"Oh--office reasons. It wouldn't do for the others to know."
She reflected on this. "I don't understand," was the result of her
thinking. "But I'll do as you ask. Only, you must not come again."
"Why not? If they knew at the office, they'd simply talk--unpleasantly."
"Yes," she admitted hesitatingly after reflecting. "So you mustn't come
again. I don't like some kinds of secrets."
"But your father will know," he urged. "Isn't that enough for--for
propriety?"
"I can't explain. I don't understand, myself. I do a lot of things by
instinct." She, standing with her hands behind her back and with clear,
childlike eyes gravely upon him, looked puzzled but resolved. "And my
instinct tells me not to do anything secret about you."
This answer made him wonder whether after all he might not be too
positive in his derisive disbelief in women's instincts. He laughed.
"Well--now for your father."
The workshop proved to be an annex to the rear, reached by a passage
leading past a cosy little dining room and a kitchen where the order and
the shine of cleanness were notable even to masculine eyes. "You are
well taken care of," he said to her--she was preceding him to show the
way.
"We take care of ourselves," replied she. "I get breakfast before I
leave and supper after I come home. Father has a cold lunch in the
middle of the day, when he eats at all--which isn't often. And on
Saturday afternoons and Sundays I do the heavy work."
"You _are_ a busy lady!"
"Oh, not so very busy. Father is a crank about system and order. He has
taught me to plan everything and work by the plans."
For the first time Norman had a glimmer of real interest in meeting her
father. For in those remarks of hers he recognized at once the rare
superior man--the man who works by plan, where the masses of mankind
either drift helplessly or are propelled by some superior force behind
them without which they would be, not the civilized beings they seem,
but even as the savage in the dugout or as the beast of the field. The
girl opened a door; a bright light streamed into the dim hallway.
"Father!" she called. "Here's Mr. Norman."
Norman saw, beyond the exquisite profile of the girl's head and figure,
a lean tallish old man, dark and gray, whose expression proclaimed him
at first glance no more in touch with the affairs of active life in the
world than had he been an inhabitant of Mars.
Mr. Hallowell gave his caller a polite glance and handshake--evidence of
merest surface interest in him, of amiable patience with an intruder.
Norman saw in the neatness of his clothing and linen further proof of
the girl's loving care. For no such abstracted personality as this would
ever bother about such things for himself. These details, however,
detained Norman only for a moment. In the presence of Hallowell it was
impossible not to concentrate upon him.
As we grow older what we are inside, the kind of thoughts we admit as
our intimates, appears ever more strongly in the countenance. This had
often struck Norman, observing the men of importance about him, noting
how as they aged the look of respectability, of intellectual
distinction, became a thinner and ever thinner veneer over the
selfishness and greediness, the vanity and sensuality and falsehood. But
never before had he been so deeply impressed by its truth. Evidently
Hallowell during most of his fifty-five or sixty years had lived the
purely intellectual life. The result was a look of spiritual beauty, the
look of the soul living in the high mountain, with serenity and vast
views constantly before it. Such a face fills with awe the ordinary
follower of the petty life of the world if he have the brains to know or
to suspect the ultimate truth about existence. It filled Norman with
awe. He hastily turned his eyes upon the girl--and once more into his
face came the resolute, intense, white-hot expression of a man doggedly
set upon an earthy purpose.
There was an embarrassed silence. Then the girl said, "Show him the
worms, father."
Mr. Hallowell smiled. "My little girl thinks no one has seen that sort
of thing," said he. "I can't make her believe it is one of the
commonplaces."
"You've never had anyone here more ignorant than I, sir," said Norman.
"The only claim on your courtesy I can make is that I'm interested and
that I perhaps know enough in a general way to appreciate."
Hallowell waved his hand toward a row of large glass bottles on one of
the many shelves built against the rough walls of the room. "Here they
are," said he. "It's the familiar illustration of how life may be
controlled."
"I don't understand," said Norman, eying the bottled worms curiously.
