LITMIR.BIZ

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Louie was gladly confiding to Sir Edgar. “There’s really not a flaw in the conception. I can say that, because I’m a mere onlooker; the whole thing’s been done by the Norwegian and my wife and Mrs. St. Peter. And,” he put his hand down affectionately upon Mrs. St. Peter’s bare arm, “and we’ve named our place! I’ve already ordered the house stationary. No, Rosamond, I won’t keep our little secret any longer. It will please your father, as well as your mother. We call our place ‘Outland,’ Sir Edgar.”

      He dropped the announcement and drew back. His mother-in-law rose to it—Spilling could scarcely be expected to understand.

      “How splendid, Louie! A real inspiration.”

      “Yes, isn’t it? I knew that would go to your hearts.” The Professor had expressed his emotion only by lifting his heavy, sharply uptwisted eyebrow. “Let me explain, Sir Edgar,” Marsellus went on eagerly. “We have named our place for Tom Outland, a brilliant young American scientist and inventor, who was killed in Flanders, fighting with the Foreign Legion, the second year of the war, when he was barely thirty years of age. Before he dashed off to the front, this youngster had discovered the principle of the Outland vacuum, worked out the construction of the bulkheaded vacuum that is revolutionizing aviation. He had not only invented it, but, curiously enough for such a hot-headed fellow, had taken pains to protect it. He had no time to communicate his discovery or to commercialize it—simply bolted to the front and left the most important discovery of his time to take care of itself.”

      Sir Edgar, fork arrested, looked a trifle dazed. “Am I to understand that you are referring to the inventor of the Outland vacuum?”

      Louie was delighted. “Exactly that! Of course you would know all about it. My wife was young Outland’s fiancée—is virtually his widow. Before he went to France he made a will in her favour; he had no living relatives, indeed. Toward the close of the war we began to sense the importance of what Outland had been doing in his laboratory—I am an electrical engineer by profession. We called in the assistance of experts and got the idea over from the laboratory to the trade. The monetary returns have been and are, of course, large.”

      While Louie paused long enough to have some intercourse with the roast before it was taken away, Sir Edgar remarked that he himself had been in the Air Service during the war, in the construction department, and that it was most extraordinary to come thus by chance upon the genesis of the Outland vacuum.

      “You see,” Louie told him, “Outland got nothing out of it but death and glory. Naturally, we feel terribly indebted. We feel it’s our first duty in life to use that money as he would have wished—we’ve endowed scholarships in his own university here, and that sort of thing. But our house we want to have as a sort of memorial to him. We are going to transfer his laboratory there, if the university will permit,—all the apparatus he worked with. We have a room for his library and pictures. When his brother scientists come to Hamilton to look him up, to get information about him, as they are doing now already, at Outland they will find his books and instruments, all the sources of his inspiration.”

      “Even Rosamond,” murmured McGregor, his eyes upon his cool green salad. He was struggling with a desire to shout to the Britisher that Marsellus had never so much as seen Tom Outland, while he, McGregor, had been his classmate and friend.

      Sir Edgar was as much interested as he was mystified. He had come here to talk about manuscripts shut up in certain mouldering monasteries in Spain, but he had almost forgotten them in the turn the conversation had taken. He was genuinely interested in aviation and all its problems. He asked few questions, and his comments were almost entirely limited to the single exclamation, “Oh!” But this, from his lips, could mean a great many things; indifference, sharp interrogation, sympathetic interest, the nervousness of a modest man on hearing disclosures of a delicately personal nature. McGregor, before the others had finished dessert, drew a big cigar from his pocket and lit it at one of the table candles, as the horridest thing he could think of to do.

      When they left the dining-room, St. Peter, who had scarcely spoken during dinner, took Sir Edgar’s arm and said to his wife: “If you will excuse us, my dear, we have some technical matters to discuss.” Leading his guest into the library, he shut the door.

      Marsellus looked distinctly disappointed. He stood gazing wistfully after them, like a little boy told to go to bed. Louie’s eyes were vividly blue, like hot sapphires, but the rest of his face had little colour—he was a rather mackerel-tinted man. Only his eyes, and his quick, impetuous movements, gave out the zest for life with which he was always bubbling. There was nothing Semitic about his countenance except his nose—that took the lead. It was not at all an unpleasing feature, but it grew out of his face with masterful strength, well-rooted, like a vigorous oak-tree growing out of a hill-side.

      Mrs. St. Peter, always concerned for Louie, asked him to come and look at the new rug in her bedroom. This revived him; he took her arm, and they went upstairs together.

      McGregor was left with the two sisters. “Outland, outlandish!” he muttered, while he fumbled about for an ashtray. Rosamond pretended not to hear him, but the dusky red on her cheeks crept a little farther toward her ears.

      “Remember, we are leaving early, Scott,” said Kathleen. “You have to finish your editorial to-night.”

      “Surely you don’t make him work at night, too?” Rosamond asked. “Doesn’t he have to rest his brain sometimes? Humour is always better if it’s spontaneous.”

      “Oh, that’s the trouble with me,” Scott assured her. “Unless I keep my nose to the grindstone, I’m too damned spontaneous and tell the truth, and the public won’t stand for it. It’s not an editorial I have to finish, it’s the daily prose poem I do for the syndicate, for which I get twenty-five beans. This is the motif:

      ‘When your pocket is under-moneyed and your fancy is over-girled, you’ll have to admit while you’re cursing it, it’s a mighty darned good old world.’

      Bang, bang!”

      He threw his cigar-end savagely into the fireplace. He knew that Rosamond detested his editorials and his jingles. She had fastidious taste in literature, like her mother—though he didn’t think she had half the general intelligence of his wife. She also, now that she was Tom Outland’s heir, detested to hear sums of money mentioned, especially small sums.

      After the good-nights were said, and they were outside the front door, McGregor seized his wife’s elbow and rushed her down the walk to the gate where his Ford was parked, breaking out in her ear as they ran: “Now what the hell is a virtual widow? Does he mean a virtuous widow, or the reverseous? Bang, bang!”

      Chapter 3

      St. Peter awoke the next morning with the wish that he could be transported on his mattress from the new house to the old. But it was Sunday, and on that day his wife always breakfasted with him. There was no way out; they would meet at compt.

      When he reached the dining-room Lillian was already at the table, behind the percolator. “Good morning, Godfrey. I hope you had a good night.” Her tone just faintly implied that he hadn’t deserved one.

      “Excellent. And you?”

      “I had a good conscience.” She smiled ruefully at him. “How can you let yourself be ungracious in your own house?”

      “Oh, dear! And I went to sleep happy in the belief that I hadn’t said anything amiss the whole evening.”

      “Nor anything aright, that I heard. Your disapproving silence can kill the life of any company.”

      “It didn’t seem to last night. You’re entirely wrong about Marsellus. He doesn’t notice.”

      “He’s too polite to take notice, but he feels it. He’s very sensitive, under a well-schooled impersonal manner.”

      St. Peter laughed. “Nonsense, Lillian!” If he were, he couldn’t pick up a dinner party and walk off with it, as he almost always does.

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