Except for an involuntary hitch of his eyelids, Mr. Lind looked as if he believed perfectly in Douglas’s respect for his parental claims. “Quite right,” he said, “quite right. You have my best wishes. I have no doubt you will succeed: none. There are, of course, a few affairs to be settled — a few contingencies to be provided for — children — accidents — and so forth. No difficulty is likely to arise between us on that score; but still, these things have to be arranged.”
“I propose a very simple method of arranging them. You are a man of honor, and more conversant with business than I. Give me your instructions. My lawyer shall have them within half an hour.”
“That is said like a gentleman and a Douglas, Sholto. But I must consider before giving you an answer. You have thrown upon me the duty of studying your position as well as Marian’s; and I must neither abuse your generosity nor neglect her interest.”
“You will, nevertheless, allow me to consider the conditions as settled, since I leave them entirely in your hands.”
“My own means have been seriously crippled by the extravagance of Reginald. Indeed both my boys have cost me much money. I had not, like you, the good fortune to be an only son. I was the fourth son of a younger son: there was very little left for me. I will treat Marian as liberally as I can; but I fear I cannot do anything for her that will bear comparison with your munificence.”
“Surely I can give her enough. I should prefer to be solely responsible for her welfare.”
“Oh no. That would be too bad. Oh no, Sholto: I will give her something, please God.”
“As you wish, Mr. Lind. We can arrange it to your satisfaction afterward. Do you intend returning to Westbourne Terrace soon?”
“I am afraid not. I have to go into the City. If you would care to come with me, I can shew you the Company’s place there, and the working of the motor. It is well worth seeing. Then you can return with me to the Terrace and dine with us. After dinner you can talk to Marian.”
Douglas consented; and they went to Queen Victoria Street, to a building which had on each doorpost a brass shield inscribed THE CONOLLY ELECTRO-MOTOR COMPANY OF LONDON, LIMITED. At the offices, on the first floor, they were received obsequiously and informed that Mr. Conolly was within. They then went to a door on which appeared the name of the inventor, and entered a handsomely furnished office containing several working models of machinery, and a writing-table, from his seat at which Conolly rose to salute his visitors.
“Good evening, Mr. Lind. How do you do, Mr. Douglas?”
“Oh!” said Mr. Lind. “You two are acquainted. I did not know that.”
“Yes,” said Conolly, “I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Douglas at the
Academy yesterday evening.”
“Indeed? Marian did not mention that you were there. Well, can we see the wonders of the place, Mr. Conolly; or do we disturb you?”
“Not at all,” replied Conolly, turning to one of the models, and beginning his showman’s lecture with disquieting promptitude. “Hitherto, as you are no doubt aware, Mr. Douglas, steam has kept electricity, as a motive power, out of the field; because it is much less expensive. Even induced magnetic currents, the cheapest known form of electric energy, can be obtained only by the use of steam power. You generate steam by the combustion of coal: electricity, without steam, can only be generated by the combustion of metals. Coal is much cheaper than metal: consider the vast amount of coal consumed in smelting metals. Still, electricity is a much greater force than steam: it’s stronger, so to speak. Sixpennorth of electricity would do more work than sixpennorth of steam if only you could catch it and hold it without waste. Up to the present the waste has been so enormous in electric engines as compared with steam engines that steam has held its own in spite of its inferior strength. What I have invented is, to put it shortly, an electric engine in which there is hardly any waste; and we can now pump water, turn millstones, draw railway trains, and lift elevators, at a saving, in fuel and labor, of nearly seventy per cent, of the cost of steam. And,” added Conolly, glancing at Douglas, “as a motor of six-horsepower can be made to weigh less than thirty pounds, including fuel, flying is now perfectly feasible.”
“What!” said Douglas, incredulously. “Does not all trustworthy evidence prove that flying is a dream?”
“So it did; because a combination of great power with little weight, such as an eagle, for instance, possesses, could not formerly be realized in a machine. The lightest known four-horse-power steam engine weighs nearly fifty pounds. With my motor, a machine weighing thirty pounds will give rather more than six-horse-power, or, in other words, will produce a wing power competent to overcome much more than its own gravity. If the Aeronautical Society does not, within the next few years, make a machine capable of carrying passengers through the air to New York in less than two days, I will make one myself.”
“Very wonderful, indeed,” said Douglas, politely, looking askance at him.
“No more wonderful than the flight of a sparrow, I assure you. We shall presently be conveyed to the top of this building by my motor. Here you have a model locomotive, a model steam hammer, and a sewing machine: all of which, as you see, I can set to work. However, this is mere show. You must always bear in mind that the novelty is not in the working of these machines, but the smallness of the cost of working.”
Douglas endured the rest of the exhibition in silence, understanding none of the contrivances until they were explained, and not always understanding them even then. It was disagreeable to be instructed by Conolly — to feel that there were matters of which Conolly knew everything and he nothing. If he could have but shaped a pertinent question or two, enough to prove that he was quite capable of the subject if he chose to turn his attention to it, he could have accepted Conolly’s information on the machinery as indifferently as that of a policeman on the shortest way to some place that it was no part of a gentleman’s routine to frequent. As it was, he took refuge in his habitual reserve, and, lest the exhibition should be prolonged on his account, took care to shew no more interest in it than was barely necessary to satisfy Mr. Lind. At last it was over; and they returned westward together in a hansom.
“He is a Yankee, I suppose,’” said Douglas, as if ingenuity were a low habit that must be tolerated in an American.
“Yes. They are a wonderful people for that sort of thing. Curious turn of mind the mechanical instinct is!”
“It is one with which I have no sympathy. It is generally subject to the delusion that it has a monopoly of utility. Your mechanic hates art; pelts it with lumps of iron; and strives to extinguish it beneath all the hard and ugly facts of existence. On the other hand, your artist instinctively hates machinery. I fear I am an artist.”
“I dont think you are quite right there, Sholto. No. Look at the steam engine, the electric telegraph, the — the other inventions of the century. How could we get on without them?”
“Quite as well as Athens got on without them. Our mechanical contrivances seem to serve us; but they are really mastering us, crowding and crushing the beauty out of our lives, and making commerce the only god.”
“I certainly admit that the coarser forms of Radicalism have made alarming strides under the influence of our modern civilization. But the convenience of steam conveyance is so remarkable that I doubt if we could now dispense with it. Nor, as a consistent Liberal, a moderate Liberal, do I care to advocate any retrogression, even in the direction of ancient Greece.”
Douglas was seized with a certain impatience of Mr. Lind, as of a well-mannered man who had never learned anything, and had forgotten all that he had been taught. He did not attempt to argue, but merely said, coldly: “I can only say that I wish Fate had made me an Athenian instead of an Englishman of the nineteenth century.”
Mr. Lind smiled complacently: he knew Douglas, if not Athens, better, but was in too tolerant a humor to say