CHAPTER VII
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 andwell-justified respect for her intellect and scholarly attainments. Herunfortunate love for a man whom he honestly believed to be a totallyunfit mate for her was the only shadow that had ever drifted betweenthem since she had become, not only his daughter, but his friend andcompanion, and the enthusiastic sharer of his intellectual pursuits. Ofcourse, anything like a scene was utterly out of the question; but thereis a silence more eloquent than words, and it was that that he wasmostly afraid of.
He found her walking up and down the lawn with her hands behind herback. She was a little paler than usual, and there was a shadow in hereyes. She came towards him, and said quite quietly:
"Mr Merrill has been here, Dad, to say good-bye. I told him, and so wehave said it."
The simple words were spoken with a quiet and yet tender dignity whichmade him feel prouder than ever of his daughter and all the more sorryfor her.
"I met him just outside the gate, Niti," he replied, looking at herthrough a little mist in his eyes, "He spoke most honourably, and likethe gentleman that he is. I hope you will believe me----"
"I believe you in everything, Dad," she said quickly; "and since thematter 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 waswell assumed.
"Ah! and what is that, Niti?" he asked, looking up at her with a smileof relief.
"It's something that I hope you will be able to get some of your solemnfun out of. One of the items in the 'Social Intelligence' to-day statesthat your old friend, Professor Hoskins van Huysman, and his wife anddaughter 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 herefor your lecture, and naturally he will not resist the temptation ofmaking one of your audience."
"Van Huysman!" exclaimed the Professor. "That Yankee charlatan, confoundhim! I shouldn't wonder if he had the impudence to take part in thediscussion afterwards."
"Then," laughed Nitocris, "you must take care to have all your heavyguns 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 andbrightest girl I know. You know, she can do almost anything, and yetshe's as unaffected----"
"As some one else we know," interrupted the Professor with anothersmile.
"And then, you know, Mrs van Huysman," continued Nitocris with a littleflush, "is such a dear, innocent, good-natured thing, so good-heartedand so deliciously American. Of course, you can fight with the Professoras much as you like in print, and in lecture halls--I know you both loveit--but you'll still be friends socially, won't you?"
"Which, of course, means garden-parties and river trips, and similarfrivolities that learned young ladies love so much. You needn't troubleabout that, Niti. I shall not allow my zeal for scientific truth tointerfere with your social pleasures, you may be quite sure. Science, asyou know, has nothing to do with what we call Society, except as one ofthe most curious phenomena of Sociology. Drive into town whenever youlike and see them. Present my respectful compliments, and ask them todinner, or whatever you like. And now I must get to my work--I've onlythree more days, and my notes are not anything like complete."
"Very well, Dad; I think I'll telephone them--they're stopping at theSavoy--extravagant people!--to say that I'll run in this afternoon andhave tea. Oh! and, by the way," she added, as he turned towards thehouse, "there's another item. Lord Leighton has been called homesuddenly on some business, and will be here the day after to-morrow."
"Oh! indeed," said the Professor, pausing. "Well, I shall be delightedto see him--but I don't know what I shall have to say to him about thatMummy."
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 theconjunction of these two announcements. Although Professor van Huysman'spersonal fortune was not as great as his attainments or his fame, Brendawould be very rich, for her mother was the only sister of a widowerwhose sole interest and occupation in life was piling up dollars. He haddollars in everything, from pork and lumber to canned goods, and her ownfather's scientific inventions, and Brenda was the bright particularstar of his affections.
On the other hand, Lord Leighton, son and heir of the invalid Earl ofKyneston, was a fairly well-to-do young nobleman, good-looking, ascholar, and a good sportsman, who had done brilliantly at Cambridge,and then devoted himself to Egyptian exploration with a whole-souledardour which had quickly won Professor Marmion's heart, and a readyconsent to his "trying his luck" with his daughter to boot. This had nota little to do with the present unfortunate condition of her own loveaffairs.
She had already refused Lord Leighton, letting him down, of course, asgently as possible, but withal firmly and uncompromisingly. Who couldbetter console him than this beautiful and brilliant American girl, andwhat would better suit that lovely head of hers than an English coronetwhich 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 HigherMathematics at the University of London, decided upon her firstexperiment in match-making.
