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Updated: May 26, 2025
"I have gotten very much interested in his story," said Queed, which was certainly true enough. "Where do people think that he is now?" "Oh, in the West somewhere, living like a fat hog off Miss Weyland's money." Queed's heart lost a beat. An instinct, swift as a reflex, turned him to the window again; he feared that his face might commit treason.
Much interested, he had lingered till the other guests were gone; and now there was nobody upon the porch but Miss Weyland's mother and grandmother, who sat at the further end of it, the eyes of both, did Mr. Queed but know it, upon him. "Why don't you come to see me sometimes?" the daughter and granddaughter was saying sweetly.
It became like one of those swinging logs which hunters hang in trees to catch bears: the harder he pushed it away, the harder it swung back at him. He fully understood the persistence of this idea. It was the heart and soul of the whole question. He himself was simply Miss Weyland's friend, the least among many.
At just that minute, outraged partners of Miss Weyland's espied and descended upon them with loud reproachful cries, and Charles Gardiner West's moment of superb impetuosity had flowered in nothing. At a little earlier hour on the same evening, in a dining-room a mile away, eight men met "without political significance" to elect a new set of officers for the city.
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.
O heavens! Look look!" West looked. Up the front steps of Miss Weyland's Aunt Jennie's a man was going, a smallish man in a suit of dusty clothes, who limped as he walked.
From his place on the top step, Queed turned and let his frank glance run over the ladies on the porch. The sadness of face that he had noticed earlier had dissolved and precipitated now: there was hardly a dry eye on that porch but his own. What were they all crying for? Miss Weyland's explanation did not seem very convincing. The war had ended a generation ago.
Running professionally through the Post at breakfast-time, his eye, like Miss Weyland's, had been suddenly riveted by that paper's remarks upon the reformatory.... What was the meaning of the staggering performance he had no idea, and need not inquire. Its immediate effect upon his own career was at least too plain for argument. His editorship and his reformatory had gone down together.
As for Charles Weyland's ripsaw criticisms, he had analyzed them dispassionately, as he had promised, and his reason rejected them in toto. Yet he could not exactly say that he had wholly purged them out of his mind. No ... the fact was that some of her phrases had managed to burn themselves into his brain.
On some houses, the decorations for the dead were five times greater, like Benjamin's mess; on others, ten times; on yet others, no colors at all floated but the beloved Stars and Bars. Upon the steps of Mrs. Weyland's porch sat Mr. Queed, come by special invitation of Mrs. Weyland's daughter to witness the parade.
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