Lady Severn had survived the measured mile. Sir Creighton was jubilant.
His daughter flew to him. How did the electric turbine work? What was
the coefficient of energy developed over the measured mile? Was forty
miles actually touched and what about the depression in the stern? Did
the boat steer all right on the progressive principle? Did the Admiral
grumble as usual?
Her father gave her a detailed account of the strong points of the new
system of propulsion, which every one had recognised, and of the weak
points, which he alone had detected, and then she was able to drink her
tea, and so was Sir Creighton.
Lady Severn said the lunch was excellent; only when travelling by water
at the rate of forty-two knots every one seemed inclined to eat at the
rate of fifty knots.
After drinking a cup of tea Sir Creighton looked at the clock and
sighed.
“The day is gone before one gets any work done,” he said. “I have not
been in my room since yesterday afternoon, Joe,” he added, looking at
Josephine as if hoping to find in her a sympathetic audience.
“You’ll get no sympathy from me, Sir Creighton,” she laughed. “You
have done more to-day than all the men of your craft--I suppose that
a turbine boat may be called a craft--have succeeded in accomplishing
during the past hundred years--forty knots!--just think of it!--and yet
you complain of not being able to get anything done! Oh, no; you’ll get
no sympathy from me.”
Sir Creighton went across the room to her and his scientific skill
enabled him to squeeze between his finger and thumb that part of her arm
where all the sensitive nerves meet.
She shrieked.
“I will force you to sympathise with me,” he said. “You have still
another arm. What! they are actually taking your part?”
Sir Creighton had a pretty wit. It was most exuberant when he had
discovered a new torture founded on a purely scientific basis. That was
how he kept himself young.
“Oh, by the way,” said Amber, when he was going once more towards the
door, “Guy has picked up with some one from New South Wales whose father
said he had once known you. His name is--now what on earth did he say
his name was?”
“Wasn’t it Mr. Winwood?” said Josephine.
“Of course. Pierce Winwood. Do you remember any man of that name--long
ago--it must have been long ago. He made a big fortune in the meantime?”
“Winwood--Winwood? No, I don’t remember any one bearing that name,” said
Sir Creighton. “Better tell Guy to bring him out and I dare say he’ll
draw the threads together.”
“I told Guy I was sure that you would like to have a chat with him--the
son, I mean; he said the father, who claimed to know you, was dead.”
“There’s cause and effect for you,” said Sir Creighton. “Better ask him
to dinner with Guy--the son, I mean.”
He spoke with his hand on the handle of the door, and then went
whistling down the corridor to his study which opened out upon the
garden of roses at the back of the house. The long table was covered
with scale drawings and the smell of the tracing paper filled the room.
Sir Creighton stood for a few moments looking down at those tracings
of the sections of wheels--wheels within wheels--and the profiles of
pinions.
“What the Nightingale sang to the Rose,” said the man of science. “Pah,
what can any one say about the Nightingale and the Rose that has not
been said before?”
He turned over several of the drawings critically, and counted the
leaves of one of the pinions.
“He has made no allowance for end-shake,” he muttered. “A sixteenth on
each pivot. Was it in the Garden of Gulistan? I rather think not. An
English rose-garden--why not within the four-mile radius?”
He stood at the glass door leading out to his own garden, and remained
there for some minutes looking out upon the great clusters of mixed
blooms. Then he turned to one of the desks and unlocking one of the
drawers and, drawing it out some way, slipped his hand inside, relieving
the spring of a secret compartment that seemed to be a fixture. He drew
out a sheaf of papers, covered with verses with many erasures and those
countless corrections which commonly occur in the manuscripts of
poets who are not only inspired but who add to the original impulse of
inspiration a fastidiousness of phrase quite unknown to the older poets.
The topmost leaf of the sheaf contained a stanza and a half of a poem in
an original metre describing how a nightingale came nightly to visit a
certain rose, but the rose being only a bud, failed to understand what
was the meaning of the music, until on the evening of a burning day,
when the Star of Love shed the only light that came from the sky through
the heavy scented air that hovered on the rose-garden, “The faithful
nightingale sang this song: “....
That was where the manuscript ended. There was space enough on the paper
for two more stanzas. All that was needed was to put into words the song
that the nightingale sang to stir the rosebud into the bloom of passion.
That was the reflection of the man of science as he read the ambitious
prelude which he had written the previous day just when the leader
writers on all the newspapers in England were pointing out how the
adaptation of electricity to the turbine boat marked the most important
epoch in the history of marine engineering.
“That’s all I have got to do,” he muttered now, when the cables were
carrying to all parts of the world the news that Sir Creighton Severn’s
electric turbine had just been tested over the measured mile with the
most surprising results, a record speed of forty-two knots having been
noted. “Only the song of the nightingale,” said the man of science,
seating himself at the desk with the unfinished poem in front of him.
He wrote for two hours, completing the poem entitled “What the
Nightingale sang to the Rose,” which when published above the name
“_Alençon Hope_” in a magazine three months later was so widely
commented on, some critics going so far as to declare with that
confidence which is the chief part of the equipment of the critic, that
in all the recently published volume by the same author nothing more
exquisite could be found.
It was Sir Creighton’s little fun to publish, unknown to any one in the
world, a volume of verse that had achieved a brilliant success in the
world and even in his own household where its apt lines were frequently
quoted both by Amber and her brother. That was how it came about that
Sir Creighton smiled quite vaguely when people remarked how strange it
was that young Severn had shown an early taste for writing verse. Who
was it that he took after, they enquired. They felt that the exigencies
of the theory of heredity were fully satisfied when Lady Severn
explained that there was a tradition in her family that her father had
once sent a valentine to her mother. Still it was funny, they said, to
find the son of a father who was a practical “scientist”--that was what
they called Sir Creighton: a “scientist”--having a tendency to write
verse.
