On the wall behind him lettered in gold leaf on black enamel, hung the apothegm (not from the eloquent pen of Doctor Wilde)—“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Beneath, in a long mahogany bookcase, were hundreds of volumes, every one inserted in gratitude and admiration to the editor of My Brothers Keeper. The great desk was heaped with books, manuscripts, folders of correspondence. Beside it, pencil warily poised, sat Miss Hardwick, who for more than twenty years had followed Doctor Wilde about these offices—during most of every working day taking down his most trivial utterances, every word, to be transcribed later on the typewriter by her three six-dollar-a-week girls. It was from the resulting mass of verbiage that Miss Hardwick and the doctor dug out and arranged the weekly sermon-editorials that you read when you were a Sunday-school pupil and that your non-citified aunts and uncles are reading in book form to this day. They were a force, these sermons. Make no mistake about that! They had a sensational vigor that you rarely heard from the formal pulpit. The back-cover announcements of feature-sermons to come were stirring in themselves. If your mind be “practical,” scorning all mystical theorizings, let me pass on to you the inside information that through sermons and advertisements of sermons and sensational full-page appeals in display type this man whom Hy light-mindedly dismissed with the title of “the Walrus” had collected more than two million dollars in twenty years for those mission stations of his in Africa or Madagascar (or whenever they were). That is slightly upward of a hundred thousand a year in actual money, as a net average!
We have had a momentary glimpse of Doctor Wilde. That was at the Crossroads Theater, where his runaway daughter was playing a boy in Jacob Zanin's playlet, Any Street. But the Walrus was then out of his proper setting—was merely a grim hint of a forgotten Puritanism in that little Bohemian world of experimental compliance with the Freudian Wish.
We see him in his proper setting here. The old-fashioned woodcut of him that was always in the upper left corner of sermon or announcement was made in 1886—-that square, young, strong face, prominent nose, penetrating eyes. Even then it flattered him. The man now sitting at the enormous desk was twenty-nine years older. The big hooked nose was still there. The pale-green eyes were still a striking feature; but they looked tired now. There was the strip of whisker on each cheek, close-clipped, tinged now with gray. He was heavier in neck and shoulders. There were deep lines about the wide, thin, orator's mouth. Despite the nose and eyes there was something yielding about that mouth; something of the old politician who has learned to temper strength with craft, who has learned, too, that human nature moves and functions within rather narrow limits and is assailed by subtle weaknesses. It was an enigmatic face. Beneath it were low turnover collar, the usual white string tie and a well-worn black frock coat.
Doctor Wilde was nervous this morning. His eyes found it difficult to meet those of his mild-faced assistant in the old alpaca office coat.
“Miss Hardwick—you may go, please!” Thus Doctor Wilde; and he threw out his hands in a nervous gesture.
For an instant, sensing some new tension in the office atmosphere, Hy caught himself thinking of Sue Wilde. She had a trick of throwing out her hands like that. Only she did it with extraordinary grace. In certain ways they were alike, this eccentric gifted man and his eccentric equally gifted daughter. Not in all particulars; for Sue had charm. “Must get it from her mother's side,” mused Hy. He knew that the mother was dead, that the house from which Sue had fled to Greenwich Village and Art and Freedom was now presided over by a second wife who dressed surprisingly well, and whose two children—little girls—were on occasions brought into the office.
His reverie ended abruptly. Miss Hardwick had gathered up her note-books and pencils; was rising now; and as she passed out, released in Hy's direction one look that almost frightened him. It was a barbed shaft of bitter malevolence, oddly confused with trembling, incredible triumph.
“Sit down, please!” It was Doctor Wilde's voice. Hy sat down in the chair that was always kept for him across the huge desk from the doctor. That gentleman had himself risen, creaked over to the door, was closing it securely.
What had that queer look meant? From Miss Hardwick of all people! To Hy she had been hardly more than an office fixture. But in that brief instant she had revealed depths of hatred, malignant jealousy—something!
The doctor sank heavily into his own chair. Hy, mystified, watched him and waited. The man reached for a paper-weight—a brass model of his first mission house from Africa or Madagascar or somewhere—and placed it before him on top of the unopened morning's mail, moved it this way, then a little that way and looked at it critically. Hy, more and more startled, a thought hypnotized, leaned forward on the desk and gazed at that little brass house. Finally the doctor spoke: