Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (286 page)

“They finally got the girl to sleep,” Ace informed me. “Had to give her opium. No report yet this morning.”

“Oh,” I said lamely, conscious I should have asked after her without waiting for him to volunteer the news. “Oh. Do you suppose we’ll find out who she is?”

“Mr. H. telegraphed the sheriff first thing. It’ll all depend how interested he is, and that’s not likely to be very. What’s to drink, Hiro?”

“Imitation tea, made from dried weeds; imitation coffee made from burnt barley. Which’ll you have?”

I didn’t see why he stressed the imitation; genuine tea and coffee were drunk only by the very rich. Most people preferred “tea” because it was less obnoxious than the counterfeit coffee. Perversely, I said, “Coffee, please.”

He set a large cup of brown liquid before me which had a tantalizing fragrance quite different from that given off by the beverage I was used to. I added milk and tasted, aware he was watching my reaction.

“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is different. I never had anything like it in my life. It’s wonderful.”

“C8 H10 O2,” said Agati with an elaborate air of indifference. “Synthetic. Specialty of the house.”

“So chemists are good for something after all,” remarked Ace.

“Give us a chance,” said Agati; “we could make beef out of wood and silk out of sand.”

“You’re a physicist like B—like Miss Haggerwells?” I asked Ace.

“I’m a physicist, but not like Barbara. No one is. She’s a genius. A great creative genius.”

“Chemists create,” said Agati sourly; “physicists sit and think about the universe.”

“Like Archimedes,” said Ace.

* * * *

How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw it twenty-two years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed land, interrupted here and there by stone outcroppings worn smooth and round by time, and trees in woodlots or standing alone strong and unperturbed? Of the main building, grown by fits and starts from the original farmhouse into a great, rambling eccentricity, stopping short of monstrosity only by its complete innocence of pretense? Shall I describe the two dormitories, severely functional, escaping harshness because they had not been built by carpenters and, though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch in every line? Or the cottages and apartments, two, four, at most six rooms, for the married fellows and their families? These were scattered all over, some so avid for privacy that one could pass unknowing within feet of the concealing trees or shrubbery, others bold in the sunshine on knolls or in hollows.

I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories, the inadequate observatory, the heterogeneous assortment of books which was both less and more than a library, the dozens of outbuildings. But these things were not the Haven. They were merely the least of its possessions. For Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a spiritual freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows could do or think or inquire. It was circumscribed only by the outside world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition or curriculum.

Most of this I could see for myself, much of it was explained by Ace. “But how can you afford the time to take me all around this way?” I asked. “I must be interfering with your own work.”

He grinned. “This is my period to be guide, counselor, and friend to those who’ve strayed in here, wittingly or un. Don’t worry, after you’re a fellow you’ll get told off for all the jobs, from shoveling manure to gilding weathercocks.”

I sighed. “The chances of my getting to be a fellow are minus nothing. Especially after last night.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Barbara’ll come out of it. She’s not always that way. As her father says, she’s high-strung, and she’s been working madly. And to tell the truth,” he went on in a burst of frankness, “she really doesn’t get on too well with other women. She has a masculine mind.”

I have often noticed that men not strikingly brilliant themselves attribute masculine minds to intelligent women on the consoling assumption that feminine minds are normally inferior. Ace, however, was manifestly innocent of any attempt to patronize.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “she has only one vote.”

I didn’t know whether to take this as a pledge of support or mere politeness. “Isn’t it wasteful, assigning a chemist like Dr. Agati to kitchen work? Or isn’t he a good chemist?”

“Just about the best there is. His artificial tea and coffee would bring a fortune to the Haven if there were a profitable market; even as it is it’ll bring a good piece of change. Wasteful? What would you have us do, hire cooks and servants?”

“They’re cheap enough.”

“Or frightfully expensive. Specialization, the division of labor, is certainly not cheap in anything but dollars and cents, and not always then. And it’s unquestionably wasteful in terms of equality. And I don’t think there’s anyone at the Haven who isn’t an egalitarian.”

