Queed Part 33

Here was a youth, with the qualities of potential great valuableness, and the wise editor, as soon as this appeared, gave him his chance by calling him off the fields of taxation and currency and a.s.signing him to topics plucked alive from the day's news.

On the fatal 15th of May, the Colonel told Queed merely that the _Post_ desired his work as long as it showed such promise as it now showed.

That was all the talk about the dismissal that ever took place between them. The Colonel was no believer in fulsome praise for the young. But to others he talked more freely, and this was how it happened that the daughter of his old friend John Randolph Weyland knew that Mr. Queed was slated for an early march upstairs.

For Queed the summer had been a swift and immensely busy one. To write editorials that have a relation with everyday life, it gradually became clear to him that the writer must himself have some such relation. In June the Mercury Athletic a.s.sociation had been thoroughly reorganized and rejuvenated, and regular meets were held every Sat.u.r.day night. At Trainer Klinker's command, Queed had resolutely permitted himself to be inducted into the Mercury; moreover, he made it a point of honor to attend the Sat.u.r.day night functions, where he had the ideal chance to match his physical competence against that of other men. Early in the sessions at the gymnasium, Buck had introduced his pupil to boxing-glove and punching-bag, his own special pa.s.sions, and now his orders ran that the Doc should put on the gloves with any of the Mercuries that were willing. Most of the Mercuries were willing, and on these early Sat.u.r.day nights, Stark's rocked with the falls of Dr. Queed. But under Klinker's stern discipline, he was already acquiring something like a form. By midsummer he had gained a small reputation for scientific precision b.u.t.tressed by invincible inability to learn when he was licked, and autumn found many of the Mercuries decidedly less Barkis-like than of old.

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.

They treated him as an equal with reference to his waxing muscular efficiency, and with some respect as regards his journalistic connection. "Want you to shake hands with the editor of the _Post_," so kindly Buck would introduce him. After the bouts or the "exhibition" of a Sat.u.r.day, there was always a smoker, and in the highly instructed and expert talk of his club-mates the Doctor learned many things that were to be of value to him later on. Some of the Mercuries, besides their picturesque general knowledge, knew much more about city politics than ever got into the papers. There was Jimmy Wattrous, for example, already rising into fame as Plonny Neal's most promising lieutenant. Jimmy bared his heart with the Mercuries, and was particularly friendly with the representative of the great power which moulds public opinion. Now and then, Neal himself looked in, Plonny, the great boss, who was said to hold the city in the hollow of his hand. Many an editorial that surprised and pleased Colonel Cowles was born in that square room back of Stark's.

And all these things took time ... took time.... And there were nights when Queed woke wide-eyed with cold sweat on his brow and the cold fear in his heart that he and posterity were being cheated, that he was making an irretrievable and ghastly blunder.

Desperate months were May, June, and July for the little Doctor. In all this time he never once put his own pencil to his own paper. Ma.n.u.script and Schedule lay locked together in a drawer, toward which he could never bear to glance. Thirteen hours a day he gave to the science of editorial writing; two hours a day to the science of physical culture; one hour a day (computed average) to the science of Human Intercourse; but to the Science of Sciences never an hour on never a day. The rest was food and sleep. Such was his life for three months; a life that would have been too horrible to contemplate, had it not been that in all of his new sciences he uncovered a growing personal interest which kept him constantly astonished at himself.

By the end of June he found it safe to give less and less time to the study of editorial paradigms, for he had the technique at his fingers'

ends; and so he gave more and more time to the ama.s.sment of material.

For he had made a magnificent boast, and he never had much idea of permitting it to turn out empty, for all his nights of torturing misgivings. He read enormously with expert facility and a beautifully trained memory; read history, biography, memoirs, war records, old newspapers, old speeches, councilmanic proceedings, departmental reports--everything he could lay his hands on that promised capital for an editorial writer in that city and that State. By the end of July he felt that he could slacken up here, too, having pretty well exhausted the field, and the first day of August--red-letter day in the annals of science--saw him unlock the sacred drawer with a close-set face. And now the Schedule, so long lapsed, was reinstated, with Four Hours a Day segregated to Magnum Opus. A pitiful little step at reconstruction, perhaps, but still a step. And henceforth every evening, between 9.30 and 1.30, Dr. Queed sat alone in his Scriptorium and embraced his love.

