Читать книгу White Banners - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 11

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MARCIA experienced no disappointment and expressed no surprise when Paul bluntly announced, late one Sunday night in November, that he was now definitely done with mechanical inventions; that he would never again—so help him—fritter away precious time trying to do something for which he had neither training nor talent; that he wasn't cut out for any such business and had been a blithering idiot ever to have thought he was.

Having long since arrived at this conclusion herself, Marcia drew a discreetly inaudible sigh of satisfaction and privately hoped her husband might remain faithful to this resolve, though her relief was disturbingly conditioned by the mounting threat that Paul already bore in his bonnet the larva for another bee which might turn out to be as time-destroying and unproductive as any of its futile predecessors. The signs were unmistakable. During his hours at home he was restless, remotely inattentive, moody, sure symptoms that the embryonic idea—whatever it was—had passed through most of its metamorphoses and could be counted upon to begin buzzing at almost any time now.

It was clear that the decision he had just declared was in response both to a push and a pull. As for the push, he had made no substantial progress on his affair in the basement for quite two months, in spite of the fact that he had doggedly continued to spend his days there almost to the very moment of the university's re-opening in mid-September.

His zeal had gradually ebbed as the momentum previously generated by his ecstatic hope declined through the successive stages of a katabasis which had reduced it from the stratosphere of hysterical hallelujahs to the more modest level of sanguine expectations, after which it had stepped down through a period of mere wistful hankering to fretful day-dreams featuring the prospect of some accidental discovery—popping up out of nowhere—to reward his patient toil. But no miraculous discovery had popped. No amiable angel had suggested a gas at once non-inflammable and non-poisonous which might be used in the compressor, and no fairy's wand had pointed to an airtight joint between a stationary and a moving part in the machine that now lay neglected on his work-bench.

As for the pull, a distraction had arrived in the form of an unexpected invitation to read a paper at the first monthly round-up of the University Club. It pleased Paul to have been thus honoured. Seeing he was chiefly concerned vocationally with the life and works of the late (or early, rather) Edmund Spenser—for had he not won his doctorate at Columbia with a thesis on The Shepheardes Calendar?—it was natural that he should turn to his authentic trade for the makings of this important speech.

The assignment to display one's wit and wisdom before the bored and brittle membership of the University Club was always taken very seriously, not only by the younger fry on the faculty who hoped to win the favourable attention of their critical overlords, but by these grizzled oldsters themselves who, though they were practically guaranteed a glutton's helping of applause because of their influential seniority, nevertheless considered these exacting occasions worth an extra effort and prepared for them with a cleverness and cunning out of all proportion to their activities in the class-room where it was considered unprofessional to be interesting.

Indeed, this sentiment which exalted the dignity of dullness was so generally accepted that any sparkling pedagogue whose lectures proved entertaining enough to require the migration of his classes to a more spacious hall was covertly referred to as "a boundah". On all other words containing r, the faculty—mostly Western-tongued—bore down on this guttural with the savagery of a bulldog disturbed at his dinner, but when any one of them classified an ambitious colleague whose happy bons mots had won acclaim on the campus, it was customary to call him "a boundah", probably out of respect for the word's more frequent British usage. And it was to ensure against being reviled with the unpleasant designation which lacked an r that many a professor, who might have enjoyed the exercise of an adroit and piquant wit, abstained from it in his class-room as he avoided oysters in months similarly distinguished.

This inhibition made it all the more imperative that when a faculty man was invited to speak before his peers at the University Club, where he was at liberty to let himself go in the indulgence of button-popping persiflage, he must take pains to do a good job. It was just as important for him to be funny on such occasions as to be unfunny while engaged in quenching the undergraduate thirst for knowledge. Well-to-do alumni, booked as sacrificial victims to the endowment fund or the projected stadium, were sometimes asked to attend these functions; and, recalling with what glassy eyes and distended throats they had swallowed one prodigious yawn after another while lounging in their chairs utterly stupefied by the apathetic mumble of these learned men, were now amazed that so much effulgence could be radiated from stars commonly supposed by them to be extinct.

Sensitive to the peculiar nature of his task, Paul had turned to the composition of his essay with a concentration that had driven what was left of his hope for the home manufacture of ice into an eclipse not only total, but probably permanent. He enjoyed banter and relished repartee, but it had not previously occurred to him in digging up the bones of Spenser that he might strike a mine of merriment. It was a new and stimulating sensation. Night after night he sat at Marcia's desk in the living-room, chuckling over neatly tipped-up phrases which, he felt, should be good for a genial haw-haw. Occasionally he broke forth into open laughter at some delicious bit which might even evoke an appreciative hear-hear! He imagined he heard the eminent satirist Wembel condescending to say, after adjournment, "That was jolly good, Ward. You'll be doing a book on Spenser, some time. Put me down for one."