“But you do specialize and divide labor. Don’t tell me you swap your physics for Agati’s chemistry.”

“In a way we do. Of course, I don’t set up as an experimenter, any more than he does as a speculator. But there have been plenty of times I’ve worked under his direction when he needed an assistant who didn’t know anything but had a strong back.”

“All right,” I said, “but I still don’t see why you can’t hire a cook and some dishwashers.”

“Where would our equality be then? What would happen to our fellowship?”

Haggershaven’s history, which I got little by little, was more than a link with the past; it was a possible hint of what might have been if the War of Southron Independence had not interrupted the American pattern. Barbara’s great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells, had been a Confederate major from North Carolina who, as conquerors sometimes do, had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania countryside. After the war he had put everything—not much by Southron standards, but a fortune in depreciated, soon to be repudiated, United States greenbacks—into the farm which later formed the nucleus of Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and transformed himself into a Northerner.

Until I became too accustomed to notice it anymore I used to stare at his portrait in the library, picturing in idle fancy a possible meeting on the battlefield between this aristocratic gentleman with his curling mustache and daggerlike imperial and my own plebian Granpa Hodgins. But the chance of their ever having come face-to-face was much more than doubtful; I, who had studied both their likenesses, was the only link between them.

“Hard-looking character, ay?” commented Ace. “This was painted when he was mellow; imagine him twenty years earlier. Pistols cocked and Juvenal or Horace or Seneca in the saddlebags.”

“He was a cavalry officer, then?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think so as a matter of fact. Saddlebags was just my artistic touch. They say he was a holy terror; discipline and all that—it sort of goes with a man on horseback. And the old Roman boys are pure deduction; he was that type. Patronized several writers and artists; you know: ‘Drop down to my estate and stay a while,’ and they stayed five or ten years.”

But it was Major Haggerwells’s son who, seeing the deterioration of Northern colleges, had invited a few restive scholars to make their home with him. They were free to pursue their studies under an elastic arrangement which permitted them to be self-supporting through work on the farm.

Thomas Haggerwells’s father had organized the scheme further, attracting a larger number of schoolmen who contributed greatly to the material progress of the Haven. They patented inventions, marketless at home, which brought regular royalties from more industrialized countries. Agronomists improved the Haven’s crops and took in a steady income from seed. Chemists found ways of utilizing otherwise wasted by-products; proceeds from scholarly works—and one more popular than scholarly—added to the funds. In his will, Volney Haggerwells left the properties to the fellowship.

I suppose I expected there would be some uniformity, some basic type characterizing the fellows. Not that Barbara, or Ace, or Hiro Agati resembled a stereotype at any point, any more than I did myself, but then I was not one of the elect nor likely to be. Even after I had met more than half of them the notion persisted that there must be some stamp on them proclaiming what they were.

Yet as I wandered about the Haven, alone or with Ace, the people I met were quite diverse, more so by far than in the everyday world. There were the ebullient and the glum, the talkative and the laconic, the bustling and the slow moving. Some were part of a family, others lived ascetically, withdrawn from the pleasures of the flesh.

In the end I realized there was, if not a similarity, a strong bond. The fellows, conventional or eccentric, passionate or reserved, were all earnest, purposeful, and, despite individual variations, tenacious. They were, though I hesitate to use so emotional a word, dedicated. The cruel struggle and suspicion, the frantic endeavor to improve one’s own financial, social, or political standing by maiming or destroying someone else intent on the same endeavor was either unknown or so subdued as to be imperceptible at the Haven. Disagreements and jealousies existed, but they were different in kind rather than in degree from those to which I had been accustomed all my life. The pervasive fears which fostered the latter, the same fears which made lotteries and indenture frantic gambles to escape the wretchedness of life, could not circulate in the security of the Haven.

