Queed

“ And he, Queed, was this man's closest, his only friend, chosen out of all the world to live with him and minister to his declining years....
"It's true!" now broke through the concealing hands. "I am that man.... God help me!"
Queed looked unseeingly out of the window, where the sun was couching in a bed of copper flame stippled over with brightest azure. Why had he done it? What crazy prompting had struck from him that promise to yoke his destiny forever with this terrible old man? If Nicolovius, the Fenian refugee, had never won his liking, Surface, the Satan apostate, was detestable to him. ”

“ The moral responsibility was none of his; and as for a name, Queed was as good as any other. X or Y was a good enough name for a real man, whose life could demonstrate his utter independence of the labels so carefully pasted upon him by environment and circumstance.
Still, if he were to die, he felt that his father, if yet alive, should come forward and weep for him, even as Mrs. Paynter was weeping for Fifi down in the Second Front. He should stand out like a man and take from Buck's hand the solemn ceremonies of cremation. ”

“ Queed resumed his seat. His face was a little pale, but otherwise just as usual. Inwardly, after the moment of critical uncertainty, he was shaken by a tempest of fierce exultation. His club, after all, was going to be strong enough; the old man would give up the money rather than give up him.
Surface picked up his cigarette. All his storm signals had disappeared as by magic.
"I did manage," began the old man, flicking off his ash with an admirable effect of calm, "to save a small nest-egg from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old age. ”

“ He leaned over the table, fixing Queed with a gaze of triumphant cunning. "I'm going to make you my heir! Leave everything I have in the world to you!"
A wave of sick disgust swept through the young man, momentarily engulfing his power of speech. Never had the old man's face looked so loathsome to him, never the man himself appeared so utterly detestable. ”

“ Queed, how much your intellect, your culture, your admirable—ah—poise—amazing they seem to me in so young a man—have appealed to me among a population of Brookes, Bylashes, and Klinkers? You are the first man in many a day that has inspired me with an impulse toward friendship and confidence. ”

“ Queed said that he had seen it.
"You had a good place to see it from, I hope?"
Excellent; Miss Weyland's porch.
"Ah!" said Nicolovius, with rather an emphasis, and permitted a pause to fall. "A most charming young lady—charming," he went on, with his note of velvet irony which the young man peculiarly disliked. "I hear she is to marry your Mr. West. An eminently suitable match in every way. Yet I shall not soon forget how that delightful young man defrauded you of the editorship." ”

“ But what Sharlee liked best about this unglassed and unscienced Mr. Queed was his entire absence of any self-consciousness in regard to her. When he told her that Easter Monday night that he cheerfully took his turn on the psychological operating-table, anæsthetics barred, and no mercy asked or given, it appeared that he, alone among men, really meant it.
Under the tiny bridge, a correspondingly tiny brook purled without surcease, its heart set upon somewhere finding the sea. Over their heads a glorious maple was taking off its coat of many colors in the wind. ”

“ In the hall, it occurred to Queed that perhaps he had misled his chief a little, though speaking the literal truth. The fall that some body had gotten was indeed nothing much, for people's bodies counted for nothing so long as they kept them under. But the fall that this body's self-esteem had gotten was no such trivial affair. It struck the young man as decidedly curious that the worst tumble his pride had ever received had come to him through his body, that part of him which he had always treated with the most systematic contempt. ”

“ Fifi laughed and coughed. "There's a big difference—isn't there? Why, it's just like the exercise, Mr. Queed. Before you began it you were just not sick; now you are very well. That's the difference between content and happiness. Now I," she ran on, "am very, very happy. I wake up in the mornings so glad that I'm alive that sometimes I can hardly bear it, and all through the day it's like something singing away inside of me! Are you like that?"
No, Mr. Queed must confess that he was not like that. ”

“ Queed smiled.
"And I was only trying in my poor way," said West, mournfully, "to follow the advice that you, young man, roared at me for a column on the fatal morning."
"I've regretted that," said Queed. "Though, of course, I never looked for any such developments as this. I was merely trying to act on Colonel Cowles's advice about always playing up local topics. You are doubtless familiar with his dictum that the people are far more interested in a cat-fight at Seventh and Centre Streets than in the greatest exploits of science." ”

“ 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 ”

“ Yet in the same breath, he had allowed his former chief to foist off that dishonesty upon his own clean shoulders, and borne the detestable burden without demand for sympathy or claim for gratitude. And this was the measure of how, as Queed had climbed by his honesty, his whole nature had been strengthened and refined. For if he had begun as the most unconscious and merciless of egoists, who could sacrifice little Fifi to his comfort without a tremor, he had ended with the supreme act of purest altruism: the voluntary sacrifice of himself to save a man whom in his heart he must despise. ”

“ She breathed a sigh. Colonel Cowles, entering with the breath of winter upon him, greeted her affectionately. Queed, rather relieved that his too hasty offer had not been accepted, noted with vexation that his conversation with the agent had cost him eighteen minutes of time. Vigorously he readdressed himself to the currency problems of the Bavarians; the girl's good-night, as applied to him, fell upon ears deafer than any post.
Sharlee walked home through the tingling twilight; fourteen blocks, and she did them four times a day. ”

“ Queed turned on him. "But you never read Southern historians."
Nicolovius had a smile for that, though his expression seemed subtly to shift. "I must make confession to you. Three days ago, I broke the habits of quarter of a century. At the second-hand shop on Centre Street I bought, actually, a little volume of history. It is surprising how these Southern manifestations have interested me."
Queed was an undesirable person for any man to live with who had a secret to keep. His mind was relentlessly constructive; it would build you up the whole dinosaur from the single left great digitus. ”

