who has had one or two articles accepted by a prehistoric magazine which n.o.body reads. In reality, it is one of the greatest and most splendid of all professions, fit to call out the very best of a really big man. You chuckle and sneer at Colonel Cowles and think yourself vastly his superior as an editorial writer, when, in the opinion of everybody else, he is in every way your superior. I doubt if the _Post_ has a single reader who would not prefer to read an article by him, on any subject, to reading an article by you. I doubt if there is a paper in the world that would not greatly prefer him as an editor to you--"

"You are absurdly mistaken," he interrupted coldly. "I might name various papers--"

"Yes, the _Political Science Quarterly_ and the _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_." Sharlee smiled tolerantly, and immediately resumed: "When you sit down at the office to write an article, whom do you think you are writing for? A company of scientists? An inst.i.tute of gray-bearded scholars? An academy of fossilized old doctors of laws?

There are not a dozen people of that sort who read the _Post_. Has it never occurred to you to call up before your mind"s eye the people you actually are writing for? You can see them any day as you walk along the street. Go into a street car at six o"clock any night and look around at the faces. There is your public, the readers of the _Post_--shop-clerks, stenographers, factory-hands, office-men, plumbers, teamsters, drummers, milliners. Look at them. Have you anything to say to interest them? Think. If they were to file in here now and ask you to make a few remarks, could you, for the life of you, say one single thing that would interest them?"

"I do not pretend, or aspire," said Mr. Queed, "to dispense frothy nothings tricked out to beguile the tired brick-layer. My duty is to give forth valuable information and ripened judgment couched in language--"

"No, your duty is to get yourself read; if you fail there you fail everywhere. Is it possible that you don"t begin to grasp that point yet?

I fancied that your mind was quicker. You appear to think that the duty of a newspaper is to back people up against a wall and ram helpful statistics into them with a force-pump. You are grotesquely mistaken.

Your ideal newspaper would not keep a dozen readers in this city: that is to say, it would be a complete failure while it lasted and would bankrupt Mr. Morgan in six months. A dead newspaper is a useless one, the world over. At the same time, every living and good newspaper is a little better, spreads a little more sweetness and light, gives out a little more valuable information, ripened judgment, et cetera, than the vast majority of its readers want or will absorb. The _Post_ is that sort of newspaper. It is constantly tugging its readers a little higher than they--I mean the majority, and not the cultured few--are willing to go. But the _Post_ always recognizes that its first duty is to get itself read: if it does not succeed in that, it lacks the principle of life and dies. Perhaps the tired bricklayer you speak of, the middle-cla.s.s, commonplace, average people who make up nearly all of the world, ought to be interested in John Stuart Mill"s att.i.tude toward the single-tax. But the fact is that they aren"t. The _Post_ wisely deals with the condition, and not a theory: it means to get itself read. It is your first duty, as a writer for it, to get yourself read. If you fail to get yourself read, you are worse than useless to the _Post_. Well, you have completely failed to do this, and that is why the _Post_ is discharging you. Come, free yourself from exaggerated notions about your own importance and look at this simple point with the calm detachment of a scientist. The _Post_ can save money, while preserving just the same effect, by discharging you and printing every morning a half-column from the Encyclopedia Britannica."

She rose quickly, as though her time was very precious, and pa.s.sed over to the table, where a great bowl of violets stood. The room was pretty: it had reminded Queed, when he entered it, of Nicolovius"s room, though there was a softer note in it, as the flowers, the work-bag on the table, the balled-up veil and gloves on the mantel-shelf. He had liked, too, the soft-shaded lamps; the vague resolve had come to him to install a lamp in the Scriptorium later on. But now, thinking of nothing like this, he sat in a thick silence gazing at her with unwinking sternness.

Sharlee carefully gathered the violets from the bowl, shook a small shower of water from their stems, dried them with a pocket handkerchief about the size of a silver dollar. Next she wrapped the stems with purple tinfoil, tied them with a silken cord and ta.s.sel and laid the gorgeous bunch upon a magazine back, to await her further pleasure.

Then, coming back, she resumed her seat facing the shabby young man she was a.s.sisting to see himself as others saw him.

"I might," she said, "simply stop there. I might tell you that you are a failure as an editorial writer because you have nothing at all to say that is of the smallest interest to the great majority of the readers of editorials, and would not know how to say it if you had. That would be enough to satisfy most men, but I see that I must make things very plain and definite for you. Mr. Queed, you are a failure as an editorial writer because you are first a failure in a much more important direction. You"re a failure as a human being--as a man."

