The Day of Uniting/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
Jimmy drove Gerald van Roon back to Blackheath, and neither of them spoke until they were in Jerry's study.
“I think we'll have some lunch,” said Jimmy. “I've just realized that I've gone grubless since breakfast time.”
“Do you think he was mad?” asked the troubled Gerald.
“Overworked,” said Jimmy practically. “Let that be a warning to you, Jerry. Go to bed early and take plenty of exercise and you'll live to a ripe old age. Sit up all night and spend the gorgeous days of summer in your evil-smelling laboratory, and I shall be pestered by reporters to give an account of your life and the cause of your unexpected demise.”
“But Maggerson!” said Gerald wonderingly. “The greatest brain in the world! Didn't you see him, Jimmy, whimpering like a little child—it was awful!”
“Did you see his slippers?” asked Jimmy. “They were awful, if you like! Oh, Mrs. Smith, get us some food, will you? We're starving. Anything, cold meat, cheese, pickles, but get it quick!”
When the housekeeper had fluttered out, Jimmy found a cigar and lit it.
“My dear Gerald, there's nothing to get worried about,” he said. “Your friend Maggerson has been overdoing it. The same sort of thing happens to an athlete when he overtrains. He gets stale and flabby, and there's no reason why we shouldn't witness the same phenomenon where brains are concerned. Besides, if people go monkeying about with strange and mysterious plants that”
Gerald turned quickly.
“The plant?” he said softly. “I wonder—what did he mean by The Terror? It could have had nothing to do with the plant.”
“Perhaps he's going to poison the country and dry up the earth,” said Jimmy. “I read an awfully good story in one of the magazines about a thing like that happening. By Jove! Suppose he's brought an uncanny vegetable—a sort of upas cabbage that throws a blight where its shadow falls!”
“Don't be ridiculous, Jimmy!” snapped Van Roon. “The legend of the upas tree is purely imaginary. The upas tree is the 'antiaris toxicaria,' the gum of which”
“I'll take your word for it,” said Jimmy. “God bless you, Mrs. Smith, that beef looks fine! If there's one thing I enjoy more than another,” Jimmy went on, as he placed a slice of red beef between two pieces of bread, “It is lunching with the prime minister of England. The least he could have done was to invite us in to dispose of the baked meats.”
“How can you jest,” said Gerald van Roon angrily. “Could one eat with the greatest mind in England dying in another room?”
“Not a bit of it,” said Jimmy practically; “that wasn't death, it was hysteria. Perhaps old Maggerson has got himself tangled up in a love affair,” he speculated outrageously, as he poured forth the beer. “These old devils do that kind of thing. I saw the same symptoms with young Freddy Parker after he had an interview with a chorus girl's mother. The poor boy was positively wilting when he came to John Stuart's flat, and we had to bring him round with absinth cocktails.”
By the time he had finished talking Gerald van Roon had stalked majestically from the room. Yet for all his cheerfulness Jimmy had been impressed by what he had witnessed. He had helped carry the unconscious Maggerson into the premier's study, and, if the truth be told, his was the only head cool enough to apply the exact treatment required. He had seen too many men stricken with that superhysteria which is called shell shock to have any doubt as to what was the matter with Mr. Maggerson.
As to the cause, he could only conjecture. Being young and healthy and bubbling with life, the loss of his lunch was almost as important a matter as the loss which the world of science would sustain by the removal of its brightest ornament. The only other worry in his mind was whether this happening would interfere with Jerry's proof correction, for Mr. Sennett had made an appointment to call that evening, and Jimmy by judicious and artful questioning had discovered that Delia Sennett was coming with him.
It was an unusual experience for him to took forward to meeting a woman, and yet beyond any doubt the most anticipated event of the day was her arrival. Mr. Sennett had evidently heard of the misfortune which had overtaken the great mathematician, and Jimmy was to discover that to this old printer, too, Walter Maggerson was something of an idol. Before they had come Gerald had talked about postponing the consultation.
“I don't feel up to proof reading to-night,” he said. “This business has rather upset me.”
“Rubbish!” said Jimmy loudly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, being affected by these purely—er—emotional happenings. Be scientific, old top!”
Gerald looked at him suspiciously.
“You haven't taken such a violent interest in science before,” he said.
“I'm picking it up,” replied Jimmy glibly. “I'm going to sit down to poor old Maggerson's calculus and read it from cover to cover.”
Jerry laughed in spite of his trouble.
“You dear idiot,” he said, “imagine reading a complicated time-table from cover to cover or a multiplication table, or the precepts of Confucius in the original language!”
“Anyway, Maggerson's better. I've telephoned an inquiry,” said Jimmy. “He will be well enough to leave Downing Street by to-night.”
“That's good news!” said Jerry gratefully.
And so Sennett and his daughter came and, after Jimmy had hustled the old man into his cousin's library, he took the girl round the garden and there learned that the news of Mr. Maggerson's fit was common property.
“They live in a world of their own, these scientists,” she said, “and I feel horribly out of it. Daddy is in that world, and your cousin, and I was afraid that you were, too.”
“Look upon me as Lucifer,” said Jimmy. “I'm banished every time I try to get back into it.”
She looked at him with a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“You're not” she hesitated.
“Clever's the word you're trying to bowdlerize,” said Jimmy.
“No, I'm not.”
“I think these scientific gentlemen are most admirable, and I don't know how we should get on without them, because undoubtedly they are responsible for my car and the various aëroplanes which carried me through the war and wireless telegraphy and all that sort of stuff; but I feel that I am doing science the best turn possible when I make the most use of its inventions.” He pulled out his watch. 'We've got an hour and a half before dinner. What do you say to a run through the garden of England to Sevenoaks and back?”
“I'll ask father,” she said.
“What is the good of asking your father; he's walking hand in hand with Jerry through the Stone Age and maybe you'll interrupt them just at the very minute when he's dissecting an ichthyosaurus or something equally ghastly.”
“All right, I'll go.”
A quarter of an hour later they were flying along a white ribbon of road between hedges white with the frothy blossom of hawthorn.
“How did your lesson go?” asked Jimmy, by way of making conversation.
“My lesson? Oh, the early-morning one. Did you remember?”
“Apparently,” said Jimmy. “I think I'll take lessons in German.”
“You're the kind of pupil that never makes progress and, besides, I only teach women,” she said.
“I know that,” he lied, “but when I said I'd take German, I was thinking of Mrs. Smith, my housekeeper. She's frightfully keen on learning languages”
But her laughter arrested his invention.
It was a quarter of an hour after dinner time when the car came rolling up the drive and he lifted her out, though she could have dispensed with his assistance, being also young and active. He looked forward to having her for the rest of the evening, but at dinner Gerald told him that his work was finished, and, although he drove the old printer and his daughter back to Camberwell by the most circuitous route, he came back to the house to face a long and lonely evening at a ridiculously early hour.