Chapter 17

"However," he said, with an unclouded face, "I am now giving six hours a day to it. And it is just as well to go slow. The smallest error of angle at the centre means a tremendous going astray at the circumference. I--ahem--do not feel that my summer has been wasted, by any means. You follow me? It is worth some delay to be doubly sure that I put down no plus signs as minuses."

"Yes, of course. How beautiful that is out there, isn't it?"

His eyes followed hers over the sunset spaces. "No, it is too quiet, too monotonous. If there must be scenery, let it have some originality and character. You yourself are very beautiful, I think."

Sharlee started, almost violently, and colored perceptibly. If a text-book in differential calculus, upon the turning of a page, had thrown problems to the winds and begun gibbering purple poems of passion, she could not have been more completely taken aback. However, there was no mistaking the utter and veracious impersonality of his tone.

"Oh, do you think so? I'm very glad, because I'm afraid not many people do...."

Mr. Queed remained silent. So far, so good; the conversation stood in a position eminently and scientifically correct; but Sharlee could not for the life of her forbear to add: "But I had no idea you ever noticed people's looks."

"So far as I remember, I never did before. I think it was the appearance of your eyes as you looked out over the plain that attracted my attention. Then, looking closer, I noticed that you are beautiful."

The compliment was so unique and perfect that another touch could only spoil it. Sharlee immediately changed the subject.

"Oh, Mr. Queed, has the Department you or Colonel Cowles to thank for the editorial about the reformatory this morning?"

"Both of us. He suggested it and I wrote it. So you really cannot tell us apart?"

She shook her head. "All this winter we shall work preparing the State's mind for this institution, convincing it so thoroughly that when the legislature meets again, it simply will not dare to refuse us. When I mention we and us, understand that I am speaking to you Departmentally. After that there are ten thousand other things that we want to do. But everything is so immortally slow! We are not allowed to raise our fingers without a hundred years' war first. Don't you ever wish for money--oceans and oceans of lovely money?"

"Good heavens, no!"

"I do. I'd pepper this State with institutions. Did you know," she said sweetly, "that I once had quite a little pot of money? When I was one month old."

"Yes," said Queed, "I knew. In fact, I had not been here a week before I heard of Henry G. Surface. Major Brooke speaks of him constantly, Colonel Cowles occasionally. Do you," he asked, "care much about that?"

"Well," said Sharlee, gently, "I'm glad my father never knew."

From half a mile away, behind the bellying woodland, a faint hoot served notice that the city-bound car was sweeping rapidly toward them. It was on the tip of Queed's tongue to remind Miss Weyland that, in the case of Fifi, she had taken the ground that the dead did know what was going on upon earth. But he did not do so. The proud way in which she spoke of _my father_ threw another thought uppermost in his mind.

"Miss Weyland," he said abruptly, "I made a--confidence to you, of a personal nature, the first time I ever talked with you. I did not, it is true, ask you to regard it as a confidence, but--"

"I know," interrupted Sharlee, hurriedly. "But of course I _have_ regarded it in that way, and have never spoken of it to anybody."

"Thank you. That was what I wished to say."

If Sharlee had wanted to measure now the difference that she saw in Mr. Queed, she could have done it by the shyness that they both felt in approaching a topic they had once handled with the easiest simplicity. She was glad of his sensitiveness; it became him better than his early callousness. Sharlee wore a suit of black-and-gray pin-checks, and it was very excellently tailored; for if she purchased but two suits a year, she invariably paid money to have them made by one who knew how. Her hat was of the kind that other girls study with cool diligence, while feigning engrossment in the conversation; and, repairing to their milliners, give orders for accurate copies of it. From it floated a silky-looking veil of gray-white, which gave her face that airy, cloud-like setting that photographers of the baser sort so passionately admire. The place was as windy as Troy; from far on the ringing plains the breeze raced and fell upon this veil, ceaselessly kicking it here and there, in a way that would have driven a strong man lunatic in seven minutes. Sharlee, though a slim girl and no stronger than another, remained entirely unconscious of the behavior of the veil; long familiarity had bred contempt for its boisterous play; and, with her eyes a thousand miles away, she was wishing with her whole heart that she dared ask Mr. Queed a question.

Whereupon, like her marionette that she worked by a string, he opened his mouth and gravely answered her.

"I have three theories about my father. One is that he is an eccentric psychologist with peculiar, not to say extraordinary, ideas about the bringing up of children. Another is that because of his own convenience or circumstances, he does not care to own me as I am now. The third is that because of my convenience or circumstances, he thinks that I may not care to own him as he is now. I have never heard of or from him since the letter I showed you, nearly nine months ago. I rather incline to the opinion," he said, "that my father is dead."

"If he isn't," said Sharlee, gently, as the great car whizzed up and stopped with a jerk, "I am very sure that you are to find him some day. If he hadn't meant that, he would never have asked you to come all the way from New York to settle here--do you think so?"

"Do you know," said Mr. Queed--so absorbedly as to leave her to clamber up the car steps without assistance--"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 chores 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 attitude 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 attitude, 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 passed 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 assure you. To have a place of his own has long been his dream, he tells me; but he cannot afford it without the financial assistance 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?"

He thought this over in silence and then said impatiently; "I'm sorry, but I do not feel that I can consider that phase of the matter."

"Certainly not."

"The arrangement between us is a strictly business one, based on mutual advantage, and to be terminated at will as the interests of either party dictates."

"Exactly."

He turned a sharp glance on her, and rose. Having risen he stood a moment, irresolute, frowning, troubled by a thought. Then he said, in an annoyed, nervous voice:--

"Look here, will it be a serious thing for your aunt to lose me?"

