As he paced the deck on the return voyage, Marvin came again to the
conclusion that he had been refused because Jean was unwilling to leave
her father. She was unwilling even to discuss the matter, lest she give
way. Dr. Rich was too old and too deeply attached to his northern
retreat to be transplanted to a city.
Well, nothing could please Jean’s lover more than to settle down there
with her in the woods, provided he could find something to do to make a
living. Were he in better favor with Asher Ferry, he might perhaps hope
to be employed in connection with that vast tract of Michigan land.
Asher would certainly need chemists in his new northern domain, and a
car might make it possible for one of them to live at some distance from
the tract.
But Asher was out of the question. What then? Might not a chemist put up
a diminutive laboratory and manufacture something at Upper Encampment?
Chemists had been reduced ere this to making tooth-paste or pills.
Marvin grimly fancied himself naming a tooth-paste for Ojeeg or the Red
Leaf.
Of course there was one other wild suggestion, the suggestion of Lord
Fortinbras that Chase Mahan might take his two millions of profit, when
he got it, and endow a research laboratory. The notion would never have
entered the old baron’s head but for a guilty conscience. Without
lifting a hand he had made a million pounds from the sale of virgin
American pine. But Chase Mahan would not be warranted in entrusting a
research laboratory to a son who was but a tyro in physics.
He had come away from England without making any effort to visit Oxford
or Cambridge or Manchester. He leaned over the rail and saw those bits
of Eden looking up at him from within the dark crystal. There was the
Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge, with Sir Joseph Thomson running his
fingers through his ambrosial locks as he evoked hypothesis after
hypothesis to be tested by his pupils. Sir Joseph had been the Mecca of
the world’s physicists for many a year.
And there at Manchester was Thomson’s most famous pupil. Sir Ernest
Rutherford, the man under whom Boltwood and Bohr and Moseley had
studied. What was Sir Ernest doing now? Was he continuing Moseley’s
work, or was he trying to prove that every atom is built up out of
lighter atoms?
Many able chemists denied that it would ever be possible to change one
element into another and so release the incredible heat. Though
admitting that Rutherford was right in regarding every nucleus as made
of positive electricity, they declared that no human skill could pierce
that nucleus. But it would be like Rutherford to try. If he did so, it
would be by bombarding light substances with radium, in the hope that
some helium atom might hit a nucleus and split it.
But these speculations all faded back into the wave as the steamer
approached New York.
On landing he called up the laboratory to make sure that Grein was
taking the much-needed vacation. He was informed that Dr. Grein was in
town and at his work as usual. So uptown went Marvin and burst in upon
his friend.
Grein was seated at a desk, figuring. He glanced up.
“Well?”
“I’m glad to see you looking better.”
“But what do you say?”
“About what?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“No. I’ve been in England.”
“Did he show you?”
“Did who show me what?”
Grein scowled, scribbled an equation, and pushed it across.
Marvin looked at it and remarked, “I’d call that a helium nucleus
pushing a hydrogen atom ahead of it about forty thousand times faster
than the bullet that killed Moseley.”
“Don’t you know what Rutherford has done since we last met?”
“No.”
“He has disintegrated the nitrogen atom. He has knocked hydrogen atoms
out of the nitrogen nucleus.”
Marvin said nothing—merely clapped his hand to his stomach as if a
thunderbolt had hit him there.
“I see it gets you,” smiled Grein. “Better get back into the game.”
“Are you offering me a job?”
“The president thinks I’m offering you the earth. But it’s only an
assistant professorship.”
“Grein, you’re an angel of mercy. But I can’t give you an answer till I
know whether I’m to be married.”
“Haven’t you got that matter fixed up yet?”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, in God’s name get it settled, and bring her down here and get to
work. We have just given Langmuir the Nichols medal for reactions at low
pressures, but his criticisms of Rutherford and Bohr drive me to drink.
They fascinate me, and I can’t disprove them, but his atom is too
simple.”
Marvin sat immobile, still thinking of the marvel accomplished by
Rutherford, and Grein went on.
“The stuff you sent me from France may contain the solution, especially
what you have to say about interpenetrating elliptical orbits. But think
of the years of experimentation before us.”
“I’m anxious enough to work under you, Grein.”
“Marvin, I’d be equally glad to work under you. Sometimes in a moment of
madness I dream of a quiet laboratory—no students except a few picked
men—no limit to cost of apparatus—no newspaper reporters—”
“Fairy tales don’t come true.”
“That’s correct, but I shall be happy enough if you join me within a
month.”