"Oh, it's simply the demonstration that life is a mere chemical
process----"
Norman had ceased to listen. The girl was moving toward the door by
which they had entered--was in the doorway--was gone! He stood in an
attitude of attention; Hallowell talked on and on, passing from one
thing to another, forgetting his caller and himself, thinking only of
the subject, the beloved science, that has brought into the modern world
a type of men like those who haunted the deserts and mountain caves in
the days when Rome was falling to pieces. With those saintly hermits of
the Dark Ages religion was the all-absorbing subject. And seeking their
own salvation was the goal upon which their ardent eyes were necessarily
bent. With these modern devotees, science--the search for the truth
about the world in which they live--is their religion; and their goal
is the redemption of the world. They are resolved--step by step, each
worker contributing his mite of discovery--to transform the world from a
hell of discomfort and pain and death to a heaven where men and women,
free and enlightened and perhaps immortal, shall live in happiness. They
even dream that perhaps this race of gods shall learn to construct the
means to take them to another and younger planet, when this Earth has
become too old and too cold and too nakedly clad in atmosphere properly
to sustain life.
From time to time Norman caught a few words of what Hallowell
said--words that made him respect the intelligence that had uttered
them. But he neither cared nor dared to listen. He refused to be
deflected from his one purpose. When he was as old as Hallowell, it
would be time to think of these matters. When he had snatched the things
he needed, it would be time to take the generous, wide, philosopher view
of life. But not yet. He was still young; he could--and he would!--drink
of the sparkling heady life of the senses, typefied now for him in this
girl. How her loveliness flamed in his blood--flamed as fiercely when he
could not see the actual, tangible charms as when they were radiating
their fire into his eyes and through his skin! First he must live that
glorious life of youth, of nerves aquiver with ecstasy. Also, he must
shut out the things of the intellect--must live in brain as well as in
body the animal life--in brain the life of cunning and strategy. For the
intellectual life would make it impossible to pursue such ignoble
things. First, material success and material happiness. Then, in its own
time, this intellectual life to which such men as Hallowell ever beckon,
from their heights, such men as Norman, deep in the wallow that seems to
them unworthy of them, even as they roll in it.
As soon as there came a convenient pause in Hallowell's talk, Norman
said, "And you devote your whole life to these things?"
Hallowell's countenance lost its fine glow of enthusiasm. "I have to
make a living. I do chemical analyses for doctors and druggists. That
takes most of my time."
"But you can dispatch those things quickly."
Hallowell shook his head. "There's only one way to do things. My clients
trust me. I can't shirk."
Norman smiled. He admired this simplicity. But it amused him, too; in a
world of shirking and shuffling, not to speak of downright dishonesty,
it struck the humorous note of the incongruous. He said:
"But if you could give all your time you would get on faster."
"Yes--if I had the time--_and_ the money. To make the search exhaustive
would take money--five or six thousand a year, at the least. A great
deal more than I shall ever have."
"Have you tried to interest capitalists?"
Hallowell smiled ironically. "There is much talk about capitalists and
capital opening up things. But I have yet to learn of an instance of
their touching anything until they were absolutely sure of large
profits. Their failed enterprises are not miscarriage of noble purpose
but mistaken judgment, judgment blinded by hope and greed."
"I see that a philosopher can know life without living it," said Norman.
"But couldn't you put your scheme in such a way that some capitalist
would be led to hope?"
"I'd have to tell them the truth. Possibly I might discover something
with commercial value, but I couldn't promise. I don't think it is
likely."
Norman's eyes were on the door. His thoughts were reaching out to the
distant and faint sound of a piano. "Just what do you propose to search
for?" inquired he.
He tried to listen, because it was necessary that he have some knowledge
of Hallowell's plans. But he could not fix his attention. After a few
moments he glanced at his watch, interrupted with, "I think I understand
enough for the present. I've stayed longer than I intended. I must go
now. When I come again I may perhaps have some plan to propose."
"Plan?" exclaimed Hallowell, his eyes lighting up.
"I'm not sure--not at all sure," hastily added Norman. "I don't wish to
give you false hopes. The matter is extremely difficult. But I'll try.
I've small hope of success, but I'll try."