“ Nicolovius resumed his cigarette. Talk languished. Both men enjoyed a good silence. Many a supper they ate through without a word. The old man's attitude toward the young one was charming. He had sloughed off some of the too polished blandness of his manner, and now offered a simpler meeting ground of naturalness and kindliness. They had shared the Duke of Gloucester Street roof-tree for a month, but Queed did not yet accept it as a matter of course. ”

“ Insensibly summer faded into autumn, and still the science of Human Intercourse was faithfully practiced. The Paynter parlor knew Queed not infrequently in these days, where he could sometimes be discovered not merely suffering, but encouraging, Major Brooke to talk to him of his victories over the Republicans in 1870-75. Nor was he a stranger to Nicolovius's sitting-room, having made it an iron-clad rule with himself to accept one out of every two invitations to that charming cloister. ”

“ The agent did not answer. By a series of covert glances she had been trying to learn, upside down, what it was that Mr. Queed was reading. "Sociology," she had easily picked out, but the chapter heading, on the opposite page, was more troublesome, and, deeply absorbed, she had now just succeeded in deciphering it. The particular division of his subject in which Mr. Queed was so much engrossed was called "Man's Duty to His Neighbors."
Struck by the silence, Sharlee looked up with a small start, and the faintest possible blush. ”

“ Vaguely Queed saw in her blue-spar eyes the same kind of softness that he noticed in people's voices this afternoon, a softness which somehow reminded him of a funeral, Fifi's or Colonel Cowles's.
"Oh, very well, if you like."
Sharlee put the flag in his buttonhole under her mother's watchful gaze. Then she got cushions and straw-mats, and explained their uses in connection with steps. Next, she gave a practical demonstration of the same by seating the young man, and sitting down beside him.
"One thing I have noticed about loving the South. Everybody does it, who takes the trouble to know us. ”

“ Queed was playing the devil's tattoo with his pencil, scowling somewhat nervously. "Did you want to graduate particularly?"
A look of exquisite wistfulness swept the child's face, and was gone. "Yes, I wanted to—lots. But I won't mind so much after I've had time to get used to it. You know the way people are."
There was a silence, during which the young man wrestled with the sudden mad idea of offering to help Fifi with all her lessons each night—not merely with the difficulties—thus enabling her to keep up with her class with a minimum of work. ”

“ However, I do not smoke," said Doctor Queed, and, bowing coldly to the old professor, started rapidly up the stairs.
Aloft the young man went to his scriptorium, happy in the thought that five hours of incorruptible leisure and unswerving devotion to his heart's dearest lay before him. It had been a day when the Post did not require him; hour by hour since breakfast he had fared gloriously upon his book. But to-night his little room was cold; unendurably cold; not even the flamings of genius could overcome its frigor ”

“ His editorship and his reformatory had gone down together.
Yet he was in no hurry now about following West into his sanctum. Of all things Queed, as people called him, despised heroics and abhorred a "scene." Nothing could be gained by a quarrel now; very earnestly he desired the interview to be as matter-of-fact as possible. In half an hour, when he had come to a convenient stopping-place, he opened the door and stood uncomfortably before the young man he had so long admired. ”

“ Queed lived now in the glow of perfect physical health, a very different thing, as Fifi had once pointed out, from merely not feeling sick. In the remarkable development that his body was undergoing, he had found an unexpected pride. But the Mercury, though he hardly realized it at the time, was useful to him in a bigger way than bodily improvement.
Here he met young men who were most emphatically in touch with life. ”

“ He came slowly around the tiny table, and Queed watched his coming with bursts of fierce repugnance which set his hard-won muscles to twitching. An elemental satisfaction there might be in throwing the old man through the window. Yet, in a truer sense, he felt that the necessity of manhandling him would be the final touch in this degrading interview.
"You value your society too high, my dear boy," said Surface with a face of chalk. "You want too big a price. I must fork over every penny I have, to a young trollop who happens to have caught your fancy—"
"Stand away from me!" ”

“ A passionate wish to mother the little Doctor tugged at her heart.
"You know what you need, Mr. Queed? Friends—lots of good friends—"
He winced as from a blow. "I assure you—"
"Yes—you—DO!" said Fifi, with surprising emphasis for so weak a little voice. "You need first a good girl friend, one lots older and better than me—one just like Sharlee. O if only you and she would be friends!—she'd be the very best in the world! And then you need men friends, plenty of them, and to go around with them, and everything. You ought to like men more, Mr. Queed! ”

“ Queed never read his own articles when they appeared in print in the Post. In this peculiarity he may be said to have resembled all the rest of the world, with the exception of the Secretary of the Tax Reform League, and the Assistant Secretary of the State Department of Charities. But not by any such device, either, can a man elude his Fate. On the day following his conversation with Mrs. Paynter's agent, Fortune gave Queed to hear a portion of his article on the Bavarians read aloud, and read with derisive laughter. ”

“ Two mats and a cushion."
"Well, he is not a Union officer," said Sharlee to Queed, "for if he were, he would not be bitter. All the bitterness nowadays comes from the non-combatants, the camp-followers, the sutlers, and the cowards. Look, Mr. Queed! Look!"
The street had become a tumult, the shouting grew into a roar. Two squares away the head of the parade swept into view, and drew steadily nearer. Mr. Queed looked, and felt a thrill in despite of himself. ”

“ Here, doubtless, would some day stand the colossal work of Queed. At the big desk sat the Rev. Mr. Dayne, a practical idealist of no common sort, a kind-faced man with a crisp brown mustache. At the typewriter-table sat Sharlee Weyland, writing firm letters to thirty-one county almshouse keepers. It was hard upon noon. Sharlee looked tired and sad about the eyes. She had not been to supper at Mrs. Paynter's for months, but she went there nearly every afternoon from the office to see Fifi, who had been in bed for four weeks. ”