She was watching his face lightly, but closely, and so she was on her feet as soon as he, and had her hand out before he had even thought of making this gesture.

"It is useless for this harangue to continue," he said, with a brow of storm. "Your conception of helpful advice ..."

But Sharlee"s voice, which had begun as soon as his, drowned him out....

"Complimented you a little too far, I see. I shall be sure to remember after this," she said with such a sweet smile, "that, after all your talk, you are just the average man, and want to hear only what flatters your little vanity. _Good_-night. So nice to have seen you."

She nodded brightly, with faint amus.e.m.e.nt, and turning away, moved off toward the door at the back. Queed, of course, had no means of knowing that she was thinking, almost jubilantly: "I _knew_ that mouth meant spirit!" He only knew that, whereas he had meant to terminate the interview with a grave yet stinging rebuke to her, she had given the effect of terminating the interview with a graceful yet stinging rebuke to him. This was not what he wanted in the least. Come to think of it, he doubted if he wanted the interview to end at all.

"Miss Weyland ..."

She turned on the threshold of the farther door. "I beg your pardon! I thought you"d gone! Your hat?--I think you left it in the hall, didn"t you?"

"It is not my hat."

"Oh--what is it?"

"G.o.d knows," said the little Doctor, hoa.r.s.ely.

He was standing in the middle of the floor, his hands jammed into his trousers pockets, his hair tousled over a troubled brow, his breast torn by emotions which were entirely new in his experience and which he didn"t even know the names of. All the acc.u.mulation of his disruptive day was upon him. He felt both terrifically upset inside, and interested to the degree of physical pain in something or other, he had no idea what. Presently he started walking up and down the room, nervous as a caged lion, eyes fixed on s.p.a.ce or on something within, while Sharlee stood in the doorway watching him casually and unsurprised, as though just this sort of thing took place in her little parlor regularly, seven nights a week.

"Go ahead! Go ahead!" he broke out abruptly, coming to a halt. "Pitch into me. Do it for all you"re worth. I suppose you think it"s what I need."

"Certainly," said Sharlee, pleasantly.

She stood beside her chair again, flushed with a secret sense of victory, liking him more for his temper and his control than she ever could have liked him for his learning. But it was not her idea that the little Doctor had got it anywhere near hard enough as yet.

"Won"t you sit down, Mr. Queed?"

It appeared that Mr. Queed would.

"I am paying you the extraordinary compliment," said Sharlee, "of talking to you as others might talk about you behind your back--in fact, as everybody does talk about you behind your back. I do this on the theory that you are a serious and honest-minded man, sincerely interested in learning the truth about yourself and your failures, so that you may correct them. If you are interested only in having your vanity fed by flattering fictions, please say so right now. I have no time," she said, hardly able for her life to suppress a smile, "for b.u.t.terflies and triflers."

_b.u.t.terflies and triflers!_ Mr. Queed, proprietor of the famous Schedule, a b.u.t.terfly and a trifler!

He said in a m.u.f.fled voice: "Proceed."

"Since an editorial writer," said Sharlee, seating herself and beginning with a paragraph as neat as a public speaker"s, "must be able, as his first qualification, to interest the common people, it is manifest that he must be interested in the common people. He must feel his bond of humanity with them, sympathize with them, like them, love them. This is the great secret of Colonel Cowles"s success as an editor. A fine gentleman by birth, breeding, and tradition, he is yet always a human being among human beings. All his life he has been doing things with and for the people. He went all through the war, and you might have thought the whole world depended on him, the way he went up Cemetery Ridge on the 3rd of July, 1863. He was shot all to pieces, but they patched him together, and the next year there he was back in the fighting around Petersburg. After the war he was a leader against the carpet-baggers, and if this State is peaceful and prosperous and comfortable for you to live in now, it is because of what men like him and my father did a generation ago. When he took the _Post_ he went on just the same, working and thinking and fighting for men and with men, and all in the service of the people. I suppose, of course, his views through all these years have not always been sound, but they have always been honest and honorable, sensible, manly, and sweet. And they have always had a practical relation with the life of the people. The result is that he has thousands and thousands of readers who feel that their day has been wanting in something unless they have read what he has to say. There is Colonel Cowles--Does this interest you, Mr. Queed? If not, I need not weary us both by continuing."

He again requested her, in the briefest possible way, to proceed.

"Well! There is Colonel Cowles, whom you presume to despise, because you know, or think you know, more political and social science than he does.

Where you got your preposterously exaggerated idea of the value of text-book science I am at a loss to understand. The people you aspire to lead--for that is what an editorial writer must do--care nothing for it.