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.

After all, there might be something to learn from both the Major's fiery reminiscences and the old professor's cultured talk. He himself, he found, tended naturally toward silence. Listeners appeared to be needed in a world where the supply of talkers exceeded the demand. The telling of humorous anecdote he had definitely excided from his creed. It did not appear needed of him; and he was sure that the author of his creed would h&self have authorized him to drop it. He never missed Fifi now, according to the way of this world, but he thought of her sometimes, which is all that anybody has a right to expect. Miss Weyland he had not seen since the day Fifi died. Mrs. Paynter had been away all summer, a firm spinster cousin coming in from the country to run the boarders, and the landlady's agent came to the house no more. Buck Klinket he saw incessantly; he was the first person in the world, probably, that the little Doctor had ever really liked. It was Buck who suggested to his pupil, in October, a particularly novel experience for his soul's unfolding, which Queed, though failing to adopt it, sometimes dandled before his mind's eye with a kind of horrified fascination, viz: the taking of Miss Miller to the picture shows.

But the bulk of his time this autumn was still going to his work on the _Post_. With ever fresh wonderment, he faced the fact that this work, first taken up solely to finance the Scriptorium, and next enlarged to satisfy a most irrational instinct, was growing slowly but surely upon his personal interest. Certainly the application of a new science to a new set of practical conditions was stimulating to his intellect; the panorama of problems whipped out daily by the telegraph had a warmth and immediateness wanting to the abstractions of closet philosophy. Queed's articles lacked the Colonel's expert fluency, his loose but telling vividness, his faculty for broad satire which occasionally set the whole city laughing. On the other hand, they displayed an exact knowledge of fact, a breadth of study and outlook, and a habit of plumbing bottom on any and all subjects which critical minds found wanting in the Colonel's delightful discourses. And nowadays the young man's articles were constantly reaching a higher and higher level of readability. Not infrequently they attracted public comment, not only, indeed not oftenest, inside the State. Queed knew what it was to be quoted in that identical New York newspaper from whose pages, so popular for wrapping around pork chops, he had first picked out his letters.

Of these things the honorable _Post_ directors were not unmindful. They met on October 10, and upon Colonel Cowles's cordial recommendation, named Mr. Queed a.s.sistant editor of the _Post_ at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars per annum. And Mr. Queed accepted the appointment without a moment's hesitation.

So far, then, the magnificent boast had been made good. The event fell on a Sat.u.r.day. The Sunday was sunny, windy, and crisp. Free for the day and regardful of the advantages of open-air pedestrianism, the new a.s.sistant editor put on his hat from the dinner-table and struck for the open country. He rambled far, over trails strange to him, and came up short, about 4.30 in the afternoon, in a grove of immemorial pines which he instantly remembered to have seen before.

XVII

_A Remeeting in a Cemetery: the Ungla.s.sed Queed who loafed on Rustic Bridges; of the Consequences of failing to tell a Lady that you hope to see her again soon._

Fifi's grave had long since lost its first terrible look of bare newness. Gra.s.s grew upon it in familiar ways. Rose-bushes that might have stood a lifetime nodded over it by night and by day. Already "the minute grey lichens, plate o'er plate," were "softening down the crisp-cut name and date"; and the winds of winter and of summer blew over a little mound that had made itself at home in the still city of the dead.

Green was the turf above Fifi, sweet the peacefulness of her little churchyard. Her cousin Sharlee, who had loved her well, disposed her flowers tenderly, and stood awhile in reverie of the sort which the surroundings so irresistibly invited. But the schedules of even electric car-lines are inexorable; and presently she saw from a glance at her watch that she must turn her face back to the city of the living.

On the little rustic bridge a hundred yards away, a man was standing, with rather the look of having stopped at just that minute. From a distance Sharlee's glance swept him lightly; she saw that she did not know him; and not fancying his frank stare, she drew near and stepped upon the bridge with a splendid unconsciousness of his presence. But just when she was safely by, her ears were astonished by his voice speaking her name.

"How do you do, Miss Weyland?"

