The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction)
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Meantime Greta ordered the new life of his home, made a clean sweep of the old dispensation and reorganized the establishment on simple lines. Of the domestics, some remained and the others retired; but many among the younger people departed; the evidences of affluence and waste disappeared. Faraday much reduced the staff of the gardeners and gamekeepers. He cared nothing for sport and let it be known that the folk might go into the woods and gather wood when and where they pleased. He remained a shadowy, doubtful being in the eyes of Cliff, for whereas his father and brother had often passed time in the village and were on friendly terms with most of its inhabitants, the new lord of the manor was seldom seen there and many did not even know him by sight.
Sir Faraday, however, was only concerned with possessions as a means to achieve his object. If success left him beggared, that would matter nothing to him. He looked ahead and gave Ernest Trensham plenty to do presently in calculating present values of farms and agricultural land, for in his opinion, while doubt of war persisted and the majority continued to disbelieve in it, land would appreciate rather than suffer such decline as war might create. Certainty of a vast conflagration was never absent from the scientist’s mind and he regarded the creation of his laboratory as running a race with it. Apprehending the certain and savage aerial bombardment of British coasts, most carefully was the growing laboratory camouflaged and, while he spared no thought upon his great mansion standing boldly upon the cliff-side within half a mile of the sea — a target for any enemy aeroplane — the scene of his future devotion was to be made practically invisible and melted into its surrounding woodlands when seen from above.
With coming of another spring, his sister and the new land-agent were married and, at Greta’s wish, no ceremony at all accompanied the business. The pair wedded before a registrar at Exeter, then proceeded directly to London and thence to Italy, where they spent six weeks beside Como. Ernest played golf and together they wandered in the chestnut woods, climbed the hills, found lily-of-the-valley prosperous on the heights, and in a motor-boat travelled round about the lake. Trensham had never been to Italy before, his wife knew it well enough and marked the growing Fascist atmosphere, for new tourists had become less welcome than the old.
They were soon at home again and each engaged upon the business of Cliff. The interval following upon Sir Hector’s death, during which, as Greta told Ernest, her brother had become distinctly more human and sympathetic, was ended and now he ceased to reveal any sustained interest in those who surrounded him. Indeed, on more than one occasion, he displayed impatience with his brother-in-law.
“The more you leave Faraday alone, the pleasanter you’ll find him,” said Greta after a breeze. “Always come to me, or the bailiff. And get out some definite statement as to existing values of the farms. Find if any of the tenants feel disposed to buy should they be offered a chance to do so. He hasn’t said it, but I know, from things he has said, that he will be selling before very long. Cliff means nothing to him but a milch cow.”
She lived to find that no genuine amity or rooted friendship could ever exist between her husband and her brother and, ere long, regretted the fact. Faraday himself was utterly indifferent and insensible as to what their relations might be. For the most part he behaved with conventional courtesy and agreed promptly to most of Ernest’s suggestions. Sometimes he even praised them, but Trensham possessed a sensitive nature and complained occasionally to Greta that he by no means occupied the place in their limited home circle he had expected to fill.
“I’ve not won him,” he would sometimes sum up. “I don’t enter into his scheme of existence and, while he has grown close as an oyster about his science and his successes or failures, I can never say the right thing, or share the vital business that fills his mind. He just keeps me at a distance and treats me as he treats Horn, or any of the staff. Such utter indifference breeds counter indifference and if it were not for you, darling, I should wish myself back at Scotland Yard, where I was somebody.”
Greta declared her understanding and regret.
“I often come very near to feeling the same myself,” she said. “But the truth is that ordinary human emotions are left out of him. I don’t believe he has the slightest idea that he is so different from other people. Once, after he had been literally rude to you and after you left the room, I flew out at him and told him he didn’t know what an utter cad he could be. And then he quite caved in and showed complete surprise. No shame — only blank astonishment and genuine regret. I’m not in his life any more than you are really, and never was. But it won’t go on for ever. You can limit the time by the war.”
Trensham declared himself comforted, but pointed out how war would instantly sever his connection with Cliff.
“I shall be wanted like everybody else,” he said.
When war came, he quickly learned his fate. It was considered that he would better serve his country in his old calling, and he was bidden to return to it.
“War always provokes a spate of crime,” he told them, “and though I would sooner go on active service, I should, of course, be more valuable at Scotland Yard.”
His employer commented bitterly on the situation.
