I Walked in Arden Part 41

Chapter Fourteen

WE FIND NEW LIFE AND NEW LOVE

The new factory was at Willesden Junction, which I reached regularly every morning by the 8.10 from Earl's Court Road, returning home to the little house in Kensington about seven. It was a long day, made longer by the railway journey at each end. The present equipment was on a comparatively small scale, future expansion depending largely on what it was to be hoped our laboratory could accomplish. Two young English chemists, graduates of a technical school, were a.s.signed to work with me. The rest of the research staff included a machinist and pipe fitter, a general utility girl, a gla.s.s blower to make special apparatus, and Chitty.

The latter I ruthlessly took from his duties as general house man to do odd jobs for me. He gloried in his new work, for he had a positive awe of chemistry. To him it was the last word in the mysterious achievements of the educated human intellect. With his awe was a wholesome fear of possible eventualities. There was not a day that it wasn't his secret belief that we should all be blown to atoms. Nevertheless, on the rare occasions when minor accidents did occur, he was the first person I found standing at my elbow. I sometimes amused myself by devising harmless bangs or unexpected puffs of smoke, to see Chitty come on the run to my side. The day I really spilt some acid on myself, I thought the man would get his hands badly burned before I could stop him from tearing my clothes off. He was, however, like a perfectly trained dog. A sharp word of command brought him up all standing. I saved his hands from serious burns and got out of my clothes without damage to myself.

"Chitty," I said another time, "if this place ever gets on fire you are to get out the first window without delay."

"Not until I see you going, sir, thank you," he replied. And he meant it.

On pleasant Sat.u.r.day afternoons, during the early autumn, Helen came out to meet me. Chitty used to prepare my luncheons for me every day; on Sat.u.r.days he catered for two. His army training taught him to use any utensils handy, and Helen laughed until the tears came at finding his kitchen a series of Bunsen burners, his crockery mainly Meissen ware and Bohemian gla.s.s beakers. He could cook sausages and grill tomatoes fit for an epicure. It was true his range was strictly limited, being restricted to what might be put in a frying pan or plain boiled, but within its limits it was unexcelled.

Luncheon over, we would take the train back and prowl about for an hour or two before tea or see a matinee from the pit. Our finances made it necessary for us to keep to simple pleasures. Still, by saving all our pennies for Sat.u.r.days and Sundays we did ourselves surprisingly well.

During the week the company paid for my railway ticket and luncheons.

Thus the week-end found us with thirty or a few more shillings to spend.

In those pre-war days two could do a lot in London on thirty shillings.

For example, if we wished to be really extravagant and "go a bust" we lunched at Kettner's for 3/6 each, table d'hote, total 7 shillings--a shilling for the waiter--eight; a bottle of table chianti, 3 bob; or eleven in all, leaving nineteen shillings over. Setting aside a half crown for tea, we still had 16/6. Suppose we went to a pit--half a crown apiece; total, 5 shillings--we yet were rich with eleven and six remaining. Plenty over for Sunday, especially if we took luncheon with us from home. We did not lack for clothes; Helen's trousseau would last a long time--and the next year the company was going to pay dividends.

Meanwhile there was one deep disappointment mixed with our improvident happiness. I had no time for writing or even for keeping in touch with my theatrical and literary friends. They had begun by dropping in at the house, never to find me at home, and in a few months a caller for us was rare. My absence in America had broken a good many threads, and there was no opportunity to spin new ones. The work and friendships we had planned to do and form together while riding over the hills of Deep Harbor could not be done and formed. I had to live and think chemistry.

The evenings were rarely free, for laboratory reports of the day's work had to be prepared then. The week-ends were so precious that Helen and I could not spare them for anything but our own companionship.

Along with the first fogs, in November, I realized that the work at the laboratory was getting on slowly. I had not yet been able to begin quant.i.ty production. My father called one day to ask me to look over the special expenditures on behalf of research. He wanted to know if economies were not possible, and where I thought we were going. For many hours I reviewed the accounts and the results to date, as set down in the laboratory diary and reports. There was nothing to show on the side of practical accomplishments. The experiments gave evidence we were on the right track; it was equally clear we had not arrived. The German process worked well on a small scale with carefully selected chemicals; it did not work at all on a commercial scale.

"Well, Ted, what are we going to do about it?" my father inquired at the end of my survey. "My a.s.sociates are getting restless; we have spent a great deal of money. What have we to show for it?"

I turned over my notes again, as one does in such cases, hoping some overlooked solution will leap from the pages.

"I am certain I can do it," I said.

"When? And how much will it cost?"

"That I can't say. It may be tomorrow--it may be next month. The answer perhaps is filtering now in the next room, or it may be a question of several weeks' experiment."

"Not good enough, Ted."

"You told me it would be a year before you expected results."

"A year before we paid dividends. If you can't begin manufacture, how can you expect to make a profit? Your experiments have eaten a deep hole in our resources, and we are where we were at the beginning. In short, Ted, if you don't tell me you are ready to manufacture before the next three months are up, we'll have to close down."

