Читать книгу White Banners - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 13

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He did not confide the stories of his successive misadventures to Hannah, but she knew without being told that he had been ruthlessly victimized by his own enthusiasms. Her heart ached for him. She wasn't quite sure whether she suffered more on his behalf when he was deep in the doldrums of despair or during the hilarious periods when he was rigging up the machinery for the production of his assorted tragedies; for it was obvious that the higher he flew his various kites, the more painful was his chagrin when they came careening down, a handful of broken sticks.

Paul's state of mind in respect to the almost incredible disaster in Europe puzzled Hannah. He had always seemed so eager to go over there and see for himself the tombs and shrines and monuments which represented the best things we ourselves had fallen heir to—laws, letters, manners, arts, ideals. To hear him talk you would have thought that nothing we had ever accomplished over here was worth comparison to the greatness and glory of the achievements across the sea. The war somehow didn't take hold of him. True, he was interested in the newspapers. And he had pinned up a map on the living-room wall with a row of brass tacks across it to indicate the long crooked line of battle. Every day he moved the tacks, seeming much gratified when the side he thought he was cheering for had made a little indentation. But that was as far as his interest seemed to go. The war was just a row of brass-headed tacks making ugly holes in the plaster.

"Awful! Isn't it?" he would say. But the tone of it was about the same as it would have been if someone had remarked that it was a mighty hot day.

To Hannah, through those tragic years, the world was smashing up everything that was good. It was of no satisfaction to her when reports came of victories for the Allies. What mattered is which side had shed more blood in yesterday's "big push"?

"Cheer up, Hannah!" Paul would say. "We're making some good gains now."

"No good gains ever came that way, Mr Ward," she would reply sadly. "They're all wrong. They'll all lose. There will be no gains for anybody."

Sometimes Hannah wondered—reproaching herself for this thought—whether the dear chap wasn't unconsciously getting a certain satisfaction out of it all. He had made such a muddle of his own affairs and had been so depressed over his defeats that the exciting reports of other people's more serious difficulties had diminished the gravity of his own. It was not that he took any pleasure in the war; rather that the war had made his little losses insignificant. He didn't fret now about being poor. The daily stories of starvation in Belgium had made his own food more appreciated. Perhaps he would have been indignant if anyone had said as much to him. One evening at dinner Wallie—nine now—had helped himself to a larger ration of candied sweet potatoes than he could eat, and his father said, "Some small boy in Belgium would probably be glad to have what you've left there, Wallie," to which the child replied, after a moment's thought, "But if I had eaten it, then he wouldn't have it either, would he?" Paul laughed. And Marcia laughed. It made Hannah sick that they could laugh at that—or anything. On his birthday, they gave Wallie an air-gun. He proudly showed it to Hannah. She closed her eyes tightly, shook her head, and with a blindly groping gesture motioned him away.

"But Daddy gave it to me," explained Wallie, quite hurt.

"I don't like guns," said Hannah.

"This is only an air-gun."

"Could you kill anything with it?"

"Birds, maybe, or a squirrel."

"Then I don't like air-guns."

As the months passed, all mention of the war was scrupulously avoided in Hannah's presence. She was so unhappy that her sorrow seemed to permeate the whole establishment. In midsummer of '16 Paul suggested to Marcia that it was time their faithful Hannah had a vacation. They would send her to the country for a week. It was obvious she needed a bit of relief from the long-continued devotion to her job. Incidentally, he remarked, it would be good for all of them.

Pretending gratitude, Hannah had gone, half aware that the Wards would also be taking a vacation in her absence. She resolved to control her feelings, realizing that she had been at fault in permitting the gloominess of her heart to shadow their house. On her return, she seemed almost cheerful.

"That's exactly what she needed," said Paul. "She had stuck too close to it here. We must insist on her taking a little more time off." And having expressed this belief to Marcia he went to the kitchen where Hannah was ironing, and repeated it—in altered phrasing—to her.

"Yes, sir," she agreed pleasantly, "a change of—of scenery is good for everybody. You can work at one thing too long. I was just thinking to-day about your—about what you were working on in the basement for many weeks."

"I certainly did waste a great lot of time on that thing," he grumbled with sour distaste for the subject.

"Well—of course that's up to you," she murmured without looking up from her work.

"Up to me?"

"Yes—whether it was wasted time or not. You've had a good rest now. If you go at it again, fresh like, you might succeed. And then the time you have spent on it wouldn't be wasted. Isn't that so? I mean, it isn't decided yet whether you wasted your time. If you finished the job, everything you did on it before would have been time well spent.... Of course," she added ruefully, "as the matter stands now, you did waste a lot of time—and a lot of yourself, too."

"Myself?"

"Yes. A disappointment like that is pretty bad for a person, don't you think? That is, if he doesn't make some good use of it."

"Good use of a disappointment?" Paul sat down on the edge of a chair and lighted a cigarette. "I can't see what use you could make of a disappointment. If you can, I'd be glad to hear about it. I've had a plenty."

"Well—a disappointment," ventured Hannah, feeling her way, cautiously, conscious of his half-derisive grin—"sometimes a disappointment closes a door in a person's face, and then he looks about for some other door, and opens it, and gets something better than he had been hunting for the first time."

"I tried several," said Paul glumly. "I think I tried 'em all."