She turned, surprised by a familiar note in the deep tones, looked, and--yes, there could be no doubt of it--it was--

"Mr. Queed! Why, _how_ do you do!"

They shook hands. He removed his hat for the process, doing it with a certain painstaking precision which betrayed want of familiarity with the engaging rite.

"I haven't seen you for a long time," said Sharlee brightly.

The dear, old remark--the moss-covered remark that hung in the well! How on earth could we live without it? In behalf of Sharlee, however, some excuses can be urged; for, remembering the way she had talked to Mr.

Queed once on the general subject of failures, she found herself struggling against a most absurd sense of embarra.s.sment.

"No," replied Queed, replacing his hat as though following from memory the diagram in a book of etiquette. He added, borrowing one of the Colonel's favorite expressions, "I hope you are very well."

"Yes, indeed.... I'm so glad you spoke to me, for to tell you the truth, I never, never should have known you if you hadn't."

"You think that I've changed? Well," said he, gravely, "I ought to have.

You might say that I've given five months to it."

"You've changed enormously."

She examined with interest this new Mr. Queed who loafed on rustic bridges, five miles from a Sociology, and hailed pa.s.sing ladies on his own motion. He appeared, indeed, decidedly altered.

In the first place, he looked decidedly bigger, and, to come at once to the fact, he was. For Klinker's marvelous exercises for all parts of the body had done more than add nineteen pounds to his weight, and deepen his chest, and broaden his shoulders. They had pulled and tugged at the undeveloped tissues until they had actually added a hard-won three-quarters of an inch to his height. The stoop was gone, and instead of appearing rather a small man, Mr. Queed now looked full middle-height or above. He wore a well-made suit of dark blue, topped by a correct derby. His hair was cut trim, his color was excellent, and, last miracle of all, he wore no spectacles. It was astonis.h.i.+ng but true. The beautiful absence of these round disfigurements brought into new prominence a pair of grayish eyes which did not look so very professorial, after all.

But what Sharlee liked best about this ungla.s.sed 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, anaesthetics 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.

Sharlee put back a small hand into a large m.u.f.f and said:--

"At church this morning I saw Colonel Cowles. He told me about you. I don't know how you look at it, but I think you're a subject for the heartiest congratulations. So here are mine."

"The men at the Mercury were pleased, too," mused Mr. Queed, looking out over the landscape. "Do you ever read my articles now?"

"For many years," said Sharlee, evasively, "I have always read the _Post_ from cover to cover. It's been to me like those books you see in the advertis.e.m.e.nts and nowhere else. Grips the reader from the start, and she cannot lay it down till the last page is turned."

A brief smile appeared in the undisguised eyes. "Do you notice any distinctions now between me and the Encyclopedia Britannica?"

"Unless you happen to refer to Lombroso or Buckle or Aristotle or Plato," said Sharlee, not noticing the smile, "I never know whether it's your article or Colonel Cowles's. Do you mind walking on? It's nearly time for my car."

"A year ago," said he, "I certainly should not have liked that. I do now, since it means that I have succeeded in what I set out to do. I've thought a good deal about that tired bricklayer this summer," he went on, quite unembarra.s.sed. "By the way, I know one personally now: Timrod Burns, of the Mercury. Only I can't say that I ever saw Timmy tired."

Down the woodland path they pa.s.sed side by side, headed for the little station known as Stop 11. Sharlee was pleased that he had remembered about the bricklayer; she could have been persuaded that his remark was vaguely intended to convey some sort of thanks to her. But saying no more of this, she made it possible to introduce casually a reference to his vanished gla.s.ses.

"Yes," said he, "I knocked them off the bureau and broke them one day.

So I just let them go. They were rather striking-looking gla.s.ses, I always thought. I don't believe I ever saw another pair quite like them."

"But," said Sharlee, puzzled, "do you find that you can see perfectly well without them?"

"Oh, yes; if anything, better." He paused, and added with entire seriousness: "You see those spectacles, striking-looking as they were, were only window-gla.s.s. I bought them at a ten-cent store on Sixth Avenue when I was twelve years old."

"Oh! What made you do that?"

"All the regulars at the Astor Library wore them. At the time it seemed to be the thing to do, and of course they soon became second nature to me. But I daresay no one ever had a sounder pair of eyes than I."