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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. What devil of impulse had trapped from him the mad offer to spend his days in the company of such a creature, and in the shadow of so odious an ill-fame?
But it was not in the least all right for one man to live with another, pretending to believe in him, when in reality he was doubting and questioning him at every move. The want of candor involved in his present relations with Nicolovius continually fretted Queed's conscience.
"I must say something that will offend you, I'm afraid. For some time I have found myself unable to believe the story of your life you were once good enough to give me." "Ah, well," said Nicolovius, engrossed in his book, "it is not required of you to believe it. We need have no quarrel about that." Suddenly Queed found that he hated to give the stab, but he did not falter.
"What is the book?" he asked. "A very able little history of the Reconstruction era in this State. I have a mind to read you a passage and convert you." Nicolovius sat down, and began turning the pages. Queed stood a step away, watching him intently. The old man fluttered the leaves vaguely for a moment; then his expression shifted and, straightening up, he suddenly closed the book.
Everybody thought that the old professor's remark was in bad taste, for it was generally known that Henry G. Surface was one subject that even Miss Weyland's intimate friends never mentioned to her. Nicolovius, however, appeared absolutely unconcerned by the boarders' silent rebuke. He ate on, rapidly but abstemiously, and finished before Mr. Bylash, who had had twenty minutes' start of him.
"But I thought you yourself never read recent history." Nicolovius flung him a sharp look, which the young man, staring thoughtfully at the floor, missed. The old professor laughed. "My dear boy! I read it on the lips of Major Brooke, I read it daily in the newspapers, I read it in such articles as your Colonel Cowles wrote about this very Reunion.
However, Queed positively refused to be drawn away from the book-shelves to listen to his story, and the old professor was compelled to turn away from the fire and to talk, at that, to the back of the young man's head. Nicolovius, so he told Queed, was not an American at all, but an Irishman, born at Roscommon, Connaught. His grandfather was a German, whence he got his name.
Thenceforward he stalked his prey as Nicolovius with what consummate skill and success! Oh, but did he not have a clever father, a stealthy, cunning, merciless father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop!
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."
Nor could he help being struck with such facts as that Nicolovius, while apparently little interested in the occasional cables about Irish affairs, had become seemingly absorbed in the three days' doings of the United Confederate Veterans. Now it was entirely all right for the old man to have a secret, and keep it. There was not the smallest quarrel on that score.
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