"I know," Hannah reinforced her remembrance with a half-dozen quick little consolatory nods. "I know you did, Mr Ward." Her voice lowered until it was barely more than a whisper. "I could have cried for you. I think I did, sometimes."

"Oh—well—" He affected a jaunty tone that dismissed his many failures en bloc. "I tried some things that weren't in my line. This one—for instance," jerking his head towards the despicable refrigerator. "I had no training for it. Involved a lot of chemistry. I didn't know enough—though I really did do three years of it at college. But it wasn't sufficient for this job."

"That's one reason I always thought you might be able to do it," remarked Hannah irrationally. "I hoped may be it was going to be handed to you, like. Sort of a gift from—from the outside."

"Outside?" echoed Paul, screwing up his face.

"Yes." Hannah ironed industriously for some minutes and then admitted, rather flustered, that it was of course "a funny way to say it"—Paul continued to regard her with a puzzled gaze that she found quite embarrassing.

"I know you don't believe in such things," she went on diffidently. "The other day—at my friend's house where I spent my vacation—she has a large library, left her by her husband—I was reading about the discovery of—of the law of—of—" Findin' herself bogged, Hannah tipped the iron up on end, rested both outspread hands on the table, intently searching Paul's eyes for assistance. "You know. About the peas—so many white and so many yellow and so many tall and so many dwarfs—"

"Oh—you mean the law of heredity—the Mendelian scheme for figuring out the results of scientific mating."

"Yes—something like that. Well—do you know that this Mr Mendel was a monk who found out all about it in his little garden in the monastery. He'd never been trained to be a scientist."

"I see what you're driving at now, Hannah," laughed Paul. "Mendel was illuminated; is that it? Had a vision from On High, or something of that sort; is that what you mean? Well—why shouldn't he, being a monk? If Heaven doesn't look after the monks—" Noting from the hurt look in her eyes that his teasing was ill-timed, he broke off and mumbled an apology.

"The book told about another case," proceeded Hannah, apparently uninjured. "There was a man named Michael Faraday."

"Famous English chemist—I know—invented the dynamo, too; didn't he? Well—did he get his from the—from the 'outside'?" Paul had resolved not to do any more spoofing, but the temptation was too strong. He grinned and waited for Hannah's rejoinder.

"I don't know," she replied seriously. "His father wanted him to be a blacksmith, but he didn't like it and got a job as a bookbinder. Maybe that is a good way to train for discovering a dynamo, but it doesn't sound as if it was. And he wasn't a monk. But the book said he did believe that there was something outside."

"I'm afraid I'll never get anything that way," said Paul, suppressing a yawn. "That's out of my line, too.... So—young lady—that's what you were doing on your vacation, eh? Here we send you away for some fresh air and a little playtime, and you sneak off into a corner to post yourself on the Mendelian theory of genetics and the early life of Faraday. Well—you'll never cease being a surprise to me, Hannah."

"That wasn't all I found out, Mr Ward." She smiled cryptically as to say she had a super-secret which might have to be tortured out of her. "I had whole days—and nights, too—for reading, and the shelves were full of books on chemistry. I heard you say, one time, that you had to find a gas that wouldn't poison anybody and wouldn't take fire, and I just kept leafing through those books until I found one. I really did," she added confidentially. "You may think it was silly of me to be looking—me not knowing a blessed thing about it—but—"

Paul was touched.

"No," he muttered, "I don't think it was silly. I think it was splendid of you, Hannah. I don't deserve that kind of fidelity. It was a wonderful thing for you to do for me. I can't tell you just how I feel about it. You are certainly a good friend."

There was a long pause in their talk. Then he rose, patted Hannah on the shoulder, and walked towards the door.

"Don't you want to know," asked Hannah, "what I found?"

"Well—you see—" Paul fumbled for words that wouldn't hurt too much. "You see, Hannah, it wasn't just finding a gas that wouldn't poison anyone and wasn't inflammable. I expect there are a hundred gases like that. There's a lot more to it, my dear, than you thought. But I do honestly appreciate your trying. It was mighty fine of you."

Hannah drew a slip of paper from the pocket of her apron and handed it to him. "There's the name of it," she said, with a little sigh. "It may be no good, but the book said it was not poisonous and wouldn't burn—and there's something else about it that I copied there. I didn't understand, but I thought you would."

Indulgently Paul took the crumpled paper and read, "Sulphur dioxide... not corrosive on copper or iron." Then he stood for a long time flicking the paper against his thumb, his eyes narrowing. He walked to the window and stood looking out, drumming with his fingers against the casement. After a while he turned and said, "Were you talking to anybody about this, Hannah?"

She shook her head and continued ironing.

"You know I wouldn't have done that, Mr Ward," she said.

"And you don't know anything about chemistry, at all?"

"No, Mr Ward. Of course not. How could I?"

"You just accidentally stumbled on to this while leafing through a textbook you found in somebody's library?"

"Yes, Mr. Ward."

"Well, by God, I believe you have been getting hunches from the 'outside'? I don't see how it could be explained any other way." In the doorway he paused, regarded her with serious scrutiny for a moment, and said, "Now let's get this straight, Hannah. You were simply browsing around among these books, and—"

"Yes, sir. It's just as I told you. I don't think it was an accident. I was really hunting for it, you know. Do you believe," she asked wistfully, "that perhaps I found something?"

"Either that—or, as you say, you were handed something."

Hannah nodded, her eyes shining.

"I would much rather you thought that, Mr Ward."