When the Professor got into his study and shut the door, there was acurious smiling expression upon his refined, intellectual features.Instead of sitting down to his desk, he lit a pipe and began walking upand down the room, communing with his own soul in isolated sentences, aswas his wont when he was trying to arrive at any difficult decision.
In order to appreciate his deliberations and their result, it will benecessary to say that Professor Hoskins van Huysman was one of the mostdistinguished physicists in America, and he had also gained distinctionin applied mathematics. In addition to this, he was the inventor of manymarvellous contrivances for the demonstration and measurement of themore obscure physical forces. His official position was that of Lecturerand Demonstrator in Physical Science in Harvard University.
He and Professor Marmion had been deadly opponents in the field ofcontroversy for years. The latter had once detected an error in a verylearned monograph which he had published in the _Scientific American_ onthe "Co-Relation of the Etheric Forces in the Phenomena of Light andHeat," and of course he had never forgiven him. From that day forth arelentless duel of wits between them had continued. Every essay,monograph, or book that the one published, the other criticised withcold but ruthless severity, to the great delectation of the scientificworld, if not to the clarification of its atmosphere.
Socially, they were cordial acquaintances, if not friends. What theyreally thought of each other was known only to themselves and to theirimmediate domestic circles.
Naturally Professor Marmion was well aware that his elevation to thehigher 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 strictlyscientific sense, and reduce him to utter confusion and public ridicule,and the question which he had come to discuss with himself was: In howfar, if at all, was he justified in so using the extra-human powers withwhich he had been endowed?
The moment that he began to do this he became conscious of anothercurious complication of his recent development. On the higher plane hehad argued the matter out with no more emotion than a calculatingmachine would have betrayed, and he had come to a conclusion that wasabsolutely luminous and just: but now that he came to argue the samequestion on the lower plane he found that he was doing it under humanlimitations, and therefore with human feelings.
"No," he said in the peculiar low, musing tone which was habitual to himduring these monologues, "no; after all, I do not see that there wouldbe any harm in that. Wrong, nay, sinful it would undoubtedly be to proveto demonstr
ation that religious, social, and physical laws, may, undercertain changing circumstances, be both true and false at the same time.I am, or was--or whatever it is--perfectly right in considering that todeliberately produce such a chaos as that would do would be the mostcolossal crime that a man could commit against humanity, as far as thisplane is concerned, but there can be no harm in making a fewmathematical experiments."
He took a few more turns up and down the room, pulling slowly at hispipe, and with his mind not wholly unoccupied with speculations as towhat Professor Van Huysman's feelings might be if he were watching thesaid experiments. Then he began again:
"At the worst I shall only be carrying certain investigations a fewsteps farther, and developing theories which have been seriouslydiscussed by the hardest-headed scholars in the world. Both the Greekand the Alexandrian philosophers speculated on the possibility of astate of four dimensions; and didn't Cayley, before this very Society,deliberately say that at the present rate of progress in the HigherMathematics, the eye of Intellect might ere long see across the borderof tri-dimensional space?
"Surely I cannot do any very great harm by carrying his arguments totheir logical conclusions--if I can. Of course, physical demonstrationswould never do: I should frighten my brilliant and learned audience outof its seven senses; but, as for mere mathematics--well, I may make themstare, and set a good many highly-respected brains--my gifted friendHuysman's, among them--working pretty hard. Of course, he will beespecially furious, but there's no harm in that either. Yes, I shallcertainly do it. If he can't understand my demonstrations, that's not myconcern."
He went and sat down at his desk, still smiling, and went very carefullythrough the notes he had already made, and then through ProfessorHartley's letter, and his speculations on the Forty-Seventh Proposition.This done, he plunged into a fresh vortex of figures, and symbols, anddiagrams, in which he remained for the next two hours, his mindhovering, as it were, over the borderland which at once divides andunites the higher and the lower planes. When he returned to earth, thedreamy, abstracted look faded away from his face; his eyes lit up, andthe pleasant smile came back.
He opened the middle drawer in his desk, and took out the first page ofthe fair copy of his notes, which Nitocris had made for him--thinkingthe while how easy it would have been for him in the state of N4 totake it out without opening the drawer at all--and looked at it. It washeaded:
"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 atheme, adequately treated, will considerably astonish my learned friendsin general, and my esteemed critic, Van Huysman, in particular."
From which remark it will be gathered that Franklin Marmion hadcertainly recrossed the dividing line between the two Planes ofExistence.