MOSTLY POSSIBILITIES
The Professor went into the garden feeling just a trifle uncomfortable.
He not only loved his daughter dearly, but he also had a very deep and
well-justified respect for her intellect and scholarly attainments. Her
unfortunate love for a man whom he honestly believed to be a totally
unfit mate for her was the only shadow that had ever drifted between
them since she had become, not only his daughter, but his friend and
companion, and the enthusiastic sharer of his intellectual pursuits. Of
course, anything like a scene was utterly out of the question; but there
is a silence more eloquent than words, and it was that that he was
mostly afraid of.
He found her walking up and down the lawn with her hands behind her
back. She was a little paler than usual, and there was a shadow in her
eyes. She came towards him, and said quite quietly:
"Mr Merrill has been here, Dad, to say good-bye. I told him, and so we
have said it."
The simple words were spoken with a quiet and yet tender dignity which
made him feel prouder than ever of his daughter and all the more sorry
for her.
"I met him just outside the gate, Niti," he replied, looking at her
through a little mist in his eyes, "He spoke most honourably, and like
the gentleman that he is. I hope you will believe me----"
"I believe you in everything, Dad," she said quickly; "and since the
matter is ended, it will only hurt us both to say any more about it.
Now, I have some news," she continued, in a tone whose alteration was
well assumed.
"Ah! and what is that, Niti?" he asked, looking up at her with a smile
of relief.
"It's something that I hope you will be able to get some of your solemn
fun out of. One of the items in the 'Social Intelligence' to-day states
that your old friend, Professor Hoskins van Huysman, and his wife and
daughter have come to London, and will stay ten days before 'proceeding'
to Paris and the South of France, and so, of course, they will be here
for your lecture, and naturally he will not resist the temptation of
making one of your audience."
"Van Huysman!" exclaimed the Professor. "That Yankee charlatan, confound
him! I shouldn't wonder if he had the impudence to take part in the
discussion afterwards."
"Then," laughed Nitocris, "you must take care to have all your heavy
guns ready for action. But, of course, Dad, you won't let your--well,
your scientific feelings get mixed up with social matters, will you?
Because, you know, I like Brenda very much; she's the prettiest and
brightest girl I know. You know, she can do almost anything, and yet
she's as unaffected----"
"As some one else we know," interrupted the Professor with another
smile.
"And then, you know, Mrs van Huysman," continued Nitocris with a little
flush, "is such a dear, innocent, good-natured thing, so good-hearted
and so deliciously American. Of course, you can fight with the Professor
as much as you like in print, and in lecture halls--I know you both love
it--but you'll still be friends socially, won't you?"
"Which, of course, means garden-parties and river trips, and similar
frivolities that learned young ladies love so much. You needn't trouble
about that, Niti. I shall not allow my zeal for scientific truth to
interfere with your social pleasures, you may be quite sure. Science, as
you know, has nothing to do with what we call Society, except as one of
the most curious phenomena of Sociology. Drive into town whenever you
like and see them. Present my respectful compliments, and ask them to
dinner, or whatever you like. And now I must get to my work--I've only
three more days, and my notes are not anything like complete."
"Very well, Dad; I think I'll telephone them--they're stopping at the
Savoy--extravagant people!--to say that I'll run in this afternoon and
have tea. Oh! and, by the way," she added, as he turned towards the
house, "there's another item. Lord Leighton has been called home
suddenly on some business, and will be here the day after to-morrow."
"Oh! indeed," said the Professor, pausing. "Well, I shall be delighted
to see him--but I don't know what I shall have to say to him about that
Mummy."
Nitocris turned away towards her chair with a faint smile on her lips.
With a woman's rapid intuition, she had seen a glimmer of hope in the
conjunction of these two announcements. Although Professor van Huysman's
personal fortune was not as great as his attainments or his fame, Brenda
would be very rich, for her mother was the only sister of a widower
whose sole interest and occupation in life was piling up dollars. He had
dollars in everything, from pork and lumber to canned goods, and her own
father's scientific inventions, and Brenda was the bright particular
star of his affections.
On the other hand, Lord Leighton, son and heir of the invalid Earl of
Kyneston, was a fairly well-to-do young nobleman, good-looking, a
scholar, and a good sportsman, who had done brilliantly at Cambridge,
and then devoted himself to Egyptian exploration with a whole-souled
ardour which had quickly won Professor Marmion's heart, and a ready
consent to his "trying his luck" with his daughter to boot. This had not
a little to do with the present unfortunate condition of her own love
affairs.
She had already refused Lord Leighton, letting him down, of course, as
gently as possible, but withal firmly and uncompromisingly. Who could
better console him than this beautiful and brilliant American girl, and
what would better suit that lovely head of hers than an English coronet
which was bright with the untarnished traditions of five hundred years?
Wherefore, then and there, Miss Nitocris Marmion, Bachelor of Science,
Licentiate of Literature and Art, and Gold-Medallist in Higher
Mathematics at the University of London, decided upon her first
experiment in match-making.
