Well, they weren't of course, though it's surprising how many clubs,
caddies, and chorus girls have depended on me at various times for
appreciable portions of their incomes. But somehow I didn't feel like
mentioning those things to the silvery-eyed girl.
We talked. Her name, it developed, was Joanna Caldwell, and she was
going as far as Paris. She was an artist, or hoped to be one day, and of
course there is no place in the world that can supply both training and
inspiration like Paris. So it was there she was bound for a year of
study, and despite her demurely humorous lips and laughing eyes, I could
see that the business was of vast importance to her. I gathered that she
had worked hard for the year in Paris, had scraped and saved for three
years as fashion illustrator for some woman's magazine, though she
couldn't have been many months over twenty-one. Her painting meant a
great deal to her, and I could understand it. I'd felt that way about
polo once.
So you see, we were sympathetic spirits from the beginning. I knew that
she liked me, and it was obvious that she didn't connect Dixon Wells
with the N. J. Wells Corporation. And as for me--well, after that first
glance into her cool silver eyes, I simply didn't care to look anywhere
else. The hours seemed to drip away like minutes while I watched her.
You know how those things go. Suddenly I was calling her Joanna and she
was calling me Dick, and it seemed as if we'd been doing just that all
our lives. I'd decided to stop over in Paris on my way back from Moscow,
and I'd secured her promise to let me see her. She was different, I tell
you; she was nothing like the calculating Whimsy White, and still less
like the dancing, simpering, giddy youngsters one meets around at social
affairs. She was just Joanna, cool and humorous, yet sympathetic and
serious, and as pretty as a Majolica figurine.
We could scarcely realize it when the steward passed along to take
orders for luncheon. Four hours out? It seemed like forty minutes. And
we had a pleasant feeling of intimacy in the discovery that both of us
liked lobster salad and detested oysters. It was another bond; I told
her whimsically that it was an omen, nor did she object to considering
it so.
Afterwards we walked along the narrow aisle to the glassed-in
observation room up forward. It was almost too crowded for entry, but we
didn't mind that at all, as it forced us to sit very close together. We
stayed long after both of us had begun to notice the stuffiness of the
air.
It was just after we had returned to our seats that the catastrophe
occurred. There was no warning save a sudden lurch, the result, I
suppose, of the pilot's futile last-minute attempt to swerve--just that
and then a grinding crash and a terrible sensation of spinning, and
after that a chorus of shrieks that were like the sounds of battle.
It _was_ battle. Five hundred people were picking themselves up from the
floor, were trampling each other, milling around, being cast helplessly
down as the great rocket-plane, its left wing but a broken stub, circled
downward toward the Atlantic.
The shouts of officers sounded and a loudspeaker blared. "Be calm," it
kept repeating, and then, "There has been a collision. We have contacted
a surface ship. There is no danger-- There is no danger--"
I struggled up from the debris of shattered seats. Joanna was gone; just
as I found her crumpled between the rows, the ship struck the water with
a jar that set everything crashing again. The speaker blared, "Put on
the cork belts under the seats. The life-belts are under the seats."
I dragged a belt loose and snapped it around Joanna, then donned one
myself. The crowd was surging forward now, and the tail end of the ship
began to drop. There was water behind us, sloshing in the darkness as
the lights went out. An officer came sliding by, stooped, and fastened a
belt about an unconscious woman ahead of us. "You all right?" he yelled,
and passed on without waiting for an answer.
The speaker must have been cut on to a battery circuit. "And get as far
away as possible," it ordered suddenly. "Jump from the forward port and
get as far away as possible. A ship is standing by. You will be picked
up. Jump from the--". It went dead again.
I got Joanna untangled from the wreckage. She was pale; her silvery eyes
were closed. I started dragging her slowly and painfully toward the
forward port, and the slant of the floor increased until it was like the
slide of a ski-jump. The officer passed again. "Can you handle her?" he
asked, and again dashed away.
I was getting there. The crowd around the port looked smaller, or was it
simply huddling closer? Then suddenly, a wail of fear and despair went
up, and there was a roar of water. The observation room walls had given.
I saw the green surge of waves, and a billowing deluge rushed down upon
us. I had been late again.
That was all. I raised shocked and frightened eyes from the
subjunctivisor to face van Manderpootz, who was scribbling on the edge
of the table.
"Well?" he asked.
I shuddered. "Horrible!" I murmured. "We--I guess we wouldn't have been
among the survivors."
"We, eh? _We?_" His eyes twinkled.
I did not enlighten him. I thanked him, bade him good-night, and went
dolorously home.
