by John Collier
Certain buildings rocked a little; certain breakfast foods popped and crackled even more snappishly than usual. But in the main people felt that it showed what a fine girl Caroline was, and yet it was in no way a threat, because it couldn't possibly last. For example, what would happen when Humphrey went to Vienna, to work under the celebrated Vingleberg?
«I shall be there,» said Humphrey, «for three years straight. And if I get out of that lab for forty-eight consecutive hours any time in those three years, it'll be because the place has burned down. I can't get back here to see you.»
«Maybe I'll come over between shows.»
«I wish you'd change your mind.»
«Darling, I'd like to get married now, just as much as you would. But I simply cannot walk out on a new show and leave everyone flat. Besides …»
«You want just one more.»
«Yes, I do. Maybe I could come when it's over.»
«They say the damned thing'll run for years.»
«It may fold up in six months. Humphrey, I know you think I'm just greedy to have a fuss made over me …»
«I've never suggested such a thing.»
«But you think so. And if you didn't you'd be crazy. Because I am, just a bit. But if ever I feel it getting a real hold on me …»
«And what do you think a real hold feels like? Like this?»
This terminated the conversation just as they were on an important point, which was rather a pity. Humphrey's boat sailed; Caroline's play opened; she was more idolized than ever, and everyone expected her to fall in love with someone else. But the first year passed, and the second year passed, and the third year wore on, and Caroline was still faithful. There were two excellent reasons for this. She was so extremely fond of Humphrey, and she was so extremely fond of herself.
When the three years were over, Humphrey Baxter was on the boat, and the boat was docking. For some weeks he had had a picture in his mind of how Caroline would look when she greeted him, and this picture was so much with him that when he was reading the right-hand page of his book, it hovered like an illustration on the left. Because this was the 1920's, he had costumed her in silver fox and violets. He looked down on the landing stage, and saw plenty of fur and flowers, but he saw no sign of Caroline.
He went down the gangway and through the barrier. Two people came up and grasped his either hand. They were Dick and Stella Archer, the very people who had introduced him to Caroline in the first place, and thus established squatter's rights in the relationship. They held his hands and looked at him, and uttered the pleasantest and friendliest of greetings. Humphrey looked this way and that. «Where's Caroline?» said he.
The greetings were gone like a burst bubble. Three altogether greyer people stood, in an east wind, in the giant cheerlessness of the landing shed.
«Carrie couldn't come,» said Stella.
There was no doubt at all that Humphrey's mouth was sensitive, extremely sensitive. «Is she ill?» he asked.
«Well …» said Dick.
«She's not ill,» said Stella. «But she couldn't come. Humphrey, get your things through, and we'll go to lunch at the Revestel, and we'll tell you about it.»
«Very well,» said Humphrey.
They went to the Revestel, where they had eaten so often in the old days. They ordered lunch. «I think it's about time you told me what it is,» said Humphrey.
«Humphrey,» said Stella, «you've got to understand.»
It was perhaps, after all, rather difficult to decide whether Humphrey's mouth was very sensitive or a little cruel. «Go on,» he said.
«We're old friends,» said Dick, «we've known you and Carrie the hell of a long time, you know.» Humphrey looked at Stella.
«Carrie's fallen in love,» said Stella.
Humphrey closed his eyes. He might have been asleep, or dead. These skull-faced men can look astonishingly dead at times.
However, after a few long seconds he opened them again. Dick was saying something.
«When?» asked Humphrey of Stella.
«Last month, Humphrey. And almost at once it was too late to write.»
«With whom?»
«He's quite a decent sort,» said Dick. «In fact, it's Brodie.»
«Alan Brodie the tennis champion,» said Stella.
«National Singles eight times,» said Dick. «The last six years in succession.»
«He talks like that because he is scared and miserable,» said Stella.
«Alan Brodie toured Europe the first year I was there,» said Humphrey. «He came to Vienna. There was some kind of fuss at his hotel. A mob of women scuffling. It doesn't often happen over there.»
«He's a popular idol,» said Stella.
«Do you mean like Carrie?»
«He's a beautiful creature, Humphrey. He gives people the same sort of thrill that Carrie does. And the two of them together … !»
«She must have changed a great deal.»
«Not really, Humphrey. I think she's realized what she's meant for.»
«She's not meant for that sort of thing at all,» said Humphrey, not loudly or emphatically, but with complete finality.
«Humphrey, you'll just have to wait till you see them together.»
«I can wait,» said Humphrey.
In New York it is seldom necessary to wait very long. Humphrey had a book to publish, and therefore a publisher, and therefore an invitation to lunch, and at a certain restaurant frequented by the people who are known to each other and to the gossip columnists. A woman for whose glands he would have paid a small fortune was sitting at the next table. Suddenly she uttered a sort of squeal. Then Humphrey, with a sensation that made of him a life-long opponent of electrocution, heard her utter the following words: «Oh, look! The lovers!»
