Without the smallest hesitation, Sharlee drew her ornamental pencil through the next name on her list, and ordered her flowers and fan transferred from the hands of Mr. Beverley Byrd to those of Mr. Charles Gardiner West.
"Only," said she, thinking of her partners, "you"ll have to hide me somewhere."
With a masterful grace which others imitated, indeed, but could not copy, West extricated his lady from her gallants, and led her away to a pretty haven; not indeed, to a conservatory, since there was none, but to a bewitching nook under the wide stairway, all banked about with palm and fern and pretty flowering shrub. There they sat them down, unseeing and unseen, near yet utterly remote, while in the blood of West beat the intoxicating strains of Straus, not to mention the vintage champagne, to which he had taken a very particular fancy.
All night, while the roses heard the flute, violin, ba.s.soon, none in all the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee. Past many heads in the dining-room, West had watched her, laughing, radiant, sparkling as the wine itself, a pretty little lady of a joyous sweetness that never knew a care. In the dance, for he had watched her there, too, wondering, as she circled laughing by, whether she felt any lingering traces of pique with him, she had been the same: no girl ever wore a merrier heart. But a sudden change came now. In the friendly freedom of the green-banked alcove, Sharlee"s gayety dropped from her like a painted mask, which, having amused the children, has done its full part. Against the back of the cushioned settle where they sat she leaned a weary head, and frankly let her fringed lids droop.
At another time West might have been pleased by such candid evidences of confidence and intimacy, but not to-night. He felt that Sharlee, having advertised a delightful gayety by her manner, should now proceed to deliver it: it certainly was not for tired sweetness and disconcerting silences that he had sought this _tete-a-tete_. But at last his failure to arouse her on indifferent topics became too marked to be pa.s.sed over; and then he said in a gentle voice:--
"Confess, Miss Weyland. You"re as tired as you can be."
She turned her head, and smiled a little into his eyes. "Yes--you don"t mind, do you?"
"Indeed I do, though! You"re going altogether too hard--working like a Trojan all day and dancing like a dryad all night. You"ll break yourself down--indeed you will!"
Hardly conscious of it herself, Sharlee had been waiting with a tense anxiety of which her face began to give signs, for him to speak. And now she understood that he would not speak; and she knew why.... How her heart warmed to him for his honorable silence in defense of his unworthy friend.
But she herself was under no such restraint. "It isn"t that," she said quickly. "It"s the reformatory--I"ve worried myself sick over it."
West averted his gaze; he saw that it had come, and in a peculiarly aggravated form. He recognized at once how impossible it would be to talk the matter over, in a calm and rational way, under such conditions as these. This little girl had brooded over it till the incident had a.s.sumed grotesque and fantastic proportions in her mind. She was seeing visions, having nightmares. In a soothing, sympathetic voice, he began consoling her with the thought that a postponement for two brief years was really not so serious, and that--
"It isn"t that!" she corrected him again, in the same voice. "That was pretty bad, but--what I have minded so much was M---- was the _Post"s_ desertion."
West"s troubled eyes fell. But some hovering imp of darkness instantly popped it into his head to ask: "Have you seen Queed?"
"No," said Sharlee, colorlessly. "Not since--"
"You--didn"t know, then, that he has left the _Post?_"
"Left the _Post!_" she echoed, with a face suddenly rigid. "No! Did he?
Won"t you tell me--?"
West looked unhappily at the floor. "Well--I"d much rather not go into this now. But the fact is that he left because ... well, we had a difference of opinion as to that reformatory article."
Sharlee turned hastily away, pretending to look for her fan. The sudden shutting of that tiny door had shot her through with unexpected pain.
The last doubt fell now; all was plain. Mr. Queed had been discharged for writing an article which outraged his chief"s sense of honor, that knightly young chief who still would not betray him by a word. The little door clicked; Sharlee turned the key upon it and threw away the key. And then she turned upon West a face so luminous with pure trust that it all but unsteadied him.
To do West justice, it was not until his words had started caroming down the eternal halls of time, that their possible implication dawned upon him. His vague idea had been merely to give a non-committal summary of the situation to ease the present moment; this to be followed, at a more suitable time, by the calm and rational explanation he had always intended. But the magical effect of his chance words, entirely unexpected by him, was quite too delightful to be wiped out. To erase that look from the tired little lady"s face by labored exposition and tedious statistic would be the height of clumsy unkindness. She had been unhappy; he had made her happy; that was all that was vital just now. At a later time, when she had stopped brooding over the thing and could see and discuss it intelligently, he would take her quietly and straighten the whole matter out for her.
For this present, there was a look in her eyes which made a trip-hammer of his heart. Never had her face--less of the mere pretty young girl"s than he had ever seen it, somewhat worn beneath its color, a little wistful under her smile--seemed to him so immeasurably sweet. In his blood Straus and the famous Verzenay plied their dizzying vocations.
Suddenly he leaned forward, seeing nothing but two wonderful blue eyes, and his hand fell upon hers, with a grip which claimed her out of all the world.
"Sharlee" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Don"t you know that--"
But he was, alas, summarily checked. At just that minute, outraged partners of Miss Weyland"s espied and descended upon them with loud reproachful cries, and Charles Gardiner West"s moment of superb impetuosity had flowered in nothing.