“I know what is going to happen to me,” he said. “Thanks to my position in the scientific world, I shall be roped in — but for no sane purpose. Any advance now, except in means to defeat the enemy, is doomed for years. Destruction, not creation will be our sole purpose.”
“If you can help to destroy this generation of Germans that ought to be good enough,” declared Ernest. “Science would make its highest contribution to civilization by exterminating them.”
Only a fast dwindling period of time now separated these three people from the dire climax of their united lives, and the attitude of each to both the others may be easily defined before those transformations resulting from war’s impact overtook them.
For Greta marriage had proved an experience of utmost happiness and her husband enjoyed her intense and steadfast affection. Perfect trust obtained between them; not an unshared secret of character as yet awakened doubt; each was faultless in the eyes of the other. Greta for her part resented any unfavourable criticism of Ernest and her brother’s attitude to him was the only thorn arising out of the present companionship. Of old she had accepted Faraday as part of the family order and tolerated his egregious personality without liking or disliking him; but now there quickened instincts of actual dislike. She was used to his egotism, but that Ernest could excite neither respect, nor win complete confidence troubled her and made her long to depart from Cliff into another environment as swiftly as it might be done.
“To feel you are of less account to him than some scrap of his wretched chemical apparatus makes me almost hate him sometimes,” she told her husband on one occasion, and he confessed that his own native vanity also resented it.
“But a thousand times more so his attitude to you,” he added. “Where he’d be without either of us it is rather difficult to guess.”
Faraday himself felt satisfaction that his sister and her husband proved a united pair, were apparently happy together and quite capable of accomplishing all that he needed from them. From his standard their mentality was modest and he felt under no compulsion to cultivate either of them, or take them into his own confidence. He attached no importance to either and was of opinion that other fellow-creatures could be engaged to fill their functions equally well should they desert him. Since Greta’s reproof he had devoted somewhat more attention to Trensham and prevented indifference from becoming discourtesy. He was only concerned with the dread of having to answer a national call; but for what might happen to Ernest and how the future would affect his sister’s movements he cared not two straws.
CHAPTER VIII
WITH the completion of Faraday’s laboratory came war, and it quickly appeared that both himself and his brother-in-law would be needed, each in his own peculiar capacity; but while the old detective found himself swiftly swallowed
up by the demands of his former business, the professor, having been called to London, played his part in certain conferences, but found himself able to return home in a fortnight. To establish active collaboration and create a pool of brains was the preliminary purpose and one paramount task confronted not only European savants, but those embraced by the Empire and Dominions. As yet Russia lay without the radius of the war, and mystery still darkened the future fate of the Soviets.
Faraday, on returning to Cliff after his sojourn in London, summed up the situation confronting civilization and the vital reasons to believe that applied science rather than might of arms on land, sea and air, would secure victory.
“Our folly has come home to roost,” he told Trensham on a night ere the latter returned for the duration to Scotland Yard. “We have evaded a vital duty, starved and stunted research for a generation, shut our eyes to the approaching challenge and now rush to investigate and, if possible, employ the powers of atomic fissure with a view to winning the war by their application. That they lie within reach is true and the question in my mind is whether the enemy has been as supine as ourselves, or whether in their sleepless and self-denying preparations for this struggle they have concentrated on atomic energy and know far more about it than as yet we do. They will soon leave us in no doubt of what explosives are going to descend upon us from the air, where they will start with enormous numerical advantage. We may hope for sufficient time to destroy their aerial armies, but they have long been the greatest chemists in the world, and if the secret of an atomic bomb is already in their hands, nothing can save us. Now, at long last, the necessary money to make such a thing is forthcoming. The State will pour out its millions for a weapon of destruction, though it denied them in the interests of humanity. Nothing stands between us and the ultimate creation and perfection of such machinery as will be needful to conserve the new energy, and the combined wealth of the Allies may achieve on a large scale and in mighty laboratories what, in my own way, I am about to accomplish here.”
“You will be among the greatest men in science now,” said Ernest.
“As for myself,” answered the professor, “thanks to my own life’s labours, I found myself in a position of authority from the first and possessed of knowledge which proved worthy of very general attention at this critical moment. Hence my enhanced value; but these proceedings are profoundly secret and my own private activities are more secret still. I told them all I chose to tell, and tremendous advance will result from my data when worked out by efficient operators. But much that concerns me more continues to lie in my head alone and will remain there until after the war. I won their complete confidence, and even such frosty enthusiasm as scientific minds are capable of displaying. Then I was bidden return to my own laboratory and occupy myself on such aspects of the future of atomic application as I pleased. The Cabinet finds it necessary to begin thinking in thousands of millions now and, as a preliminary, are sacrificing our foreign securities to help provide them.”
