was becoming a little grey. The tints of her face and hair and lashes
were so soft that one did not realize, on first meeting her, how very
definitely and decidedly her features were cut, under the smiling
infusion of colour. When she was annoyed or tired, the lines became
severe. Rosamond, the elder daughter, resembled her mother in feature,
though her face was heavier.
Her colouring was altogether different; dusky black hair, deep dark
eyes, a soft white skin with rich brunette red in her cheeks and lips.
Nearly everyone considered Rosamond brilliantly beautiful. Her father,
though he was very proud of her, demurred from the general opinion. He
thought her too tall, with a rather awkward carriage. She stooped a
trifle, and was wide in the hips and shoulders. She had, he sometimes
remarked to her mother, exactly the wide femur and flat shoulder-blade
of his old slab-sided Kanuck grandfather. For a tree-hewer they were an
asset. But St. Peter was very critical. Most people saw only Rosamond's
smooth black head and white throat, and the red of her curved lips that
was like the duskiness of dark, heavy-scented roses.
Kathleen, the younger daughter, looked even younger than she was--had
the slender, undeveloped figure then very much in vogue. She was pale,
with light hazel eyes, and her hair was hazel-coloured with distinctly
green glints to it. To her father there was something very charming in
the curious shadows her wide cheekbones cast over her cheeks, and in the
spirited tilt of her head. Her figure in profile, he used to tell her,
looked just like an interrogation point.
Mrs. St. Peter frankly liked having a son-in-law who could tot up
acquaintances with Sir Edgar from the Soudan to Alaska. Scott, she saw,
was going to be sulky because Sir Edgar and Marsellus were talking about
things beyond his little circle of interests. She made no effort to draw
him into the conversation, but let him prowl like a restless leopard
among the books. The Professor was amiable, but quiet. When the second
maid came to the door and signalled that dinner was ready--dinner was
signalled, not announced--Mrs. St. Peter took Sir Edgar and guided him
to his seat at her right, while the others found their usual places.
After they had finished the soup, she had some difficulty in summoning
the little maid to take away the plates, and explained to her guest that
the electric bell, under the table, wasn't connected as yet--they had
been in the new house less than a week, and the trials of building were
not over.
"Oh? Then if I had happened along a fortnight ago I shouldn't have found
you here? But it must be very interesting, building you own house and
arranging it as you like," he responded.
Marsellus, silenced during the soup, came in with a warm smile and a
slight shrug of the shoulders. "Building is the word with us, Sir Edgar,
my--oh, isn't it! My wife and I are in the throes of it. We are building
a country house, rather an ambitious affair, out on the wooded shores of
Lake Michigan. Perhaps you would like to run out in my car and see it?
What are your engagements for to-morrow? I can take you out in half an
hour, and we can lunch at the Country Club. We have a magnificent site;
primeval forest behind us and the lake in front, with our own beach--my
father-in-law, you must know, is a formidable swimmer. We've been
singularly fortunate in architect,--a young Norwegian, trained in Paris.
He's doing us a Norwegian manor house, very harmonious with its setting,
just the right thing for rugged pine woods and high headlands."
Sir Edgar seemed most willing to make this excursion, and allowed
Marsellus to fix an hour, greatly to the surprise of McGregor, whose
look at his wife implied that he entertained serious doubts whether this
baronet with walrus moustaches amounted to much after all.
The engagement made, Louie turned to Mrs. St. Peter. "And won't you come
too, Dearest? You haven't been out since we got our wonderful
wrought-iron door fittings from Chicago. We found just the right sort of
hinge and latch, Sir Edgar, and had all the others copied from it. None
of your Colonial glass knobs for us!"
Mrs. St. Peter sighed. Scott and Kathleen had just glass-knobbed their
new bungalow throughout, yet she knew Louie didn't mean to hurt their
feelings--it was his heedless enthusiasm that made him often say
untactful things.
"We've been extremely fortunate in getting all the little things right,"
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,
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 fianc�e--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 vacuu
m.
"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
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. I don't
mind when it's our dinner, but I hate seeing him do it in other people's
houses."
"Be fair, Godfrey. You know that if you'd once begun to talk about your
work in Spain, Louie would have followed it up with enthusiasm. Nobody
is prouder of you than he."