When the Professor got into his study and shut the door, there was a
curious smiling expression upon his refined, intellectual features.
Instead of sitting down to his desk, he lit a pipe and began walking up
and down the room, communing with his own soul in isolated sentences, as
was his wont when he was trying to arrive at any difficult decision.
In order to appreciate his deliberations and their result, it will be
necessary to say that Professor Hoskins van Huysman was one of the most
distinguished physicists in America, and he had also gained distinction
in applied mathematics. In addition to this, he was the inventor of many
marvellous contrivances for the demonstration and measurement of the
more obscure physical forces. His official position was that of Lecturer
and Demonstrator in Physical Science in Harvard University.
He and Professor Marmion had been deadly opponents in the field of
controversy for years. The latter had once detected an error in a very
learned monograph which he had published in the _Scientific American_ on
the "Co-Relation of the Etheric Forces in the Phenomena of Light and
Heat," and of course he had never forgiven him. From that day forth a
relentless duel of wits between them had continued. Every essay,
monograph, or book that the one published, the other criticised with
cold but ruthless severity, to the great delectation of the scientific
world, if not to the clarification of its atmosphere.
Socially, they were cordial acquaintances, if not friends. What they
really thought of each other was known only to themselves and to their
immediate domestic circles.
Naturally Professor Marmion was well aware that his elevation to the
higher plane of N4 gave him an enormous advantage over his adversary,
for now he could, if he chose, smite him hip and thigh, in a strictly
scientific sense, and reduce him to utter confusion and public ridicule,
and the question which he had come to discuss with himself was: In how
far, if at all, was he justified in so using the extra-human powers with
which he had been endowed?
The moment that he began to do this he became conscious of another
curious complication of his recent development. On the higher plane he
had argued the matter out with no more emotion than a calculating
machine would have betrayed, and he had come to a conclusion that was
absolutely luminous and just: but now that he came to argue the same
question on the lower plane he found that he was doing it under human
limitations, and therefore with human feelings.
"No," he said in the peculiar low, musing tone which was habitual to him
during these monologues, "no; after all, I do not see that there would
be any harm in that. Wrong, nay, sinful it would undoubtedly be to prove
to demonstration that religious, social, and physical laws, may, under
certain changing circumstances, be both true and false at the same time.
I am, or was--or whatever it is--perfectly right in considering that to
deliberately produce such a chaos as that would do would be the most
colossal crime that a man could commit against humanity, as far as this
plane is concerned, but there can be no harm in making a few
mathematical experiments."
He took a few more turns up and down the room, pulling slowly at his
pipe, and with his mind not wholly unoccupied with speculations as to
what Professor Van Huysman's feelings might be if he were watching the
said experiments. Then he began again:
"At the worst I shall only be carrying certain investigations a few
steps farther, and developing theories which have been seriously
discussed by the hardest-headed scholars in the world. Both the Greek
and the Alexandrian philosophers speculated on the possibility of a
state of four dimensions; and didn't Cayley, before this very Society,
deliberately say that at the present rate of progress in the Higher
Mathematics, the eye of Intellect might ere long see across the border
of tri-dimensional space?
"Surely I cannot do any very great harm by carrying his arguments to
their logical conclusions--if I can. Of course, physical demonstrations
would never do: I should frighten my brilliant and learned audience out
of its seven senses; but, as for mere mathematics--well, I may make them
stare, and set a good many highly-respected brains--my gifted friend
Huysman's, among them--working pretty hard. Of course, he will be
especially furious, but there's no harm in that either. Yes, I shall
certainly do it. If he can't understand my demonstrations, that's not my
concern."
He went and sat down at his desk, still smiling, and went very carefully
through the notes he had already made, and then through Professor
Hartley's letter, and his speculations on the Forty-Seventh Proposition.
This done, he plunged into a fresh vortex of figures, and symbols, and
diagrams, in which he remained for the next two hours, his mind
hovering, as it were, over the borderland which at once divides and
unites the higher and the lower planes. When he returned to earth, the
dreamy, abstracted look faded away from his face; his eyes lit up, and
the pleasant smile came back.
He opened the middle drawer in his desk, and took out the first page of
the fair copy of his notes, which Nitocris had made for him--thinking
the while how easy it would have been for him in the state of N4 to
take it out without opening the drawer at all--and looked at it. It was
headed:
"RECENT PROGRESS IN THE HIGHER MATHEMATICS."
He crossed the title out carefully, and wrote above it:
"AN EXAMINATION OF SOME SUPPOSED MATHEMATICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES."
"There," he murmured, as he put the sheet back; "I think that such a
theme, adequately treated, will considerably astonish my learned friends
in general, and my esteemed critic, Van Huysman, in particular."
From which remark it will be gathered that Franklin Marmion had
certainly recrossed the dividing line between the two Planes of
Existence.