Humphrey had no reason to turn his head. He saw other people looking in the direction of the door. He had time enough to observe, on faces horribly besmeared with success, a look of simple pleasure such as made even those faces seem quite attractive. Humphrey not only observed this, but reflected on it. «It must be a good thing,» he thought, «that can so transfigure faces like these.»
All this time the faces in question were turning, like searchlights converging on an unseen objective, as they followed Caroline and her Alan Brodie. Suddenly Humphrey found himself caught as it were in the full blaze, which meant she was close behind him. He turned, and they met.
Everything was very pleasant, good-humoured and gay. Caroline and Brodie sat down with Humphrey and his publisher; other people came to greet them and were induced to sit down also. Everyone talked a great deal except Humphrey, who was not expected to talk a great deal.
The truth is, Humphrey had a decision to make. He was prepared to believe this new impression of his, that Caroline's approaching marriage was a good thing. He wanted to believe it, as far at least as a man nearly insane with jealousy could be expected to. Indeed, as far as is consistent with that very human weakness, and with knowing deep down that the whole business was nothing but an imbecile, narcissistic delusion, it may be said he did believe it was a good thing, and that his impulse to kick it to pieces and drag Caroline out of it was barbarous, atavistic, and on no account to be indulged in.
Caroline helped him in this noble endeavour. Her every word and every look was exactly right for the occasion. She made no bones about asking the publisher to move so that she could sit next to Humphrey. She spoke to him with the utmost tenderness and concern. Her look appealed to him to understand. Her smile, and the glow about her, proclaimed that, even if he didn't understand, there are values and glories in life that must be held paramount. And when she looked at her lover it was perfectly plain what those glories were. «So be it!» thought Humphrey. «It's a good thing.» And he joined with the rest of the circle in watching the happy pair, and the light that was reflected on the faces of the others was reflected on his own, though no doubt in a broken sort of way.
There then ensued a divertissement such as often happens in restaurants frequen
ted by celebrities. Sallow young men arrived with cameras and flash bulbs; Caroline and Alan were required to get together and to take first this pose and then that. The process was more elaborate than the usual snapping of pictures in a restaurant, partly because an important magazine was involved, partly because there was a great deal of by-play with the manager and with people at other tables. It was the sort of thing that would be an awful pain in the neck unless you like that sort of thing, in which case of course it could be very gratifying.
Caroline was flushed, smiling, and immensely gratified when she sat down again beside Humphrey. It is in such states of happy excitement that words pop out that are utterly different from what one really means, words that anyone but a cold-blooded scientist would have the decency to ignore. «Well?» said Caroline. «What do you think of us?» She stopped herself suddenly, and looked at Humphrey in blushing embarrassment, for such words are not fit to be heard by a psychoanalyst, much less by a forsaken lover.
«I think,» said Humphrey, «You're both charming, and I hope we'll be friends. Why not bring your young man around to see me?»
«We go off on Friday, you know,» said Caroline, still confused. «There's not a chance in the world before then.»
«But you will when you get back?»
«Of course. We'd love to. But it won't be for two months at least.»
«I can wait, »said Humphrey.
About a week before Alan and Caroline were due back from their honeymoon, Humphrey, who had been thinking a great deal while he waited, called up a man named Morgan. This was Albert Morgan, whose vocation it is to take the ambiguous and uncertain mutterings of scientists and transform them into clear, downright, and extremely thrilling articles for the weekly magazines. «Morgan,» said Humphrey, «It's now three months since you last pestered me to give you some private information about Vingleberg's experiments.»
Morgan explained why he had abandoned the attempt to get Humphrey to talk.
«If you think clams do that sort of thing,» said Humphrey, «I can understand why your articles are so extremely inaccurate. But, anyway, I'm not a clam, and to prove it I'm calling you to say I've just had a letter from Vingleberg. It concerns some tests we started just before I left. Now, listen; I shall tell you nothing that's in the least confidential, because I know damned well I'll see it in all the headlines tomorrow morning. But if you want to hear about twenty very carefully chosen words …»
«Hold it!» said Morgan. «I'll be right over.»
It was really remarkable what Morgan could do with twenty carefully chosen words. Or possibly Humphrey, being a guileless scientist, had been cozened into uttering twenty-five or even thirty. At all events the news broke, not in the headlines, it's true, but in very impressive articles on important pages, to the effect that stocky, balding, Viennese endocrinologist Vingleberg and Johns Hopkins' Humphrey Baxter had succeeded in isolating V.B. 282. And V.B. 282, it appeared, was neither more nor less than the glandular secretion that controls the aging of the tissues. And since we all have tissues, all aging, the promise in these paragraphs was seized on with avidity by all who read.
Meanwhile Caroline and Alan returned, and soon — very soon — they came round to Humphrey's apartment for a drink. He received them with the utmost cordiality, and asked them a thousand questions about themselves, all of which they answered fully and frankly, like people who had nothing to conceal. They were so anxious to give him all the information that might be of interest to him that neither of them observed his reactions very closely. Had they done so, they might have noticed that at certain answers, particularly from Caroline, his cruel and sensitive mouth tightened itself with that painful satisfaction with which a pathologist might regard the slide which tells him that his difficult diagnosis was right in every particular, and his best friend needs immediate surgery.