“The infernal lack of money, that always dogged you before your father’s death, exists no longer then,” suggested Trensham.
“No longer,” agreed Faraday, “but a point to note is this: that had not Sir Hector passed untimely, and so placed the needful resources in my power, I should never have been able to proceed with my own great work. Given my speedy success, I may yet help to win the war in record time if we anticipate the enemy. There is some distance to go yet, and if the Germans have already made the discovery, we shall not be kept in doubt. The greater the delay the more our hope.”
That night he gave his relations a clearer sight of the situation than they had yet attained.
“Given atomic power, a new sort of war awaits the world,” he said. “If the old weapons, under normal evolution persist, then they will be common to both sides, and war on a larger scale than the last awaits us. Science is already busy with expedients to help our arms. On pure science such things entirely depend and great brains are engaged upon them. Research has been quickened beyond belief, but certain technical puzzles have yet to be solved in the laboratories of the Allies. From this country, or America, or Canada will, I hope, come the answer. From reliable information the United States seem most advanced, because she has spent most money, but they are not at war and, if they reach the secret first, will probably find themselves quite unprepared to share it with us.”
“Would they be drawn in, as they were before?” asked Greta.
“To save the British Empire they might,” he said. “If possessed of knowledge to use atomic power, they might come in and turn the tables against the Hun. But they are certainly not going to war again if it proves possible to avoid it. Who shall blame them? Whether the American States can remain neutral looks to be an open question, but what we may surely accept is that she will never fight against us. Team work is seldom very close between the English-speaking peoples, except those of the Empire, and we proceed at a jog-trot with the States and not a very genuine jog-trot; but since the outbreak of war there is increase of pace and even of harmony.
“I had conceived of England,” he continued, “as taking and keeping the lead in the future control and adjustment of this new power. I imagined us administering a world force and holding the balance between American capitalism and Russian communism for the benefit of civilization at large; but these dreams are gone, for one sees no reason why Russia should enter the war if not attacked. She may remain hidden behind the clouds of her own creation and not reckoned a world peril.”
“She must know well enough that, when Germany had settled with the Western powers, it would be her turn,” said Ernest. “But I suppose she couldn’t put up any show. Look what it cost her even to beat the Finns. She wouldn’t have a dog’s chance against Germany.”
“Go back to your researches and tell us about them,” begged Greta.
“More interesting certainly,” agreed her brother. “Well, what we, Canada and America know I can tell in a few words. What I know I tell none until perfected in every detail. Even when the time comes it will not be shared with any but British scientists under present conditions. Concerning the raw material for atomic energy our most advanced knowledge lies with me and me alone. Common knowledge is common property and most of it mistaken on every subject. For example, it has been stated that the United Kingdom is extremely lacking in uranium, and that is an error of fact. As far back as before the Great War, Cornwall exported substantial tonnage of pure uranium compounds to Germany. Only as subsidiary products they were regarded then, their content of radium being of primary importance; but now the present significance of uranium exalts it into first place. Plenty of uranium may be assumed to exist in Cornwall and I shall be devoting my present attention to the School of Mines in that county.”
“You will go to hunt uranium yourself?” asked Trensham.
“I shall go to stimulate the search and investigate the amount of activity being bestowed upon it,” he answered. “Personally I do not attach the vast importance to this element that science is doing, for I anticipate startling advances. That is where my secret knowledge makes rubbish of common knowledge. History repeats itself and we shall doubtless waste millions of tons of precious material — just as we have wasted and continue to waste incredible quantities of coal and increase instead of decrease its value and cost of getting. But science jogs on her way, no matter what our efforts to hamper her, and I prophesy a familiar phenomenon: the quickening of our brain activity under the impetus and goad of war. It may solve the problem of controlling and employing atomic energy for one thing, and thus open the road for men like me to venture into more perilous regions — regions containing still vaster revolutionary powers. What terrific sources of energy for example may the cosmic rays contain?”
“And what world power might be won by the people who discovered and applied them?” asked Ernest. “Given new miracles, Switzerland might have Europe at her mercy, or one Balkan State dominate the Middle East to-morrow.”