"My daughter didn't explain to me," said the scientist. "She simply said
one of the gentlemen for whom she worked was coming to look at my place.
I thought it was mere curiosity."
"So it was, Mr. Hallowell," said Norman. "But I have been interested. I
don't as yet see what can be done. I'm only saying that I'll think it
over."
"I understand," said Hallowell. He was trying to seem calm and
indifferent. But his voice had the tremulous note of excitement in it
and his hands fumbled nervously, touching evidence of the agitated
gropings of his mind in the faint, perhaps illusory, light of a
new-sprung hope. "Yes, I understand perfectly. Still--it is pleasant to
think about such a thing, even if there's no chance of it. I am very
fond of dreaming. That has been my life, you know."
Norman colored, moved uneasily. The fineness of this man's character
made him uncomfortable. He could pity Hallowell as a misguided failure.
He could dilate himself as prosperous, successful, much the more
imposing and important figure in the contrast. Yet there was somehow a
point of view at which, if one looked carefully, his own sort of man
shriveled and the Hallowell sort towered.
"I _must_ be going," Norman said. "No--don't come with me. I know the way.
I've interrupted you long enough." And he put out his hand and, by those
little clevernesses of manner which he understood so well, made it
impossible for Hallowell to go with him to Dorothy.
He was glad when he shut the door between him and her father. He paused
in the hall to dispel the vague, self-debasing discomfort--and listening
to _her_ voice as she sang helped wonderfully. There is no more trying
test of a personality than to be estimated by the voice alone. That test
produces many strange and startling results. Again and again it
completely reverses our judgment of the personality, either destroys or
enhances its charm. The voice of this girl, floating out upon the quiet
of the cottage--the voice, soft and sweet, full of the virginal passion
of dreams unmarred by experience--It was while listening to her voice,
as he stood there in the dimly lighted hall, that Frederick Norman
passed under the spell in all its potency. In taking an anaesthetic
there is the stage when we reach out for its soothing effects; then
comes the stage when we half desire, half fear; then a stage in which
fear is dominant, and we struggle to retain our control of the senses.
Last comes the stage when we feel the full power of the drug and relax
and yield or are beaten down into quiet. Her voice drew him into the
final stage, was the blow of the overwhelming wave's crest that crushed
him into submission.
She glanced toward the door. He was leaning there, an ominous calm in
his pale, resolute face. She gazed at him with widening eyes. And her
look was the look of helplessness before a force that may, indeed must,
be struggled against, but with the foregone certainty of defeat.
A gleam of triumph shone in his eyes. Then his expression changed to one
more conventional. "I stopped a moment to listen, on my way out," said
he.
Her expression changed also. The instinctive, probably unconscious
response to his look faded into the sweet smile, serious rather than
merry, that was her habitual greeting. "Mr. Tetlow didn't get away from
father so soon."
"I stayed longer than I intended. I found it even more interesting than
I had expected. . . . Would you be glad if your father could be free to
do as he likes and not be worried about anything?"
"That is one of my dreams."
"Well, it's certainly one that might come true. . . . And you--It's a
shame that you should have to do so much drudgery--both here and in New
York."
"Oh, I don't mind about myself. It's all I'm fit for. I haven't any
talent--except for dreaming."
"And for making--_some_ man's dreams come true."
Her gaze dropped. And as she hid herself she looked once more almost as
insignificant and colorless as he had once believed her to be.
"What are you thinking about?"
She shook her head slowly without raising her eyes or emerging from the
deep recess of her reserve.
"You are a mystery to me. I can't decide whether you are very innocent
or very--concealing."
She glanced inquiringly at him. "I don't understand," she said.
He smiled. "No more do I. I've seen so much of faking--in women as well
as in men--that it's hard for me to believe anyone is genuine."
"Do you think I am trying to deceive you? About what?"
He made an impatient gesture--impatience with his credulity where she
was concerned. "No matter. I want to make you happy--because I want you
to make me happy."
Her eyes became as grave as a wondering child's. "You are laughing at
me," she said.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I could not make you happy."
"Why not?"
"What could a serious man like you find in me?"