I do not wish to convey that the conversation of the newly married pair was entirely egotistical. Before a single hour had passed Caroline herself broached a new subject. «Humphrey, dear,» she said, «we hear you've become famous. Is it true?»
«It's true if you've heard it,» he replied. «That's what fame is.»
«But is it true about eternal youth and all that?»
«My dear girl,» said he, «I think you've got all the scientists beaten as far as eternal youth is concerned. You looked eighteen when I met you, and you were twenty-three. Now you're twenty-six …»
«Twenty-seven last week, Humphrey.»
«And you still look eighteen.»
«But I shan't always.»
«I can't say I've noticed myself slowing up any,» said Brodie. «But some of these youngsters from the West Coast …» He shook his head with the melancholy always induced in tennis players by a mention of the West Coast.
Humphrey ignored this interjection. His eyes were fixed on Caroline. «Of course you won't be young always,» said he. «I imagine you'd hardly want to. Those people you see around, who never seem to mature, they belong to a particular frigid, inhibited, narcissistic type — they're in love with themselves; they can't love anyone else; therefore they don't really live; therefore they don't get any older.»
«Yes, yes. But this stuff you've discovered… ?»
«Oh!» said Humphrey. And smiling, he shook his head.
«It's not true then?» cried Caroline. Her disappointment would have moved a heart of stone.
«I told you it was all a lot of hooey,» said Brodie.
«These journalists always omit to mention the snags,» said Humphrey.
«And they wrote as if you'd really truly discovered it,» lamented Caroline.
«It's completely untrue,» said Humphrey. «It was Vingleberg, almost entirely.»
«You mean it has been found,» said Caroline, her face lighting up again.
«I didn't say so, to the newspaper men,» said Humphrey. «However, they chose to take it that way.» His tone suddenly became very cold and hard. «Now I want both of you to understand this. This is something no one in the world must know about.»
«Oh, yes! Yes!»
«Do you understand that, Brodie?»
«You can rely on me.»
«Very well,» said Humphrey. He sat very still for a moment, as if conquering some final reluctance. Then he rose abruptly and went out of the room.
Caroline and Alan didn't even glance at each other. They sat there looking at the door through which Humphrey had disappeared, expecting him to return with a crucible or an alembic at the very least. Instead, he came back almost immediately, dangling a piece of very ordinary string.
He smiled at his guests. He gave the string a jerk or two, and in through the door, leaping, frisking, clapping its paws in hot pursuit, came a kitten. Humphrey enticed it right over to where Caroline was sitting, made it jump once or twice. Then he picked it up and handed it to her.
«It's sweet,» said Caroline. «But …»
«It had a birthday last week,» said Humphrey. «Five years old.»
Caroline dropped the kitten as if it were hot. «I hope people will be able to overcome that sort of instinctive prejudice,» said Humphrey, picking it up again and handing it back to her. «Before very long the world will have to get used to this sort of thing.»
«But, Humphrey,» said Caroline, quite agitated, «it's a dwarf or a midget or something.»
«I assure you,» said Humphrey, «that kitten is as normal as any kitten you've ever seen in your life.»
«But what will happen to it? Will it go on forever?» And, as Humphrey shook his head: «Will it go off bang, or crumble into dust or something?»
«Almost surely heart failure,» said Humphrey. «But only after forty years of glorious youth. That's two hundred for a human being. But remember this, both of you …» He paused impressively.
«Yes? Yes?»
«I went to Vienna,» said Humphrey very slowly and clearly, «exactly three years and four months ago. This kitten is five years old. So you see it's Vingleberg's discovery.»
«Oh, yes
. Yes, of course. But they said in the papers it was human beings,» said Caroline.
«I was helping Vingleberg adapt it to human beings.»
«And you succeeded?»
«Remember you have promised not to mention this to a living soul. Yes, we succeeded. To a limited extent, that is.»
Alan spoke in a voice at once impatient and businesslike. «Mr. Baxter, you said before very long the world …»
«Humphrey,» said Humphrey with a friendly smile.
«Yes — Humphrey. But … but when?»
«It's a question of finding a new source for the extract,» said Humphrey. «Or possibly making it synthetically, though I doubt we'll ever do that. I should say thirty years. With luck — twenty.»
«Ah!» said Caroline. «I thought you meant now.»
«To get this stuff,» cried Humphrey, «we have to perform an extremely delicate operation, which unfortunately is fatal to the animal we get it from. So it's terribly difficult.»
«What animal?» asked Alan.
«It's quite a common one,» said Humphrey. «Man.»
«Oh!»
«I think we've discovered another source, but it'll take years to test, and more years to manufacture an adequate supply. That's the point. That's why I swore you to secrecy. All merry hell would break loose on this planet if people knew there was just some in existence, being kept for the privileged few.»