The new factory was at Willesden Junction, which I reached regularly
every morning by the 8.10 from Earl's Court Road, returning home to the
little house in Kensington about seven. It was a long day, made longer
by the railway journey at each end. The present equipment was on a
comparatively small scale, future expansion depending largely on what it
was to be hoped our laboratory could accomplish. Two young English
chemists, graduates of a technical school, were assigned to work with
me. The rest of the research staff included a machinist and pipe fitter,
a general utility girl, a glass blower to make special apparatus, and
Chitty.
The latter I ruthlessly took from his duties as general house man to do
odd jobs for me. He gloried in his new work, for he had a positive awe
of chemistry. To him it was the last word in the mysterious achievements
of the educated human intellect. With his awe was a wholesome fear of
possible eventualities. There was not a day that it wasn't his secret
belief that we should all be blown to atoms. Nevertheless, on the rare
occasions when minor accidents did occur, he was the first person I
found standing at my elbow. I sometimes amused myself by devising
harmless bangs or unexpected puffs of smoke, to see Chitty come on the
run to my side. The day I really spilt some acid on myself, I thought
the man would get his hands badly burned before I could stop him from
tearing my clothes off. He was, however, like a perfectly trained dog. A
sharp word of command brought him up all standing. I saved his hands
from serious burns and got out of my clothes without damage to myself.
"Chitty," I said another time, "if this place ever gets on fire you are
to get out the first window without delay."
"Not until I see you going, sir, thank you," he replied. And he meant
it.
On pleasant Saturday afternoons, during the early autumn, Helen came out
to meet me. Chitty used to prepare my luncheons for me every day; on
Saturdays he catered for two. His army training taught him to use any
utensils handy, and Helen laughed until the tears came at finding his
kitchen a series of Bunsen burners, his crockery mainly Meissen ware and
Bohemian glass beakers. He could cook sausages and grill tomatoes fit
for an epicure. It was true his range was strictly limited, being
restricted to what might be put in a frying pan or plain boiled, but
within its limits it was unexcelled.
Luncheon over, we would take the train back and prowl about for an hour
or two before tea or see a matinee from the pit. Our finances made it
necessary for us to keep to simple pleasures. Still, by saving all our
pennies for Saturdays and Sundays we did ourselves surprisingly well.
During the week the company paid for my railway ticket and luncheons.
Thus the week-end found us with thirty or a few more shillings to spend.
In those pre-war days two could do a lot in London on thirty shillings.
For example, if we wished to be really extravagant and "go a bust" we
lunched at Kettner's for 3/6 each, table d'hote, total 7 shillings--a
shilling for the waiter--eight; a bottle of table chianti, 3 bob; or
eleven in all, leaving nineteen shillings over. Setting aside a half
crown for tea, we still had 16/6. Suppose we went to a pit--half a crown
apiece; total, 5 shillings--we yet were rich with eleven and six
remaining. Plenty over for Sunday, especially if we took luncheon with
us from home. We did not lack for clothes; Helen's trousseau would last
a long time--and the next year the company was going to pay dividends.
Meanwhile there was one deep disappointment mixed with our improvident
happiness. I had no time for writing or even for keeping in touch with
my theatrical and literary friends. They had begun by dropping in at the
house, never to find me at home, and in a few months a caller for us was
rare. My absence in America had broken a good many threads, and there
was no opportunity to spin new ones. The work and friendships we had
planned to do and form together while riding over the hills of Deep
Harbor could not be done and formed. I had to live and think chemistry.
The evenings were rarely free, for laboratory reports of the day's work
had to be prepared then. The week-ends were so precious that Helen and I
could not spare them for anything but our own companionship.
Along with the first fogs, in November, I realized that the work at the
laboratory was getting on slowly. I had not yet been able to begin
quantity production. My father called one day to ask me to look over the
special expenditures on behalf of research. He wanted to know if
economies were not possible, and where I thought we were going. For many
hours I reviewed the accounts and the results to date, as set down in
the laboratory diary and reports. There was nothing to show on the side
of practical accomplishments. The experiments gave evidence we were on
the right track; it was equally clear we had not arrived. The German
process worked well on a small scale with carefully selected chemicals;
it did not work at all on a commercial scale.
"Well, Ted, what are we going to do about it?" my father inquired at the
end of my survey. "My associates are getting restless; we have spent a
great deal of money. What have we to show for it?"
I turned over my notes again, as one does in such cases, hoping some
overlooked solution will leap from the pages.