"That's why I kept quiet. Support can be too able--certainly too
fluent."
"There you are; the dog in the manger! You won't let him discuss your
affairs, and you are annoyed when he talks about his own."
"I admit I can't bear it when he talks about Outland as his affair. (I
mean Tom, of course, not their confounded place!) This calling it after
him passes my comprehension. And Rosamond's standing for it! It's brazen
impudence."
Mrs. St. Peter frowned pensively. "I knew you wouldn't like it, but they
were so pleased about it, and their motives are so generous--"
"Hang it, Outland doesn't need their generosity! They've got everything
he ought to have had, and the least they can do is to be quiet about it,
and not convert his very bones into a personal asset. It all comes down
to this, my dear: one likes the florid style, or one doesn't. You
yourself used not to like it. And will you give me some more coffee,
please?"
She refilled his cup and handed it across the table. "Nice hands," he
murmured, looking critically at them as he took it, "always such n
ice
hands."
"Thank you. I dislike floridity when it is beaten up to cover the lack
of something, to take the place of something. I never disliked it when
it came from exuberance. Then it isn't floridness, it's merely strong
colour."
"Very well; some people don't care for strong colour. It fatigues them."
He folded his napkin. "Now I must be off to my desk."
"Not quite yet. You never have time to talk to me. Just when did it
begin, Godfrey, in the history of manners--that convention that if a man
were pleased with his wife or his house or his success, he shouldn't say
so, frankly?" Mrs. St. Peter spoke thoughtfully, as if she had
considered this matter before.
"Oh, it goes back a long way. I rather think it began in the Age of
Chivalry--King Arthur's knights. Whoever it was lived in that time, some
feeling grew up that a man should do fine deeds and not speak of them,
and that he shouldn't speak the name of his lady, but sing of her as a
Phyllis or a Nicolette. It's a nice idea, reserve about one's deepest
feelings: keeps them fresh."
"The Oriental peoples didn't have an Age of Chivalry. They didn't need
one," Lillian observed. "And this reserve--it becomes in itself
ostentatious, a vain-glorious vanity."
"Oh, my dear, all is vanity! I don't dispute that. Now I must really go,
and I wish I could play the game as well as you do. I have no enthusiasm
for being a father-in-law. It's you who keep the ball rolling. I fully
appreciate that."
"Perhaps," mused his wife, as he rose, "it's because you didn't get the
son-in-law you wanted. And yet he was highly coloured, too."
The Professor made no reply to this. Lillian had been fiercely jealous
of Tom Outland. As he left the house, he was reflecting that people who
are intensely in love when they marry, and who go on being in love,
always meet with something which suddenly or gradually makes a
difference. Sometimes it is the children, or the grubbiness of being
poor, sometimes a second infatuation. In their own case it had been,
curiously enough, his pupil, Tom Outland.
St. Peter had met his wife in Paris, when he was but twenty-four, and
studying for his doctorate. She too was studying there. French people
thought her an English girl because of her gold hair and fair
complexion. With her really radiant charm, she had a very interesting
mind--but it was quite wrong to call it mind, the connotation was false.
What she had was a richly endowed nature that responded strongly to life
and art, and very vehement likes and dislikes which were often quite out
of all proportion to the trivial object or person that aroused them.
Before his marriage, and for years afterward, Lillian's prejudices, her
divinations about people and art (always instinctive and unexplained,
but nearly always right), were the most interesting things in St. Peters
life. When he accepted almost the first position offered him, in order
to marry at once, and came to take the chair of European history at
Hamilton, he was thrown upon his wife for mental companionship. Most of
his colleagues were much older than he, but they were not his equals
either in scholarship or in experience of the world. The only other man
in the faculty who was carrying on important research work was Doctor
Crane, the professor of physics. St. Peter saw a good deal of him,
though outside his specialty he was uninteresting--a narrow-minded man,
and painfully unattractive. Years ago Crane had begun to suffer from a
malady which in time proved incurable, and which now sent him up for an
operation periodically. St. Peter had had no friend in Hamilton of whom
Lillian could possibly be jealous until Tom Outland came along, so well
fitted by nature and early environment to help him with his work on the