THE LAW OF SELECTION
In actual mundane time, to use a somewhat halting expression, Professor
Marmion's walk had occupied about a couple of hours. His strange
experiences had, of course, occupied none, since they had taken place
beyond the bounds of Time.
Meanwhile, Miss Nitocris had finished her digest of the morning papers,
given the cook a few directions, and then gone out on the lawn at the
back of the house to have a quiet read and enjoy the soft air and
sunshine of that lovely May morning. She lay down in a hammock chair in
the shade of a fine old cedar at the bottom of the lawn, and began to
read, and soon she began to dream. The news in the papers, even the most
responsible of them, had been very serious. The shadow of war was once
more rising in the East--war which, if it came, England could scarcely
escape, and if it did Someone would have to go and fight in that most
perilous of all forms of battle, torpedo attack.
The book she had taken with her was one of exceedingly clever verse
written years before by just such another as herself; a girl, beautiful,
learned, and yet absolutely womanly, and endowed, moreover, with that
gift so rare among learned women, the gift of humour. Long ago, this
girl had taken the fever in Egypt, and died of it; but before she died
she wrote a book of poems and verses, which, though long forgotten--if
ever known--by the multitude, is still treasured and re-read by some,
and of these Miss Nitocris was one. Just now the book was open at the
hundred and forty-third page, on which there is a portion of a poem
entitled _Natural Selection_.
Miss Nitocris' eyes alternately rested on the page for a few moments and
then lifted and looked over the lawn towards the open French windows.
The verses ran thus:
_"But there comes an idealless lad,
With a strut, and a stare, and a smirk;
And I watch, scientific though sad,
The Law of Selection at work._
_"Of Science he hasn't a trace,
He seeks not the How and the Why,
But he sings with an amateur's grace
And he dances much better than I._
_"And we know the more dandified males
By dance and by song win their wives--
'Tis a law that with_ Aves _prevails,
And even in_ Homo _survives."_
"Just my precious papa's ideas!" she murmured, with a toss of her head,
and something like a little sniff. "What a nuisance it all is!
Aristocracy of intellect, indeed! Just as if any of us, even my dear
Dad, if he _is_ considered one of the cleverest and most learned men in
Europe, were anything more than what Newton called himself--a little
child picking up pebbles and grains of sand on the shore of a boundless
and fathomless ocean, and calling them knowledge. I'm not quite sure
that that's correct, but it's something like it. Still, that's not the
question. How on earth am I to tell poor Mark? Oh dear! he'll have to be
'Mr Merrill' now, I suppose. What a shame! I've half a mind to rebel,
and vindicate the Law of Selection at any price. Ah, there he is. Well,
I suppose I've got to get through it somehow."
As she spoke, one of the French windows under the verandah opened, and a
man in a panama hat, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, came out and
raised his hat as he stepped off the verandah.
With a sigh and a frown she closed the book sharply, got up and tossed
it into the chair. No daintier or more desirable incarnation of the
eternal feminine could have been imagined than she presented as she
walked slowly across the lawn to meet the man whom the Law of Selection
had designated as her natural mate, and whom her father, for reasons
presently to be made plain, had forbidden her to marry on pain of exile
from his affections for ever.
The face he turned towards her as she approached was not exactly
handsome as an artist or some women would have defined the word, but it
was strong, honest, and open--just the sort of face, in short, to match
the broad shoulders, the long, cleanly-shaped, athletic limbs, and the
five feet eleven of young, healthy manhood with which Nature had
associated it.
A glance at his face and another one at him generally would, in spite of
the costume, have convinced any one who knows the genus that Mark
Merrill was a naval officer. He had that quiet air of restrained
strength, of the instinctive habit of command which somehow or other
does not distinguish any other fighting man in the world in quite the
same degree. His name and title were Lieutenant-Commander Mark Gwynne
Merrill, of His Majesty's Destroyer _Blazer_, one of the coolest-headed
and yet most judiciously reckless officers in the Service.
There was a light in his wide-set, blue-grey eyes, and a smile on his
strong, well-cut lips which were absolutely boyish in their anticipation
of sheer delight as she approached; and then, after one glance at her
face, his own changed with a suddenness, which, to a disinterested
observer, would have been almost comic.
"I'm awfully sorry, Mark," she began, in a tone which literally sent a
shiver--a real physical shiver--through him, for he was very, very much
in love with her.
"What on earth is the matter, Niti?" he said, looking at the fair face
and downcast eyes which, for the first time since he had asked the
eternal question and she had answered it according to his heart's
desire, had refused to meet his. "Let's have it out at once. It's a lot
better to be shot through the heart than starved to death, you know. I
suppose it's something pretty bad, or you wouldn't be looking down at
the grass like that," he continued.
"Oh, it's--it's--it's a _beastly_ shame, that's what it is, so there!"
And as she said this Miss Nitocris Marmion, B.Sc., stamped her foot on
the turf and felt inclined to burst out crying, just as a milkmaid might
have done.
"Which means," said Mark, pulling himself up, as a man about to face a
mortal enemy would do, "that the Professor has said 'No.' In other
words, he has decided that his learned and lovely daughter shall not, as
I suppose he would put it, mate with an animal of a lower order--a mere
fighting-man. Well, Miss Marmion----"
"Oh, don't; _please_ don't!" she exclaimed, almost piteously, dropping
into a big wicker armchair by the verandah and putting her hands over
her eyes.
He had an awful fear that she was going to cry, and, as the Easterns
say, he felt his heart turning to water within him. But her highly
trained intellect came to her aid. She swallowed the sob, and looked up
at him with clear, dry eyes.