"We might get one of the Germans over and let him have a look at what I'm doing." I went into the next room and came back with a sample. "Here is the stuff--I make it every day in there. But when it goes through in quant.i.ty downstairs, I can't get it."

"What are you doing about it?"

"a.n.a.lyzing all our raw materials to see if I can trace the probable impurity that is blocking us. The apparatus downstairs has been tested and examined a dozen times. I can find nothing the matter there. I thought, at first, lubricating oil might be leaking into the mixers."

"Suppose you can't find the cause?"

I shrugged. "If the world comes to an end, there's not much good planning what you will do. There is a cause, and I've got to find it.

There's nothing mysterious about it. Such matters are a problem of elimination. You must be careful not to overlook any possibility. In the end you run it down--corner it. But it may take time."

"Is there any possibility our German friends have done us?"

"I've thought of that. Yet if that is the case, why the devil does the stuff come out all right on a small scale? Here it is in my hand. There _is_ such a thing. They haven't faked it--there it is."

"Will you write a special report tonight for me to show the board of directors tomorrow?"

"Yes. You still own the controlling interest, don't you?"

"Up till now I do," my father replied. "I may have to let that go, Ted, if you don't find the answer soon."

I gave up my Sat.u.r.day afternoons and often my Sundays. The answer did not appear. All this was hard on Helen. The family tension did not tend to relax in the face of our difficulties at the factory. My own nerves were being stretched taut, and I had to fight to keep Helen from noticing too much the strain I was under. I laid off my two a.s.sistant chemists, to reduce expenses. Their help had never been valuable except for doing routine things. Occasionally, when there was an experiment on that couldn't be left unfinished, I worked at Willesden until late at night. It was Helen's calm faith in me that kept me at it and gave me self-control. I talked little with her--or with any one--about this d.a.m.ned problem, preferring, with her, to read and dream as we had always done; and I kept my mouth shut as far as possible before my father, to prevent his noting that I was badly frightened. Chitty realized that I had a facer. His anxiety was pathetic; I would look up from an experiment and find him watching my face eagerly, to see if now I had a ray of hope. Of course, Helen knew why I did not come home on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, but her confidence kept her so optimistic she scarcely worried at all. I cursed German chemistry from A to Z before Chitty; elsewhere I was grimly silent on the subject.

My mother in no wise changed her att.i.tude; Helen was treated with the formality of a guest, and I should have worried more than I did about this if I had not discovered by accident that she was closeted with Sims a great part of each day in her own room making baby clothes. Poor mother, how happy she could have made Helen by letting her know this!

But she didn't. Helen sat all day working in her room on little things, and my mother in hers, and neither woman spoke to the other of what she was doing. "While I'm seeking answers to chemical riddles, I wish some one would explain to me the riddle of human nature," I thought to myself. One night I decided to act on this idea and seek the latter answer for myself. I went to my mother's room.

"What do you wish, Ted?" she asked as I sat down. It had been a great many years since we had exchanged any confidences face to face. Her devotion to me had always alarmed me--it put me off when I came near her. I knew I didn't think as she thought, and I was afraid a misunderstanding hopeless to reconcile would come. It sounds paradoxical, I know--that I should fear her love to the point that I believed it dangerous--but so it was. "If we ever really quarrel," I had said to myself, "nothing on earth will patch it up." So it came about that for years I had avoided intimacy with her, preferring a queer aloofness to any attempt at understanding, since by nature we were such opposites.

"I shan't pretend, mother. It's about Helen," I said in answer to her question.

"What about Helen?" my mother replied coldly.

I wondered what to say. She sat there looking at me calmly, but there was a hardness in her expression which indicated that all defences were fully manned. "I'll make a mess of it--get the worst of it, I know, and go out of here thoroughly in the wrong," I said to myself. "But, d.a.m.n it all, I ought to be able to think of the right thing."

"You wished to speak to me about Helen?"

"Helen likes you," I blurted out, at the same time realizing I had made the worst of all possible starts.

"She has only to tell me this herself." My mother's voice was level.

"Would it do any good?" I blundered on.

"I am sure I have not the least idea what you mean, Ted. I think it would be much better if you went up to your own room."

I began to be desperate. There ought to be some facial flag of truce, indicating unconditional surrender, that one could wave with a look. At that moment I would have given anything, except Helen's love, to have my mother relent. Instead, she picked up a book and made an elaborate show of reading. I meditated flying into a childish rage, thus forcing the issue, but I was so truly hurt and angry I didn't dare. I knew I should probably say something I should afterwards regret. I got upon my feet.

"I am sorry you do not approve of my marriage, mother"--adding mistake number three to the two I was certain I had made.

"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of your marriage, Edward. I was not consulted. It is no affair of mine."

"Of course, you don't mean it," I said. "That remark is silly enough to have been made by me." I was quite appalled at my boldness, but anger was fast mastering me.

"I do not wish to have any further discussion with you on this subject, either now or in the future. Whatever else you learned in Deep Harbor, it wasn't manners."

"Rot!" I exclaimed. She lifted her eyebrows and turned a page. I stood a second irresolute. "I mean I didn't intend to be rude--you know what I mean--only you won't admit it."