"I am certain I can do it," I said.
"When? And how much will it cost?"
"That I can't say. It may be tomorrow--it may be next month. The answer
perhaps is filtering now in the next room, or it may be a question of
several weeks' experiment."
"Not good enough, Ted."
"You told me it would be a year before you expected results."
"A year before we paid dividends. If you can't begin manufacture, how
can you expect to make a profit? Your experiments have eaten a deep hole
in our resources, and we are where we were at the beginning. In short,
Ted, if you don't tell me you are ready to manufacture before the next
three months are up, we'll have to close down."
"We might get one of the Germans over and let him have a look at what
I'm doing." I went into the next room and came back with a sample. "Here
is the stuff--I make it every day in there. But when it goes through in
quantity downstairs, I can't get it."
"What are you doing about it?"
"Analyzing all our raw materials to see if I can trace the probable
impurity that is blocking us. The apparatus downstairs has been tested
and examined a dozen times. I can find nothing the matter there. I
thought, at first, lubricating oil might be leaking into the mixers."
"Suppose you can't find the cause?"
I shrugged. "If the world comes to an end, there's not much good
planning what you will do. There is a cause, and I've got to find it.
There's nothing mysterious about it. Such matters are a problem of
elimination. You must be careful not to overlook any possibility. In the
end you run it down--corner it. But it may take time."
"Is there any possibility our German friends have done us?"
"I've thought of that. Yet if that is the case, why the devil does the
stuff come out all right on a small scale? Here it is in my hand. There
_is_ such a thing. They haven't faked it--there it is."
"Will you write a special report tonight for me to show the board of
directors tomorrow?"
"Yes. You still own the controlling interest, don't you?"
"Up till now I do," my father replied. "I may have to let that go, Ted,
if you don't find the answer soon."
I gave up my Saturday afternoons and often my Sundays. The answer did
not appear. All this was hard on Helen. The family tension did not tend
to relax in the face of our difficulties at the factory. My own nerves
were being stretched taut, and I had to fight to keep Helen from
noticing too much the strain I was under. I laid off my two assistant
chemists, to reduce expenses. Their help had never been valuable except
for doing routine things. Occasionally, when there was an experiment on
that couldn't be left unfinished, I worked at Willesden until late at
night. It was Helen's calm faith in me that kept me at it and gave me
self-control. I talked little with her--or with any one--about this
damned problem, preferring, with her, to read and dream as we had always
done; and I kept my mouth shut as far as possible before my father, to
prevent his noting that I was badly frightened. Chitty realized that I
had a facer. His anxiety was pathetic; I would look up from an
experiment and find him watching my face eagerly, to see if now I had a
ray of hope. Of course, Helen knew why I did not come home on Saturday
afternoons, but her confidence kept her so optimistic she scarcely
worried at all. I cursed German chemistry from A to Z before Chitty;
elsewhere I was grimly silent on the subject.
My mother in no wise changed her attitude; Helen was treated with the
formality of a guest, and I should have worried more than I did about
this if I had not discovered by accident that she was closeted with Sims
a great part of each day in her own room making baby clothes. Poor
mother, how happy she could have made Helen by letting her know this!
But she didn't. Helen sat all day working in her room on little things,
and my mother in hers, and neither woman spoke to the other of what she
was doing. "While I'm seeking answers to chemical riddles, I wish some
one would explain to me the riddle of human nature," I thought to
myself. One night I decided to act on this idea and seek the latter
answer for myself. I went to my mother's room.
"What do you wish, Ted?" she asked as I sat down. It had been a great
many years since we had exchanged any confidences face to face. Her
devotion to me had always alarmed me--it put me off when I came near
her. I knew I didn't think as she thought, and I was afraid a
misunderstanding hopeless to reconcile would come. It sounds
paradoxical, I know--that I should fear her love to the point that I
believed it dangerous--but so it was. "If we ever really quarrel," I had
said to myself, "nothing on earth will patch it up." So it came about
that for years I had avoided intimacy with her, preferring a queer
aloofness to any attempt at understanding, since by nature we were such
opposites.
"I shan't pretend, mother. It's about Helen," I said in answer to her
question.
"What about Helen?" my mother replied coldly.
I wondered what to say. She sat there looking at me calmly, but there
was a hardness in her expression which indicated that all defences were
fully manned. "I'll make a mess of it--get the worst of it, I know, and
go out of here thoroughly in the wrong," I said to myself. "But, damn it
all, I ought to be able to think of the right thing."
