XXIX

_In which Queed's Shoulders can bear One Man's Roguery and Another's Dishonor, and of what these Fardels cost him: how for the Second Time in his Life he stays out of Bed to think._

Sharlee, sitting upstairs, took the card from the tray and, seeing the name upon it, imperceptibly hesitated. But even while hesitating, she rose and turned to her dressing-table mirror.

"Very well. Say that I'll be down in a minute."

She felt nervous, she did not know why; chilled at her hands and cold within; she rubbed her cheeks vigorously with a handkerchief to restore to them some of the color which had fled. There was a slightly pinched look at the corners of her mouth, and she smiled at her reflection in the gla.s.s, somewhat artificially and elaborately, until she had chased it away. Undoubtedly she had been working too hard by day, and going too hard by night; she must let up, stop burning the candle at both ends.

But she must see Mr. Queed, of course, to show him finally that no explanation could explain now. It came into her mind that this was but the third time he had ever been inside her house--the third, and it was the last.

He had been shown into the front parlor, the stiffer and less friendly of the two rooms, and its effect of formality matched well with the temper of their greeting. By the obvious stratagem of coming down with book in one hand and some pretense at fancy-work in the other, Sharlee avoided shaking hands with him. Having served their purpose, the small burdens were laid aside upon the table. He had been standing, awaiting her, in the shadows near the mantel; the chair that he chanced to drop into stood almost under one of the yellow lamps; and when she saw his face, she hardly repressed a start. For he seemed to have aged ten years since he last sat in her parlor, and if she had thought his face long ago as grave as a face could be, she now perceived her mistake.

The moment they were seated he began, in his usual voice, and with rather the air of having thought out in advance exactly what he was to say.

"I have come again, after all, to talk only of definite things. In fact, I have something of much importance to tell you. May I ask that you will consider it as confidential for the present?"

At the very beginning she was disquieted by the discovery that his gaze was steadier than her own. She was annoyingly conscious of looking away from him, as she said:--

"I think you have no right to ask that of me."

Surface's son smiled sadly. "It is not about--anything that you could possibly guess. I have made a discovery of--a business nature, which concerns you vitally."

"A discovery?"

"Yes. The circ.u.mstances are such that I do not feel that anybody should know of it just yet, but you. However--"

"I think you must leave me to decide, after hearing you--"

"I believe I will. I am not in the least afraid to do so. Miss Weyland, Henry G. Surface is alive."

Her face showed how completely taken back she was by the introduction of this topic, so utterly remote from the subject she had expected of him.

"Not only that," continued Queed, evenly--"he is within reach. Both he--and some property which he has--are within reach of the courts."

"Oh! How do you know?... Where is he?"

"For the present I am not free to answer those questions."

There was a brief silence. Sharlee looked at the fire, the stirrings of painful memories betrayed in her eyes.

"We knew, of course, that he might be still alive," she said slowly.

"I--hope he is well and happy. But--we have no interest in him now.

That is all closed and done with. As for the courts--I am sure that he has been punished already more than enough."

"It is not a question of punishing him any more. You fail to catch my meaning, it seems. It has come to my knowledge that he has some money, a good deal of it--"

"But you cannot have imagined that I would want his money?"

"His money? He has none. It is all yours. That is why I am telling you about it."

"Oh, but that can't be possible. I don't understand."

Sitting upright in his chair, as businesslike as an attorney, Queed explained how Surface had managed to secrete part of the embezzled trustee funds, and had been snugly living on it ever since his release from prison.

"The exact amount is, at present, mere guesswork. But I think it will hardly fall below fifty thousand dollars, and it may run as high as a hundred thousand. I learn that Mr. Surface thinks, or pretends to think, that this money belongs to him. He is, needless to say, wholly mistaken.

I have taken the liberty of consulting a lawyer about it, of course laying it before him as a hypothetical case. I am advised that when Mr.

Surface was put through bankruptcy, he must have made a false statement in order to withhold this money. Therefore, that settlement counts for nothing, except to make him punishable for perjury now. The money is yours whenever you apply for it. That--"

"Oh--but I shall not apply for it. I don't want it, you see."

"It is not a question of whether you want it or not. It is yours--in just the way that the furniture in this room is yours. You simply have no right to evade it."

Through all the agitation she felt in the sudden dragging out of this long-buried subject, his air of dictatorial authority brought the blood to her cheek.

"I have a right to evade it, in the first place, and in the second, I am not evading it at all. He took it; I let him keep it. That is the whole situation. I don't want it--I couldn't touch it--"

"Well, don't decide that now. There would be no harm, I suppose, in your talking with your mother about it--even with some man in whose judgment you have confidence. You will feel differently when you have had time to think it over. Probably it--"

"Thinking it over will make not the slightest difference in the way I feel--"

"Perhaps it would if you stopped thinking about it from a purely selfish point of view. Other--"

"_What_?"

"I say," he repeated dryly, "that you should stop thinking of the matter from a purely selfish point of view. Don't you know that that is what you are doing? You are thinking only whether or not you, personally, desire this money. Well, other people have an interest in the question besides you. There is your mother, for example. Why not consider it from her standpoint? Why not consider it from--well, from the standpoint of Mr. Surface?"

"Of Mr. Surface?"

"Certainly. Suppose that in his old age he has become penitent, and wants to do what he can to right the old wrong. Would you refuse him absolution by declining to accept your own money?"

"I think it will be time enough to decide that when Mr. Surface asks me for absolution."

"Undoubtedly. I have particularly asked, you remember, that you do not make up your mind to anything now."

"But you," said she, looking at him steadily enough now--"I don't understand how you happen to be here apparently both as my counselor and Mr. Surface's agent."

"I have a right to both capacities, I a.s.sure you."

"Or--have you a habit of being--?"

She left her sentence unended, and he finished it for her in a colorless voice.

"Of being on two sides of a fence, perhaps you were about to say?"