* * * * *
Even my father noticed something queer about me. The day I got to the
office only five minutes late, he called me in for some anxious
questioning as to my health. I couldn't tell him anything, of course.
How could I explain that I'd been late once too often, and had fallen in
love with a girl two weeks after she was dead?
The thought drove me nearly crazy. Joanna! Joanna with her silvery eyes
now lay somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic. I went around half
dazed, scarcely speaking. One night I actually lacked the energy to go
home and sat smoking in my father's big overstuffed chair in his private
office until I finally dozed off. The next morning, when old N. J.
entered and found me there before him, he turned pale as paper,
staggered, and gasped, "My heart!" It took a lot of explaining to
convince him that I wasn't early at the office but just very late going
home.
At last I felt that I couldn't stand it. I had to do something--anything
at all. I thought finally of the subjunctivisor. I could see--yes, I
could see what would have transpired if the ship hadn't been wrecked! I
could trace out that weird, unreal romance hidden somewhere in the
worlds of "if". I could, perhaps, wring a somber, vicarious joy from the
things that might have been. I could see Joanna once more!
It was late afternoon when I rushed over to van Manderpootz's quarters.
He wasn't there; I encountered him finally in the hall of the Physics
Building.
"Dick!" he exclaimed. "Are you sick?"
"Sick? No. Not physically. Professor. I've got to use your
subjunctivisor again. I've _got_ to!"
"Eh? Oh--that toy. You're too late, Dick. I've dismantled it. I have a
better use for the space."
I gave a miserable groan and was tempted to damn the autobiography of
the great van Manderpootz. A gleam of sympathy showed in his eyes, and
he took my arm, dragging me into the little office adjoining his
laboratory.
"Tell me," he commanded.
I did. I guess I made the tragedy plain enough, for his heavy brows knit
in a frown of pity. "Not even van Manderpootz can bring back the dead,"
he murmured. "I'm sorry, Dick. Take your mind from the affair. Even were
my subjunctivisor available, I wouldn't permit you to use it. That would
be but to turn the knife in the wound." He paused. "Find something else
to occupy your mind. Do as van Manderpootz does. Find forgetfulness in
work."
"Yes," I responded dully. "But who'd want to read my autobiography?
That's all right for you."
"Autobiography? Oh! I remember. No, I have abandoned that. History
itself will record the life and works of van Manderpootz. Now I am
engaged in a far grander project."
"Indeed?" I was utterly, gloomily disinterested.
"Yes. Gogli has been here, Gogli the sculptor. He is to make a bust of
me. What better legacy can I leave to the world than a bust of van
Manderpootz, sculptured from life? Perhaps I shall present it to the
city, perhaps to the university. I would have given it to the Royal
Society if they had been a little more receptive, if they--if--_if_!"
The last in a shout.
"Huh?"
"_If!_" cried van Manderpootz. "What you saw in the subjunctivisor was
what would have happened _if_ you had caught the ship!"
"I know that."
"But something quite different might really have happened! Don't you
see? She--she-- Where are those old newspapers?"
He was pawing through a pile of them. He flourished one finally. "Here!
Here are the survivors!"
Like letters of flame, Joanna Caldwell's name leaped out at me. There
was even a little paragraph about it, as I saw once my reeling brain
permitted me to read:
"At least a score of survivors owe their lives to the bravery of
twenty-eight-year-old Navigator Orris Hope, who patrolled both
aisles during the panic, lacing life-belts on the injured and
helpless, and carrying many to the port. He remained on the sinking
liner until the last, finally fighting his way to the surface
through the broken walls of the observation room. Among those who
owe their lives to the young officer are: Patrick Owensby, New York
City; Mrs. Campbell Warren, Boston; Miss Joanna Caldwell, New York
City--"
I suppose my shout of joy was heard over in the Administration Building,
blocks away. I didn't care; if van Manderpootz hadn't been armored in
stubby whiskers, I'd have kissed him. Perhaps I did anyway; I can't be
sure of my actions during those chaotic minutes in the professor's tiny
office.
At last I calmed. "I can look her up!" I gloated. "She must have landed
with the other survivors, and they were all on that British tramp
freighter the _Osgood_, that docked here last week. She must be in New
York--and if she's gone over to Paris, I'll find out and follow her!"
Well, it's a queer ending. She was in New York, but--you see, Dixon
Wells had, so to speak, known Joanna Caldwell by means of the
professor's subjunctivisor, but Joanna had never known Dixon Wells. What
the ending might have been if--_if_-- But it wasn't; she had married
Orris Hope, the young officer who had rescued her. I was late again.