"You wished to speak to me about Helen?"
"Helen likes you," I blurted out, at the same time realizing I had made
the worst of all possible starts.
"She has only to tell me this herself." My mother's voice was level.
"Would it do any good?" I blundered on.
"I am sure I have not the least idea what you mean, Ted. I think it
would be much better if you went up to your own room."
I began to be desperate. There ought to be some facial flag of truce,
indicating unconditional surrender, that one could wave with a look. At
that moment I would have given anything, except Helen's love, to have my
mother relent. Instead, she picked up a book and made an elaborate show
of reading. I meditated flying into a childish rage, thus forcing the
issue, but I was so truly hurt and angry I didn't dare. I knew I should
probably say something I should afterwards regret. I got upon my feet.
"I am sorry you do not approve of my marriage, mother"--adding mistake
number three to the two I was certain I had made.
"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of your marriage, Edward. I
was not consulted. It is no affair of mine."
"Of course, you don't mean it," I said. "That remark is silly enough to
have been made by me." I was quite appalled at my boldness, but anger
was fast mastering me.
"I do not wish to have any further discussion with you on this subject,
either now or in the future. Whatever else you learned in Deep Harbor,
it wasn't manners."
"Rot!" I exclaimed. She lifted her eyebrows and turned a page. I stood a
second irresolute. "I mean I didn't intend to be rude--you know what I
mean--only you won't admit it."
"I don't expect an apology. Good night, Edward."
"Now you've done it, you blithering idiot," I said as I clumped upstairs
to Helen. "I knew I'd end in the wrong." Helen gently told me, at the
conclusion of my story, words to the same effect.
"Am I a blithering idiot, Helen dear?"
"No, sweetheart, you are just a boy," was Helen's exit line for this
episode.
* * * * *
Our second Christmas together was drawing near, and it promised to be
far different from the one we had looked forward to the year before. The
factory problem was still unsolved; the building which my father had
anticipated would be humming with prosperous activity stood silent. Only
in the laboratory upstairs was there any work being done, labour which
still seemed but a beating of the air. I had called in more than one
consulting chemist; they merely suggested that I do the things I had
been doing. The advice from Germany was to the same effect. Analyze and
search for the cause among the raw materials. I had outside analyses
made on these, to check my own by, and no clue developed. The board of
directors called upon me collectively and singly to offer the inane
suggestions which non-technical men always make when they wish to be
helpful over a technical matter.
A week before Christmas I sat staring at samples of my raw materials
spread over the laboratory table. Chitty was rinsing test tubes at the
sink.
"It does beat the devil, Chitty," I said, "to think that the answer to
all our trouble is staring right at us from one of these heaps of
samples, and we can't find it."
"Yessir," Chitty agreed. "Don't give up, sir; 'ave another try."
I looked at my watch. It was three o'clock; the short winter day was
already dusk without. A London and Northwestern express screeched past
our windows.
"I'd like my overcoat, please, Chitty. I'm going home." A queer,
startled look came into his face.
"You're not giving up, Mister Edward? You won't tell them you're beaten?
'Ave another shot at your last experiment. I don't mind working late
tonight, sir."
"Chitty," I said, "sometimes it pays to cut your losses and start
afresh. We're up a blind passage. Let's turn round and walk out of it."
He helped me into my great coat with a doubtful air.
"Don't let them say it's done you in, sir," he said. "Come back tomorrow
morning. You never know your luck, sir."
"I'll be here at the usual time, Chitty." And with this I left him.
My father, luckily, was in when I got back to Kensington. I saw him
studying me carefully as I came into the library and sat down. He laid
aside his pipe and waited. I was in no hurry to begin speaking.
"Discouraged, Ted?" my father at last inquired.
"No. I'm through."
"That sounds rather tragic, Ted. Just what do you mean?"
"I have been thinking this thing over. We've reached an absolutely blank
wall. I can neither climb over it, tunnel under it, nor walk around it."
"Facts, please," my father interrupted. "Cut your rhetoric." I gave him
a brief recapitulation of my failure, together with my reasons for
believing that it was no use going on doing the same useless experiments
over and over again. He listened patiently, without giving any sign of
emotion.
"It doesn't make pleasant telling," I ended, "to confess one has
failed."
"Have you your laboratory notebooks and diary here?"
"Yes," I admitted, "but they won't mean anything to you--they are mainly
full of chemical formulae and abbreviated notes."
"Nevertheless, I wish to see them."