having a son-in-law who could tot up acquaintances with Sir Edgar from the Soudan to Alaska. Scott, she saw, was going to be sulky because Sir Edgar and Marsellus were talking about things beyond his little circle of interests. She made no effort to draw him into the conversation, but let him prowl like a restless leopard among the books. The Professor was amiable, but quiet. When the second maid came to the door and signalled that dinner was ready—dinner was signalled, not announced—Mrs. St. Peter took Sir Edgar and guided him to his seat at her right, while the others found their usual places. After they had finished the soup, she had some difficulty in summoning the little maid to take away the plates, and explained to her guest that the electric bell, under the table, wasn’t connected as yet—they had been in the new house less than a week, and the trials of building were not over.
“Oh? Then if I had happened along a fortnight ago I shouldn’t have found you here? But it must be very interesting, building your own house and arranging it as you like,” he responded.
Marsellus, silenced during the soup, came in with a warm smile and a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Building is the word with us, Sir Edgar, my—oh, isn’t it! My wife and I are in the throes of it. We are building a country house, rather an ambitious affair, out on the wooded shores of Lake Michigan. Perhaps you would like to run out in my car and see it? What are your engagements for to-morrow? I can take you out in half an hour, and we can lunch at the Country Club. We have a magnificent site; primeval forest behind us and the lake in front, with our own beach—my father-in-law, you must know, is a formidable swimmer. We’ve been singularly fortunate in architect,—a young Norwegian, trained in Paris. He’s doing us a Norwegian manor house, very harmonious with its setting, just the right thing for rugged pine woods and high headlands.”
Sir Edgar seemed most willing to make this excursion, and allowed Marsellus to fix an hour, greatly to the surprise of McGregor, whose look at his wife implied that he entertained serious doubts whether this baronet with walrus moustaches amounted to much after all.
The engagement made, Louie turned to Mrs. St. Peter. “And won’t you come too, Dearest? You haven’t been out since we got our wonderful wrought-iron door fittings from Chicago. We found just the right sort of hinge and latch, Sir Edgar, and had all the others copied from it. None of your Colonial glass knobs for us!”
Mrs. St. Peter sighed. Scott and Kathleen had just glass-knobbed their new bungalow throughout, yet she knew Louie didn’t mean to hurt their feelings—it was his heedless enthusiasm that made him often say untactful things.
“We’ve been extremely fortunate in getting all the little things right,” Louie was gladly confiding to Sir Edgar. “There’s really not a flaw in the conception. I can say that, because I’m a mere onlooker; the whole thing’s been done by the Norwegian and my wife and Mrs. St. Peter. And,” he put his hand down affectionately upon Mrs. St. Peter’s bare arm, “and we’ve named our place! I’ve already ordered the house stationary. No, Rosamond, I won’t keep our little secret any longer. It will please your father, as well as your mother. We call our place ‘Outland,’ Sir Edgar.”
He dropped the announcement and drew back. His mother-in-law rose to it—Spilling could scarcely be expected to understand.
“How splendid, Louie! A real inspiration.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I knew that would go to your hearts.” The Professor had expressed his emotion only by lifting his heavy, sharply uptwisted eyebrow. “Let me explain, Sir Edgar,” Marsellus went on eagerly. “We have named our place for Tom Outland, a brilliant young American scientist and inventor, who was killed in Flanders, fighting with the Foreign Legion, the second year of the war, when he was barely thirty years of age. Before he dashed off to the front, this youngster had discovered the principle of the Outland vacuum, worked out the construction of the bulkheaded vacuum that is revolutionizing aviation. He had not only invented it, but, curiously enough for such a hot-headed fellow, had taken pains to protect it. He had no time to communicate his discovery or to commercialize it—simply bolted to the front and left the most important discovery of his time to take care of itself.”
Sir Edgar, fork arrested, looked a trifle dazed. “Am I to understand that you are referring to the inventor of the Outland vacuum?”
Louie was delighted. “Exactly that! Of course you would know all about it. My wife was young Outland’s fiancée—is virtually his widow. Before he went to France he made a will in her favour; he had no living relatives, indeed. Toward the close of the war we began to sense the importance of what Outland had been doing in his laboratory—I am an electrical engineer by profession. We called in the assistance of experts and got the idea over from the laboratory to the trade. The monetary returns have been and are, of course, large.”
While Louie paused long enough to have some intercourse with the roast before it was taken away, Sir Edgar remarked that he himself had been in the Air Service during the war, in the construction department, and that it was most extraordinary to come thus by chance upon the genesis of the Outland vacuum.
“You see,” Louie told him, “Outland got nothing out of it but death and glory. Naturally, we feel terribly indebted. We feel it’s our first duty in life to use that money as he would have wished—we’ve endowed scholarships in his own university here, and that sort of thing. But our house we want to have as a sort of memorial to him. We are going to transfer his laboratory there, if the university will permit,—all the apparatus he worked with. We have a room for his library and pictures. When his brother scientists come to Hamilton to look him up, to get information about him, as they are doing now already, at Outland they will find his books and instruments, all the sources of his inspiration.”
“Even Rosamond,” murmured McGregor, his eyes upon his cool green salad. He was struggling with a desire to shout to the Britisher that Marsellus had never so much as seen Tom Outland, while he, McGregor, had been his classmate and friend.
Sir Edgar was as much interested as he was mystified. He had come here to talk about manuscripts shut up in certain mouldering monasteries in Spain, but he had almost forgotten them in the turn the conversation had taken. He was genuinely interested in aviation and all its problems. He asked few questions, and his comments were almost entirely limited to the single exclamation, “Oh!” But this, from his lips, could mean a great many things; indifference, sharp interrogation, sympathetic interest, the nervousness of a modest man on hearing disclosures of a delicately personal nature. McGregor, before the others had finished dessert, drew a big cigar from his pocket and lit it at one of the table candles, as the horridest thing he could think of to do.
When they left the dining-room, St. Peter, who had scarcely spoken during dinner, took Sir Edgar’s arm and said to his wife: “If you will excuse us, my dear, we have some technical matters to discuss.” Leading his guest into the library, he shut the door.
Marsellus looked distinctly disappointed. He stood gazing wistfully after them, like a little boy told to go to bed. Louie’s eyes were vividly blue, like hot sapphires, but the rest of his face had little colour—he was a rather mackerel-tinted man. Only his eyes, and his quick, impetuous movements, gave out the zest for life with which he was always bubbling. There was nothing Semitic about his countenance except his nose—that took the lead. It was not at all an unpleasing feature, but it grew out of his face with masterful strength, well-rooted, like a vigorous oak-tree growing out of a hill-side.
Mrs. St. Peter, always concerned for Louie, asked him to come and look at the new rug in her bedroom. This revived him; he took her arm, and they went upstairs together.
McGregor was left with the two sisters. “Outland, outlandish!” he muttered, while he fumbled about for an ashtray. Rosamond pretended not to hear him, but the dusky red on her cheeks crept a little farther toward her ears.
“Remember,