That tired bricklayer whom you dismiss with such contempt of course cares nothing for it. But that bricklayer is the People, Mr. Queed. He is the very man that Colonel Cowles goes to, and puts his hand on his shoulder, and tries to help--help him to a better home, better education for his children, more and more wholesome pleasures, a higher and happier living. Colonel Cowles thinks of life as an opportunity to live with and serve the common, average, everyday people. You think of it as an opportunity to live by yourself and serve your own ambition. He writes to the hearts of the people. You write to the heads of scientists. Doubtless it will amaze you to be told that his paragraph on the death of Moses Page, the Byrds" old negro butler, was a far more useful article in every way than your long critique on the currency system of Germany which appeared in the same issue. Colonel Cowles is a big-hearted human being. You--you are a scientific formula. And the worst of it is that _you"re proud of it!_ The hopeless part of it is that you actually consider a few old fossils as bigger than the live people all around you! How can I show you your terrible mistake?... Why, Mr. Queed, the life and example of a little girl ..." she stopped, rather precipitately, stared hard at her hands, which were folded in her lap, and went resolutely on: "The life and example of a little girl like Fifi are worth more than all the text-books you will ever write."

A silence fell. In the soft lamplight of the pretty room, Queed sat still and silent as a marble man; and presently Sharlee, plucking herself together, resumed:--

"Perhaps you now begin to glimpse a wider difference between yourself and Colonel Cowles than mere unlikeness of literary style. If you continue to think this difference all in your own favor, I urge you to abandon any idea of writing editorials for the _Post_. If on the other hand, you seriously wish to make good your boast of this morning, I urge you to cease sneering at men like Colonel Cowles, and humbly begin to try to imitate them. I say that you are a failure as an editorial writer because you are a failure as a man, and I say that you are a failure as a man because you have no relation at all with man"s life. You aspire to teach and lead human beings, and you have not the least idea what a human being is, and not the slightest wish to find out. All around you are men, live men of flesh and blood, who are moving the world, and you, whipping out your infinitesimal measuring-rod, dismiss them as inferior cattle who know nothing of text-book science. Here is a real and living world, and you roll through it like a billiard-ball. And all because you make the fatal error of mistaking a sorry handful of mummies for the universe."

"It is a curious coincidence," said Queed, with great but deceptive mildness, "that Fifi said much the same thing to me, though in quite a different way, this afternoon."

"She told me. But Fifi was not the first. You had the same advice from your father two months ago."

"My father?"

"You have not forgotten his letter that you showed me in your office one afternoon?"

It seemed that he had; but he had it in his pocket, as it chanced, and dug it out, soiled and frayed from long confinement. Stooping forward to introduce it into the penumbra of lamplight, he read over the detective-story message: "_Make friends: mingle with people and learn to like them. This is the earnest injunction of Your father_."

"You complain of your father"s treatment of you," said Sharlee, "but he offered you a liberal education there, and you declined to take it."

She glanced at the clock, turned about to the table and picked up her beautiful bouquet. A pair of long bodkins with lavender gla.s.s heads were waiting, it appeared; she proceeded to pin on her flowers, adjusting them with careful attention; and rising, again reviewed herself in the mantel-mirror. Then she sat down once more, and calmly said:

"As you are a failure as an editorial writer and as a man, so you are a failure as a sociologist ..."

It was the last straw, the crowning blasphemy. She hardly expected him to endure it, and he did not; she was glad to have it so. But the extreme mildness with which he interrupted her almost unnerved her, so confidently had she braced herself for violence.

"Do you mind if we omit that? I think I have heard enough about my failures for one night."

He had risen, but stood, for a wonder, irresolute. It was too evident that he did not know what to do next. Presently, having nowhere else to go, he walked over to the mantel-shelf and leant his elbow upon it, staring down at the floor. A considerable interval pa.s.sed, broken only by the ticking of the clock before he said:--

"You may be an authority on editorial writing--even on manhood--life.

But I can hardly recognize you in that capacity as regards sociology."

Sharlee made no reply. She had no idea that the young man"s dismissal from the _Post_ had been a crucifixion to him, an unendurable infamy upon his virginal pride of intellect. She had no conception of his powers of self-control, which happened to be far greater than her own, and she would have given worlds to know what he was thinking at that moment. For her part she was thinking of him, intensely, and in a personal way. Manners he had none, but where did he get his manner? Who had taught him to bow in that way? He had mentioned insults: where had he heard of insults, this stray who had raised himself in the house of a drunken policeman?

"Well," said Queed, with the utmost calmness, "you might tell me, in a word, why you think I am a failure as a sociologist."