ST. PETER was breakfasting at six-thirty, alone, reading last night’s
letters while he waited for the coffee to percolate. It had been long
since he had had an eight o’clock class, but this year the schedule
committee had slyly put him down for one. “He can afford to take a taxi
over now,” the Dean remarked.
After breakfast he went upstairs and into his wife’s room. “I have a
rendezvous with a lady,” he said, tossing an envelope upon her
counterpane. She read a note from Mrs. Crane, the least attractive of
the faculty ladies, requesting an interview with the Professor at his
earliest convenience: as she wished to see him quite alone, might she
come to his study in the old house, where she understood he still
worked?
“Poor Godfrey!” murmured his wife.
“One ought not to joke about it----” St. Peter went into his own room to
get a handkerchief and came back, taking up his suspended sentence. “I’m
afraid it means poor Crane is coming up for another operation. Or, worse
still, that the surgeons tell her another would be useless. It’s like
_The Pit and the Pendulum_. I feel as if the poor fellow were strapped
down on a revolving disk that comes around under the knife just so
often.”
Mrs. St. Peter looked judicially at the letter, then at her husband’s
back. She didn’t believe that surgery would be the subject of discussion
when they met. Mrs. Crane had been behaving very strangely of late.
Doctor Crane had married a girl whom no other man ever thought of
courting, a girl of whom people always said: “Oh, she’s so _good_!”
chiefly because she was so homely. They had three very plain daughters,
and only Crane’s salary to live upon. Doctors and surgeons kept them
poor enough.
St. Peter kissed his wife and went forth quite unconscious of what was
going on in her mind. During the morning he telephoned Mrs. Crane, and
arranged a meeting with her at five o’clock. As the bell in the old
house didn’t work now, he waited downstairs on the front porch, to
receive his visitor and conduct her up to his study. It was raining
drearily, and Mrs. Crane arrived in a rubber coat, and a knitted sport
hat belonging to one of her daughters. St. Peter took her wet umbrella
and led her up the two flights of stairs.
“I’m not very well appointed to receive ladies, Mrs. Crane. This was the
sewing-room, you know. There’s Augusta’s chair, which she insisted was
comfortable.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Crane sat down, took off her gloves, and tucked wisps
of damp hair up under her crocheted hat. Her bleak, plain face wore an
expression of grievance.
“I’ve come without my husband’s knowledge, Doctor St. Peter, to ask you
what you think can be done about our rights in the Outland patent. You
know how my husband’s health has crippled us financially, and we never
know when his trouble may come on worse again. Myself, I’ve never
doubted that you would see it is only right to share with us.”
St. Peter looked at her in amazement. “But, my dear Mrs. Crane, how can
I share with you what I haven’t got? Tom willed his estate and royalties
in a perfectly regular way. The fact that he named my daughter as his
sole beneficiary doesn’t affect me, any more than if he had named some
relative of his own. I tell you frankly, I have never received one
dollar from the Outland patent.”
“It’s all the same if it goes to your family, Doctor St. Peter. My
husband must be considered in this matter. He spent days and nights
working with Outland. Tom never could have worked his theory out without
Robert’s help. He said so, more than once, in my presence and in the
presence of others.”
“Oh, I believe that, Mrs. Crane. But the difficulty is that Tom didn’t
make any recognition of that assistance in his will.”
Mrs. Crane had set her head and advanced her long chin with meek
determination. “Well, this is how it was, Professor. Mr. Marsellus came
here a stranger, to put in the Edison power plant, just at the time the
city was stirred up about Outland’s being killed at the front. Everybody
was wanting to do something in recognition of the young man. You brought
Mr. Marsellus to our house and introduced him. After that he came alone,
again and again, and he got round my husband. Robert thought he was
disinterested, and was only taking a scientific interest, and he told
him a great deal about what he and Outland had been working on. Then
Rosamond’s lawyers came for the papers. Tom Outland had no laboratory of
his own. He was allowed the use of a room in the physics building, at my
husband’s request. He wanted to be there, because he constantly needed
Robert’s help. The first thing we knew, your daughter’s engagement to
Marsellus was announced, and then we heard that all Outland’s papers had
been given over to him.”
Here St. Peter anticipated her. “But, Mrs. Crane, your husband couldn’t,
and wouldn’t, have kept Tom’s papers. They had to be given over to his
executor, who was my daughter’s attorney.”
“Well, I could have kept them, if he couldn’t!”--Mrs. Crane threw up her
head as if to show that the worm had turned at last--“kept them until
justice was done us, and some recognition had been made of my husband’s
part in all that research work. If he had taken the papers to court
then, with all the evidence we have, we could easily have got an equity.
But Mr. Marsellus is very smooth. He flattered Robert and got everything
there was.”
“But he didn’t get anything from your husband. Outland’s papers and
apparatus were delivered to his executor, as was inevitable.”
“That was a poor subterfuge,” said Mrs. Crane, with deep meaning. “You
know how unworldly Robert is, and as an old friend you might have warned
us.”
“Of what, Mrs. Crane?”
“Why, that Marsellus saw there was a fortune in the gas my husband and
his pupil had made, and we could have asked for our equity before we
gave your son-in-law a free hand with everything.”
St. Peter felt very unhappy. He began walking up and down the little
room. “Heaven knows I’d like to see Crane get something out of it, but
how? How? I’ve thought a great deal about this matter, and I’ve blamed
Tom for making that kind of will. I don’t think it occurred to the boy
that the will would ever be probated. He expected to come back from the
war and develop the thing himself. I doubt whether Robert, with all his
superior knowledge, would have known the twists and turns by which the
patent could be commercialized. It took a great deal of work and a
special kind of ability to do that.”