The agent burst out laughing. He was surprised by her merriment; he could not guess that it covered her instantaneous discovery that she liked him more than she would ever have thought possible.

"While I'm on the other side--remember that," said she, "I'm obliged to tell you that we can let the rooms any day at an hour's notice. Not that the places of our two scholars can ever be filled, but the boarding-house business is booming these days. We are turning them away. Do you remember the night that you walked in here an hour late for supper, and I arose and collected twenty dollars from you?"

"Oh, yes.... By the way--I have never asked--whatever became of that extraordinary pleasure-dog of yours?"

"Thank you. He is bigger and more pleasurable than ever. I take him out every afternoon, and each day, just as the clock strikes five, he knocks over a strange young man for me. It is delightful sport. But he has never found any young man that he enjoyed as heartily as he did you."

Gravely he moved toward the door. "I must return to my work. You will tell your aunt I have given notice? Well--good-evening."

"_Good_-evening, Mr. Queed."

The door half shut upon him, but opened again to admit his head and shoulders.

"By the way, there was a curious happening yesterday which might be of interest to you. Did you see it in the _Post_--a small item headed 'The Two Queeds'?"

"Oh--no! About you and Tim?"

"About Tim, but not about me. His beat was changed the other day, it seems, and early yesterday morning a bank in his new district was broken into. Tim went in and arrested the burglar after a desperate fight in the dark. When other policemen came and turned on the lights, Tim discovered to his horror that he had captured his brother Murphy."

XVIII

_Of President West of Old Blaines College, his Trustees and his Troubles; his Firmness in the Brown-Jones Hazing Incident so misconstrued by Malicious Asses; his Article for the Post, and why it was never printed: all ending in West's Profound Dissatisfaction with the Rewards of Patriotism._

The way of Blaines College was not wholly smooth that winter, and annoyances rose to fret the fine edge of President West's virgin enthusiasms. The opening had been somewhat disappointing. True, there were more students than last year, the exact increment being nine. But West had hoped for an increase of fifty, and had communicated his expectations to the trustees, who were correspondingly let down when the actual figures--total enrolment, 167--were produced at the October meeting. The young president explained about the exasperating delays in getting out his advertising literature, but the trustees rather hemmed over the bills and said that that was a lot of money. And one of them bluntly called attention to the fact that the President had not assumed his duties till well along in September.

West, with charming humility and good humor, asked indulgence for his inexperience. His mistake, he said, in giving an excess of time to the study of the great collegiate systems of the old world, if it was a mistake, was one that could hardly be repeated. Next year ...

"Meantime," said the blunt trustee, "you've got a ten per cent increase in expenditures and but nine more stoodents."

"Let us not wholly forget," said West, with his disarming smile, "my hope to add substantially to the endowment."

But he marked this trustee as one likely to give trouble in the future, and hence to be handled with care. He was a forthright, upstanding, lantern-jawed man of the people, by the name of James E. Winter. A contractor by profession and a former member of the city council, he represented the city on the board of trustees. For the city appropriated seventy-five hundred dollars a year, for the use of the college, and in return for this munificence, reserved the right to name three members of the board.

Nor was Mr. Winter the only man of his kidney on that directorate. From his great friend among the trustees, Mr. Fyne, donator of the fifty thousand dollar endowment on which Blaines College partly subsisted, West learned that his election to the presidency had failed of being unanimous. In fact, the vote had stood seven to five, and the meeting at which he was chosen had at times approached violence. Of the five, two had voted against West because they thought that old Dr. Gilfillan's resignation did not have that purely spontaneous character so desirable under the circumstances; two because they did not think that West had the qualifications, or would have the right point of view, for a people's college; and one for all these reasons, or for any other reason, which is to say for personal reasons. This one, said Mr. Fyne, was James E. Winter.

"I know," said West. "He's never got over the poundings we used to give him in the _Post_ when he trained with those grafters on the Council. He'd put poison in my tea on half a chance."

Unhappily, the sharp cleft made in the board at the time of the election survived and deepened. The trustees developed a way of dividing seven to five on almost all of West's recommendations which was anything but encouraging. An obstinate, but human, pride of opinion tended to keep the two factions facing each other intact, and matters very tiny in themselves served, as the weeks went by, to aggravate this feeling. Once, at least, before Christmas, it required all of West's tact and good-humor to restore the appearance of harmony to a meeting which was fast growing excited.

But the young president would not allow himself to become discouraged. He earnestly intended to show James E. Winter which of the two knew most about running a modern institution of the higher learning. Only the perfectest bloom of his ardor faded under the constant handling of rough fingers. The interval separating Blaines College and the University of Paris began to loom larger than it had seemed in the halcyon summer-time, and the classic group of noble piles receded further and further into the prophetic haze. But West's fine energy and optimism remained. And he continued to see in the college, unpromising though the outlook was in some respects, a real instrument for the uplift.

The president sat up late on those evenings when social diversions did not claim his time, going over and over his faculty list with a critical eye, and always with profound disapproval. There were only three Ph.D.'s among them, and as a whole the average of attainment was below, rather than above, the middle grade. They were, he was obliged to admit, a lot of cheap men for a cheap college. With such a staff, a distinguished standard was clearly not to be hoped for. But what to do about it? His general idea during the summer had been mercilessly to weed out the weak brothers in the faculty, a few at a time, and fill their places with men of the first standing. But now a great obstacle presented itself. Men of the first standing demanded salaries of the first standing. Blaines College was not at present in position to pay such salaries. Obviously one of two courses remained. Either the elevation of the faculty must proceed in a very modest form, or else Blaines College must get in position to pay larger salaries. West decided to move in both directions.