"It isn't quite that, Mark," she continued. "You know I wouldn't stand
anything like that even from the dear old Dad. Much as I love him, and
even, as you know, in some senses almost worship him, it isn't that.
It's this theory of heredity of his--this scientific faith--bigotry, I
call it, for it is just the same to him as Catholicism was to the
Spaniards in the sixteenth century. In fact, I told him the other night
that he reminded me of the Spanish grandee whose daughters were
convicted of heresy by the Inquisition, and who showed his devotion to
the Church by lighting the faggots which burned them with his own
hands."
"And what did he say to that?" said the sailor, not because he wanted to
know, but because there was an awkward pause that needed filling.
"I would rather not tell you, Mark, if you don't mind," she said slowly
and looking very straightly and steadily at him. "You know--well, I
needn't tell you again what I've told you already. You know I care for
you, and I always shall, but I cannot--I dare not--disobey my father. I
owe all that I ever had to him. He has been father, mother, teacher,
friend, companion--everything to me. We are absolutely alone in the
world. If I could leave him for anybody, I'd leave him for you, but I
won't disobey him and break his heart, as I believe I should, even for
you."
"You're perfectly right, Niti, perfectly," said Commander Merrill, in a
tone of steady conviction which inspired her with an almost irresistible
impulse to get up and kiss him. "You couldn't honestly do anything else,
and I know the shortest way to make you hate me would be to ask you to
do that something else. But still," he went on, thrusting his hands into
the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, "I do think I have a sort of right
to have some sort of explanation, and with your permission I shall just
ask him for one."
"For goodness' sake, don't do that, Mark--don't!" she pleaded. "You
might as well go and ask a Jewish Rabbi why he wouldn't let his daughter
marry a Christian. Wise and clever as he is in other things, poor Dad is
simply a fanatic in this, and--well, if he did condescend to explain,
I'm afraid you might mistake what he would think the correct scientific
way of putting it, for an insult, and I couldn't bear to think of you
quarrelling. You know you're the only two people in the world I--I--Oh
dear, what _shall_ I do!"
It was at this point that the Law of Natural Selection stepped in.
Natural laws of any sort have very little respect for the refinements of
what mortals are pleased to call their philosophy. Professor Marmion was
a very great man--some men said he was the greatest scientist of his
age--but at this moment he was but as a grain of sand among the wheels
of the mighty machine which grinds out human and other destinies.
Commander Merrill took a couple of long, swift strides towards the chair
in which Nitocris was leaning back with her hands pressed to her eyes.
He picked her up bodily, as he might have picked a child of seven up,
put her protesting hands aside, and slowly and deliberately kissed her
three times squarely on the lips as if he meant it; and the third time
her lips moved too. Then he whispered:
"Good-bye, dear, for the present, at any rate!"
After which he deposited her tenderly in the chair again, and, with just
one last look, turned and walked with quick, angry strides across the
lawn and round the semi-circular carriage-drive, saying some things to
himself between his clenched teeth, and thinking many more.
A few yards outside the gate he came face to face with the Professor.
"Good-morning, sir," said Merrill, with a motion of his hand towards his
hat.
"Oh, good-morning, Mr Merrill," replied the Professor a little stiffly,
for relations between them had been strained for some considerable time
now. "I presume you have been to the house. I am sorry that you did not
find me at home, but if it is anything urgent and you have half an hour
to spare----"
He stopped in his speech, silenced by a shock of something like shame.
He was prevaricating. He knew perfectly well that "it" was the most
urgent errand a man could have, next to his duty to his country, that
had brought the young sailor to his house. Twenty-four hours ago he
would not have noticed such a trifle: but it was no trifle now; for to
his clearer vision it was a sin, an evasion of the immutable laws of
Truth, utterly unworthy of the companion of Nitocris the Queen in that
other existence which he had just left.
"You have seen Niti, I suppose?" he continued, with singular directness.
"Yes," replied Merrill. "You will remember that the week was up this
morning, and so I called to learn my fate, and your daughter has told
me. I presume that your decision is final, and that, therefore, there is
nothing more to be said on the subject."
"My decisions are usually final, Mr Merrill, because I do not arrive at
them without due consideration. I am deeply grieved, as I have told you
before, but my decision is a deduction from what I consider to be an
unbreakable chain of argument which I need not trouble you with.
Personally and socially, of course, it would be impossible for me to
have the slightest objection to you. In fact, apart from your execrable
fighting profession, I like you; but otherwise, as you know, I cannot
help looking at you as the survival of an age of barbarism, a hark-back
of humanity, for all the honour in which that trade is held by an
ignorant and deluded world; and so for the last time it is my painful
task to tell you that there can be no union between your blood and mine.
Outside that, of course, there is no reason why we should not remain
friends."
"Very well, sir," replied Merrill, "I have heard your decision, and Miss
Marmion has told me she is resolved to abide by it; I should be
something less than a man if I attempted to alter her resolve. We are
ordered on foreign service this week, and so for the present,
good-bye."
He lifted his hat, turned away and walked down the road with teeth
clenched and eyes fixed straight in front of him, and a shade of grey
under the tan of his skin.
The Professor looked after him for a few moments and turned in at the
gate, saying:
"It's a great pity in some ways--many ways, in fact. He's a fine young
fellow and a thorough gentleman, and I'm afraid they're very fond of
each other, but of course to let Niti marry him would be the negation of
the belief and teaching of more than half a lifetime. I hope the poor
girl won't take it too keenly to heart. I'm afraid he seems rather hard
hit, poor chap, but of course there's no help for it. Just fancy me the
father-in-law of a fighting man, and the grandfather of what might be a
brood of fighters! No, no; that is quite out of the question."