“A salesman’s ability!” Mrs. Crane was becoming nasty.
“If you like; but certainly Robert would have been no man to convince
manufacturers and machinists, any more than I would. A great deal of
money was put into it, too, before any came back; every cent Marsellus
had, and all he could borrow. He took heavy chances. Crane and I
together could never have raised a hundredth part of the capital that
was necessary to get the thing started. Without capital to make it go,
Tom’s idea was merely a formula written out on paper. It had lain for
two years in your husband’s laboratory, and would have lain there for
years more before he or I would have done anything about it.”
Mrs. Crane’s dreary face took on more animation than he had supposed it
capable of. “It had lain there because it belonged there, and was made
there! My husband was done out of it by an adventurer, and his
friendship for you tied his hands. I must say you’ve shown very little
consideration for him. You might have warned us never to let those
papers go. You see Robert getting weaker all the time and having those
terrible operations, and our girls going shabby and teaching in the ward
schools, and Rosamond riding about in a limousine and building country
houses,--and you do nothing about it. You take your honours--you’ve
deserved them, we never forget that--and move into your new house, and
you don’t remember what it is to be in straitened circumstances.”
St. Peter drew his chair nearer to Mrs. Crane, and addressed her
patiently. “Mrs. Crane, if you had any legal rights in the patent, I’d
defend them against Rosamond as soon as against anyone else. I think she
ought to recognize Dr. Crane’s long friendship and helpfulness to Tom in
some way. I don’t see just how it can be done, but I feel it should be.
And if you wish, I’ll tell Rosamond how I feel. Why don’t you put this
matter before her?”
“I don’t care to ask anything of Mrs. Marsellus. I wrote her some time
ago, and she replied to me through her lawyer, saying that all claims
against the Outland patent would be considered in due order. It’s not
worthy of a man in Robert’s position to accept hush money from the
Marselluses. We want justice, and my brother is confident the court will
give it to us.”
“Well, I suppose Bright knows more about what the courts will do than I.
But if you’ve decided to go to law about it, why did you come to me?”
“There are some things the law don’t cover,” said Mrs. Crane
mysteriously, as she rose and put on her gloves. “I wanted you to know
how we feel about it.”
St. Peter followed her downstairs and put up her umbrella for her, and
then went back to his study to think it over. His friendship with Crane
had been a strange one. Out in the world they would almost certainly
have kept clear of each other; but in the university they had fought
together in a common cause. Both, with all their might, had resisted the
new commercialism, the aim to “show results” that was undermining and
vulgarizing education. The State Legislature and the board of regents
seemed determined to make a trade school of the university. Candidates
for the degree of Bachelor of Arts were allowed credits for commercial
studies; courses in book-keeping, experimental farming, domestic
science, dress-making, and what not. Every year the regents tried to
diminish the number of credits required in science and the humanities.
The liberal appropriations, the promotions and increases in salary, all
went to the professors who worked with the regents to abolish the purely
cultural studies. Out of a faculty of sixty, there were perhaps twenty
men who made any serious stand for scholarship, and Robert Crane was one
of the staunchest. He had lost the Deanship of the College of Science
because of his uncompromising opposition to the degrading influence of
politicians in university affairs. The honour went, instead, to a much
younger man, head of the department of chemistry, who was willing “to
give the taxpayers what they wanted.”
The struggle to preserve the dignity of the university, and their own,
had brought St. Peter and Dr. Crane much together. They were, moreover,
the only two men on the faculty who were doing research work of an
uncommercial nature, and they occasionally dropped in on one another to
exchange ideas. But that was as far as it went. St. Peter couldn’t ask
Crane to dinner; the presence of a bottle of claret on the table would
have made him uncomfortable. Dr. Crane had all the prejudices of the
Baptist community in which he grew up. He carried them with him when he
went to study at a German university, and brought them back. But Crane
knew that none of his colleagues followed his work so closely, and
rejoiced at his little triumphs so heartily, as St. Peter.
St. Peter couldn’t help admiring the man’s courage; poor, ill,
overworked, held by his conscience to a generous discharge of his duties
as a teacher, he was all the while carrying on these tedious and
delicate experiments that had to do with determining the extent of
space. Fortunately, Crane seemed to have no social needs or impulses. He
never went anywhere, except, once or twice a year, to a dinner at the
President’s house. Music disturbed him too much, dancing shocked him--he
couldn’t see why it was permitted among the students. Once, after Mrs.
St. Peter had sat next him at the President’s dinner-table, she said to
her husband: “The man is too dreary! All evening his heavy underwear
kept coming down below his cuffs, and he kept poking it bade with his
fore-finger. I believe he thinks it’s wicked to live with even so plain
a woman as Mrs. Crane.”
After Tom Outland graduated from the university, he and Dr. Crane worked
side by side in the Physics building for several years. The older man
had been of great assistance to the younger, without doubt. Though that
kind of help, the result of criticism and suggestion, is not easily
reckoned in percentages, still St. Peter thought Crane ought to get
something out of the patent. He resolved to see Louie about it. But
first he had better talk with Crane himself, and try to dissuade him
from going to law. His brother-in-law, Homer Bright, would be tempted by
the publicity which an action involving the Outland patent would
certainly bring him. But he would lose the case, and Crane would get
nothing. Whereas Louie, if he were properly approached, would be
generous.
St. Peter looked at his watch. He would go home now, and after dinner he
would walk over to the Physics building, where his colleague worked
every night. He never went to see Crane at his house if he could help
it. He lived in the most depressing and unnecessary ugliness.