To-night, having sat for some minutes meditatively tapping his front teeth with the top of his pen, Paul slowly pushed back his chair, regarded Marcia as an object of great interest and, clearing his throat, solemnly abjured invention—his recent invention in particular and all inventions in general. It wasn't his job. He would never attempt it again.

"I can't say I blame you much, dear, for deciding to give it up. After all, you could hardly have expected—" Marcia had tried to put just the right degree of approval into her remarks, knowing that if she joined too heartily in his own pooh-poohing of his experiment he was likely to attempt a defence of them. And fearing she had already begun a comment which might involve her in an argument, she dropped it suddenly, en route, as being a bit too hot to hold, and gave herself to a diligent recovery of a lost stitch in the sweater she was knitting for Wallie.

"Do you know—Marcia—" Paul rose, thrust his hands deep into his pockets of his smoking-jacket, and leaned against the mantel. "You know—" he repeated dreamily. Marcia could see it coming—the new idea! It was galloping towards her with harness a-jingle and hoofs a-pounding and red nostrils distended. Always when Paul was about to plunge into some fresh adventure, he thus gave her due notice. With the unfocused, opalescent eye of the enraptured he would begin—after an impressive pause, "Do you know—Marcia—"

"Marcia—something tells me there's a great chance here for a biographical novel. Nobody has ever done a Spenser for popular consumption. I doubt if more than one out of a hundred knew who he was."

"One out of a hundred what?" inquired Marcia, unwilling to assist in the reckless inflation of his already turgid bubble. "College professors, maybe?"

"There really could be made of it," he soliloquized, disregarding her query, "a great story".

"But don't you have to presuppose a certain amount of general interest before you can hope to popularize a character? I should think a book on Spenser frankly intended for literary workers might do better."

"Now that's where you're wrong, Marcia." Paul was kind, but unbudgeable. "You've always insisted that I should stick to my job as a teacher and try to make something big out of that. It can't be done. Suppose I keep on doing what I'm doing. Suppose I do it a little better every year. When I'm fifty my salary will have been increased by a few hundreds; granted. But Marcia, darling, there's so much we want to do that can never be done unless I make some money—much more money than my position will ever provide."

"I know, dear," sympathized Marcia gently, "and I want you to, of course."

"So we can travel.... By the way"—he chuckled a little to signify that this needn't be taken too seriously, but his eyes showed he could easily be serious enough about it if given the slightest encouragement—"I looked in at the railway station to-day and picked up some cruise literature."

"Paul! How silly!" laughed Marcia. "Fancy us planning a cruise."

"I don't know that it's so silly," he said half-petulantly. "It certainly can't do any harm to talk about it. We've just got to do it, some day!"

Marcia unfolded the gaudy advertising and studied the pictures of familiar European scenes.

"It would be wonderful if we could, Paul," she agreed softly. "I do hope, for your sake, that we're able to. You've always been so keen on it."

He reloaded his pipe and paced up and down the room for a while quite lost in his dreams.

"Do you know—Marcia"—he paused to say impressively—"if I can get this thing done by the middle of May—and I don't see why not, for I have all the stuff in hand with practically no research to do—the book might be accepted for publication within a month—"

"Oh—do you think they would bring it out that soon?"

"I said 'accepted'," explained Paul, waving his pipe impatiently. "As soon as it's accepted, we should be entirely justified in raising some cash on the strength of what would be coming to us, or perhaps they might make me a liberal advance. I understand that's done, sometimes, if the book is sure-fire. Well—if that came to pass, we could—" He broke off to do a little mental arithmetic. "Let's see. We should know by the middle of June. We could have made our boat reservations. Then we could plan to sail early in July for at least a two-months' trip. Hannah would look after the children. You know that. I'll show you. Look—sail to Southampton, up to London same day. Think what it would all mean to me; literary shrines in London, Stratford. Oxford. Think what it would mean to me to be able to ramble about in old East Smithfield—where Spenser was born, you know, and of course we should want to see Cambridge where he went to school. Think of it, Marcia, three centuries and an half ago!... It would certainly do me a lot of good in my work," he added, hopeful that this practical feature of the trip might stimulate Marcia's interest to the point where she would forget to be prudent.

"Well—you write your book, dear," she said, in the tone she used when recommending spinach to Roberta, "and you know I'll be glad enough to take the trip with you. I'll keep the house as quiet as I can while you're working."

"That's the way to talk! We'll plan on it! Dream of a lifetime! You better have a little chat with Hannah. Tell her what we're going to do."

"There'll be plenty of time for that, dear. Let's make a little secret of it—and not tell anybody."

"I don't believe you're as confident as I am," said Paul, a bit disappointed. "You've got to have a will to make things happen. That's the way to succeed."

"Sounds like Hannah," observed Marcia, amused.

"Well—you notice that Hannah generally gets what she wants. You tell her what we have in mind, and see if she doesn't think it a good idea."