At a little earlier hour on the same evening, in a dining-room a mile away, eight men met "without political significance" to elect a new set of officers for the city. A bit of red-tape legislation permitted the people to ratify the choices at a "primary," to be held some months later; but the election came now. Unanimously, and with little or no discussion, the eight men elected one of their own number, Mr. Meachy T.
Bangor by name, to the office of Mayor of the City.
One of them then referred humorously to Mr. Bangor as just the sort of progressive young reformer that suited _him_. Another suggested, more seriously, that they might have to allow for the genuine article some day. Plonny Neal, who sat at the head of the table, as being the wisest of them, said that the organization certainly must expect to knuckle to reform some day; perhaps in eight years, perhaps in twelve years, perhaps in sixteen.
"Got your young feller all picked out, Plonny?" queried the Mayor elect, Mr. Bangor, with a wink around the room.
Plonny denied that he had any candidate. Under pressure, however, he admitted having his eye on a certain youth, a "dark horse" who was little known at present, but who, in his humble judgment, was a coming man. Plonny said that this man was very young just now, but would be plenty old enough before they would have need of him.
Mr. Bangor once more winked at the six. "Why, Plonny, I thought you were rooting for Charles Gardenia West."
"Then there"s two of ye," said Plonny, dryly, "he being the other one."
He removed his unlighted cigar, and spat loudly into a tall bra.s.s cuspidor, which he had taken the precaution to place for just such emergencies.
"Meachy," said Plonny, slowly, "I wouldn"t give the job of dog-catcher to a man you couldn"t trust to stand by his friends."
XXVIII
_How Words can be like Blows, and Blue Eyes stab deep; how Queed sits by a Bedside and reviews his Life; and how a Thought leaps at him and will not down._
In the first crushing burst of revelation, Queed had had a wild impulse to wash his hands of everything, and fly. He would pack Surface off to a hospital; dispose of the house; escape back to Mrs. Paynter"s; forget his terrible knowledge, and finally bury it with Surface. His reason fortified the impulse at every point. He owed less than nothing to his father; he had not the slightest responsibility either toward him or for him; to acknowledge the relation between them would do no conceivable good to anybody. He would go back to the Scriptorium, and all would be as it had been before.
But when the moment came either to go or to stay, another and deeper impulse rose against this one, and beat it down. Within him a voice whispered that though he might go back to the Scriptorium, he would never be as he had been before. Whether he acknowledged the relation or not, it was still there. And, in time, his reason brought forth material to fortify this impulse, too: it came out in brief, grim sentences which burned themselves into his mind. Surface was his father. To deny the primal blood-tie was not honorable. The sins of the fathers descended to the children. To suppress Truth was the crowning blasphemy.
Queed did not go. He stayed, resolved, after a violent struggle--it was all over in the first hour of his discovery--to bear his burden, shouldering everything that his sonship involved.
By day and by night the little house stood very quiet. Its secret remained inviolate; the young man was still Mr. Queed, the old one still Professor Nicolovius, who had suffered the last of his troublesome "strokes." Inside the darkened windows, life moved on silent heels. The doctor came, did nothing, and went. The nurse did nothing but stayed.
Queed would have dismissed her at once, except that that would have been bad economy; he must keep his own more valuable time free for the earning of every possible penny. To run the house, he had, for the present, his four hundred and fifty dollars in bank, saved out of his salary. This, he figured, would last nine weeks. Possibly Surface would last longer than that: that remained to be seen.
Late on a March afternoon, Queed finished a review article--his second since he had left the newspaper, four days before--and took it himself to the post-office. He wanted to catch the night mail for the North; and besides his body, jaded by two days" confinement, cried aloud for a little exercise. His fervent desire was to rush out all the articles that were in him, and get money for them back with all possible speed.
But he knew that the market for this work was limited. He must find other work immediately; he did not care greatly what kind it was, provided only that it was profitable. Thoughts of ways and means, mostly hard thoughts, occupied his mind all the way downtown. And always it grew plainer to him how much he was going to miss, now of all times, his eighteen hundred a year from the _Post_.
In the narrowest corridor of the post-office--like West in the Byrds"
vestibule--he came suddenly face to face with Sharlee Weyland.
The meeting was unwelcome to them both, and both their faces showed it.
Sharlee had told herself, a thousand times in a week, that she never wanted to see Mr. Queed again. Queed had known, without telling himself at all, that he did not want to see Miss Weyland, not, at least, till he had more time to think. But Queed"s dread of seeing the girl had nothing to do with what was uppermost in her mind--the _Post"s_ treacherous editorial. Of course, West had long since made that right as he had promised, as he would have done with no promising. But--ought he to tell her now, or to wait?... And what would she say when she knew the whole shameful truth about him--knew that for nearly a year Surface Senior and Surface Junior, shifty father and hoodwinked son, had been living fatly on the salvage of her own plundered fortune?
She would have pa.s.sed him with a bow, but Queed, more awkward than she, involuntarily halted. The dingy gas-light, which happened to be behind him, fell full upon her face, and he said at once:--
"How do you do?--not very well, I fear. You look quite used up--not well at all."
Pride raised a red flag in her cheek. She lifted a great m.u.f.f to her lips, and gave a little laugh.
"Thank you. I am quite well."