Sir Creighton, when he had finished writhing at the word “scientist,”
smiled quite vaguely; for no one seemed to entertain the idea that the
inspiration which had enabled the man of science to look into the future
and see ships moving silently over the water at a speed of forty-two
knots an hour was precisely the same quality which permitted of
his translating into English metre the passionate song sung by the
Nightingale to the Rose.
No one knew how refreshed he felt on returning to his electrical designs
after spending an hour or two over those exquisite fabrics of verse
which appeared in the volume by “Alençon Hope” Rhythm and arithmetic
seem to many people to be the positive and negative poles of a magnet,
but both mean the same thing in the language from which they are
derived.
“Poor old pater!” said Amber when the girls were left alone with Lady
Severn. “He is back again at one of those problems which he has set
himself to solve for the good of the world. Poor old pater!”
“Old!” cried Josephine. “I never met any one so young in the whole
course of my life. In his presence I feel quite mature.”
“The greatest problem that he has solved is the science of living,” said
Lady Severn. “If he has not discovered the secret of perpetual youth, he
has mastered the more important mystery of perpetual happiness.”
“He knows that it is best seen through another’s eye,” said Josephine.
At this point a young man with a very shiny hat in his hand was shown
in. He was greeted by Amber by the name of Arthur and by the others
as Mr. Galmyn. He was a somewhat low-sized youth with very fair hair
breaking into curls here and there that suggested the crests of a wave
blown by the wind. It was not his curls, however, but his eyes that
attracted the attention of most people; for his eyes were large and
delicately blue. Sentimentalists who sat opposite him in an omnibus--an
omnibus is full of sentimental people, six on each side--were accustomed
to see a certain depth of sadness in Arthur Galmyn’s eyes. He would have
felt greatly disappointed if they had failed to think them sad. He had
long ago formed a definite opinion about their expression. They had
caused him a great deal of thought and some trouble in his time, but he
had long ago come to feel every confidence in their sadness. It was his
aim to see that his life was congenially tinged with a mild melancholy.
He quoted from “The Lotus Eaters” and tried to realise a life “in which
it always seemed afternoon.”
He took tea punctually at five.
“If you please,” he said. “I know that the tea leaves are never allowed
to remain in your tea-pot. I have no disquieting recollection of your
tea-pot, Amber. And a cake--one of the hot ones, Miss West. They have no
currants. I know that I shall never run the chance of coming in personal
contact with a currant, change you your cakes never so often. I found
myself confronted with a currant without a moment’s warning a few days
ago at Lady March’s. I was saddened. And I thought I knew her tea-cakes
so well. I felt for some days as if I had heard of a dear friend’s
committing a forgery--as if I had come across you suddenly in the Park
wearing mauve, instead of pink, Amber.”
“It does tinge one’s life with melancholy. Have you made any money
to-day?” said Amber in one breath.
He drank his cup of tea and bit off a segment from the circle of the tea
cake, then he looked earnestly at the tips of his fingers. Two of them
were shiny.
“I’ve not done badly,” he said. “I made about eight pounds. It doesn’t
seem much, does it? But that eight pounds is on the right side of the
ledger, and that’s something.”
“It’s excellent,” said Lady Severn.
“I consider it most praiseworthy if you made it by fair dealing,” said
Josephine.
“Oh, Joe, don’t discourage him so early in his career,” cried Amber.
Arthur Galmyn finished the tea in his cup and laid it thoughtfully
before Amber to be refilled.
“It’s quite delicious,” he said. “Quite delicious. I wonder if anything
is quite fair in the way of making money--except the tables at Monte
Carlo: there’s no cheating done there.”
“That’s what I wonder too,” said Josephine.
“Anyway I’ve only made eight pounds to-day--there’s not much cheating in
eight pounds, is there, Miss West?” said Mr. Galmyn.
“Everything must have a beginning,” said Miss West.
“Don’t be discouraged, Arthur,” said Amber. “If you only continue on
this system I’ve laid down for you you’ll make plenty of money, and
what’s better still you will become reformed.”
“I’ve given up poetry already,” said he, in the sad tone that one adopts
in speaking of one’s pleasant vices which one is obliged to relinquish
through the tyranny of years.
“That’s a step in the right direction,” said Amber. “Oh, I’ve no doubt
as to your future, Arthur. But you must study hard--oh, yes, you must
study hard.”
“So I do: I can tell you the closing price of all Home Rails to-day
without referring to a list.”
“Really? Well, you are progressing. What about Industrials?” said Amber.
“I’m leaving over Industrials for another week,” he replied. “I’ve given
all my attention to Home Rails during the past fortnight. I dare say
if I don’t break down under the strain I shall go through a course of
Industrials inside another week, and then go on to Kaffirs.”
“It’s at Industrials that the money is to be made, you must remember,”
said Amber. “Let me enforce upon you once more the non-speculative
business--don’t think of _coups_. Aim only at a half per cent, of a
rise, and take advantage of even the smallest rise.”
“That’s how I made my eight pounds to-day,” said he. “You see when
things were very flat in the morning there came the report of a great
British victory. I knew that it wasn’t true, but half a dozen things
went up ten shillings or so and I unloaded--unloaded. It’s so nice to
have those words pat; it makes you feel that you’re in the swim of
the thing. If I only knew what contango meant, I think I could make an
impressive use of that word also.”
At this point another visitor was announced. His name was Mr. William
Bateman. He was a bright looking man of perhaps a year or two over
thirty, and though he was close upon six feet in height he probably
would have ridden under ten stone, so earnest was the attention that he
had given to his figure.
He would not take any tea.