“Among this racket?” he asked. “Not much. I think if I’ve made any progress it’s backwards. Two months ago I could read a novel—if it was the right sort—without trouble. But since I have been shown the parts of the machine that turns them out, blest if I can get beyond the first page.”
“That’s a good sign; it shows that you are becoming critical,” cried Amber.
“Does it? Well … I don’t know. If attending a Technical School of Novel-writing makes a chippie incapable of reading a book, I don’t think the show can be called a success. Anyway I don’t believe that prose fiction—that’s how it’s called—is the department for me. I believe that the poetry shop is the one I’m meant to shine in. You see, there’s only one sort of poetry nowadays, and it’s easily taught; whereas there are a dozen forms of prose fiction—I never guessed that the business was so complicated before I came here. Oh, yes, I’ll join the poetry shop next week.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort: it’s twice as complicated as this,” said Amber severely.
“Don’t tell me that,” he retorted. “I’ve heard the best poetry of the day—yes, in the Music Halls, and I believe that with a little practice I could turn it out by the web. All the people want is three verses and a good kick in the chorus—something you remember easily, with a good word about Tommy Atkins and two for good old Mother England. I know the swing of the thing. Oh, yes; I’ll get seconded to the poetry shop. Here comes Barnum himself.”
His final words were delivered in a furtive whisper while Mr. Richmond strolled across the room to the group—it was the last group that remained.
When he had come up Mr. Guy Overton was extremely respectful in his attitude to Mr. Richmond and called him “Sir.” He looked at his watch, however, a moment later and said he was an hour late for a particular appointment that he had, so he reckoned he should make himself distant.
Mr. Richmond smiled socially, not officially, and added a nod, before turning to greet the girls. He was not very impressive while saying that he felt greatly honoured to see Miss West in the class-room. He was sure that she understood his aims. Then Miss West said she was certain that it must be a great pleasure to him to lecture before a sympathetic audience. He evaded her evasion and enquired of Miss Severn if he might include her among the sympathetic members of his audience, and Miss Severn declared that she had learned more in ten minutes from him respecting the literary value of certain Scotch words than she had acquired by reading the two novels in the Scotch tongue which she had mastered in the previous four years of her life, and she hoped Mr. Richmond considered the attendance satisfactory. He assured her that sanguine though he had been as to the number of persons anxious to write novels the attendance at the fiction class amazed him.
“And many who were present to-day were actually attentive,” remarked Josephine.
“And one of the ladies defines Platonic Friendship as the reason why Brutus killed Cæsar—I hold the document in my hand,” said the master.
Both girls cried “How funny!” and smiled their way to the door, which Mr. Richmond held open for them.
On the way to Kensington Palace Gardens they agreed that the Khaki frocks then so popular would not survive another season.
CHAPTER VI
Lady Severn had survived the measured mile. Sir Creighton was jubilant. His daughter flew to him. How did the electric turbine work? What was the coefficient of energy developed over the measured mile? Was forty miles actually touched and what about the depression in the stern? Did the boat steer all right on the progressive principle? Did the Admiral grumble as usual?
Her father gave her a detailed account of the strong points of the new system of propulsion, which every one had recognised, and of the weak points, which he alone had detected, and then she was able to drink her tea, and so was Sir Creighton.
Lady Severn said the lunch was excellent; only when travelling by water at the rate of forty-two knots every one seemed inclined to eat at the rate of fifty knots.
After drinking a cup of tea Sir Creighton looked at the clock and sighed.
“The day is gone before one gets any work done,” he said. “I have not been in my room since yesterday afternoon, Joe,” he added, looking at Josephine as if hoping to find in her a sympathetic audience.
“You’ll get no sympathy from me, Sir Creighton,” she laughed. “You have done more to-day than all the men of your craft—I suppose that a turbine boat may be called a craft—have succeeded in accomplishing during the past hundred years—forty knots!—just think of it!—and yet you complain of not being able to get anything done! Oh, no; you’ll get no sympathy from me.”
Sir Creighton went across the room to her and his scientific skill enabled him to squeeze between his finger and thumb that part of her arm where all the sensitive nerves meet.
She shrieked.
“I will force you to sympathise with me,” he said. “You have still another arm. What! they are actually taking your part?”
Sir Creighton had a pretty wit. It was most exuberant when he had discovered a new torture founded on a purely scientific basis. That was how he kept himself young.
“Oh, by the way,” said Amber, when he was going once more towards the door, “Guy has picked up with some one from New South Wales whose father said he had once known you. His name is—now what on earth did he say his name was?”
“Wasn’t it Mr. Winwood?” said Josephine.
“Of course. Pierce Winwood. Do you remember any man of that name—long ago—it must have been long ago. He made a big fortune in the meantime?”
“Winwood—Winwood? No, I don’t remember any one bearing that name,” said Sir Creighton. “Better tell Guy to bring him out and I dare say he’ll draw the threads together.”
“I told Guy I was sure that you would like to have a chat with him—the son, I mean; he said the father, who claimed to know you, was dead.”
“There’s cause and effect for you,” said Sir Creighton. “Better ask him to dinner with Guy—the son, I mean.”
He spoke with his hand on the handle of the door, and then went whistling down the corridor to his study which opened out upon the garden of roses at the back of the house. The long table was covered with scale drawings and the smell of the tracing paper filled the room. Sir Creighton stood for a few moments looking down at those tracings of the sections of wheels—wheels within wheels—and the profiles of pinions.
“What the Nightingale sang to the Rose,” said the man of science. “Pah, what can any one say about the Nightingale and the Rose that has not been said before?”
He turned over several of the drawings critically, and counted the leaves of one of the pinions.
“He has made no allowance for end-shake,” he muttered. “A sixteenth on each pivot. Was it in the Garden of Gulistan? I rather think not. An English rose-garden—why not within the four-mile radius?”
He stood at the glass door leading out to his own garden, and remained there for some minutes looking out upon the great clusters of mixed blooms. Then he turned to one of the desks and unlocking one of the drawers and, drawing it out some way, slipped his hand inside, relieving the spring of a secret compartment that seemed to be a fixture. He drew out a sheaf of papers, covered with verses with many erasures and those countless corrections which commonly occur in the manuscripts of poets who are not only inspired but who add to the original impulse of inspiration a fastidiousness of phrase quite unknown to the older poets.
The