After the scene at my arrival, I didn’t see Barbara again for some ten days. Even then it was but a glimpse, caught as she hurried in one direction and I sauntered in another. She threw me a single frigid glance and went on. Later, I was talking with Mr. Haggerwells, who had proved to be not quite an amateur of history but more than a dabbler, when, without knocking, she burst into the room.

“Father, I—” Then she caught sight of me. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were entertaining.”

His tone was that of one found in a guilty act. “Come in, come in, Barbara. Backmaker is after all something of a protege of yours. Urania, you know—if one may stretch the ascription a bit—encouraging Clio.”

“Really, Father!” She was regal. Wounded, scornful, but majestic. “I’m sure I don’t know enough about self-taught pundits to sponsor them. It seems too bad they have to waste your time—”

He flushed. “Please, Barbara. You must, you really must control…”

Her disapproval became open anger. “Must I? Must I? And stand by while every pretentious swindler usurps your attention? Oh, I don’t ask for any special favors as your daughter; I know too well I have none coming. But I should think at least the consideration due a fellow of the Haven would prompt ordinary courtesy even where no natural affection exists!”

“Barbara, please…Oh, my dear girl, how can you…?”

But she was gone, leaving him distressed and me puzzled. Not at her lack of restraint but at her accusation that he lacked a father’s love for her. Nothing was clearer than his pride in her or his protective, baffled tenderness. It did not seem possible so willful a misunderstanding could be maintained.

“You can’t judge Barbara by ordinary standards,” insisted Ace uncomfortably, when I told him what had happened.

“I’m not judging her by any standards or at all,” I said; “I just don’t see how anyone could get things so wrong.”

“She…Her nature needs sympathy. Lots of it. She’s never had the understanding and encouragement she ought to have.”

“It looks the other way around to me.”

“That’s because you don’t know the background. She’s always been lonely. From childhood. Her mother was impatient of children and never found time for her.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Why…she told me, of course.”

“And you believed her. Without corroborative evidence. Is that what’s called the scientific attitude?”

He stopped stock-still. “Look here, Backmaker”—a moment before I had been Hodge to him—“Look here, Backmaker, I’m damned tired of all the things people say about Barbara; the jeers and sneers and gossip by people who just aren’t good enough to breathe the same air with her, much less have the faintest notion of her mind and spirit—”

“Come off it, Ace,” I interrupted. “I haven’t got anything against Barbara. The shoe is on the other foot. Tell her I’m all right, will you? Don’t waste time trying to convince me; I’m just trying to get along.”

It was clear, not only from the slips which evaded Ace’s guard, but from less restrained remarks by other fellows, that Barbara’s tortured jealousy was a fixture of her character. She had created feuds, slandered and reviled fellows who had been guilty of nothing except trying to interest her father in some project in which she herself was not concerned. I learned much more also, much Ace had no desire to convey. But he was a poor hand at concealing anything, and it was clear he was helplessly subject to her, but without the usual kindly anesthetic of illusion. I guessed he had enjoyed her favors, but she evidently didn’t bother to hide the fact that the privilege was not exclusive; perhaps indeed she insisted on his knowing. I gathered she was a fiercely moral polyandrist, demanding absolute fidelity without offering the slightest hope of reciprocal single-mindedness.

XII.

MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN

Among the fellows was an Oliver Midbin, a student of what he chose to call the new and revolutionary science of emotional pathology. Tall and thin, with an incongruous little potbelly like an enlarged and far-slipped Adam’s apple, he pounced on me as a ready-made and captive audience for his theories.

“Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—”

“He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside.

“Nonsense. Dumbness is not even the statement of a symptom, but a very imperfect description. Pseudoaphonia. Purely of an emotional nature. Of course, if you take her to some medical quack he’ll convince himself and you and certainly her that there’s an impairment, or degeneration, or atrophy of the vocal cords—”

“I’m not the girl’s guardian, Mr. Midbin—”

“Doctor. Philosophiae, Gottingen. Trivial matter.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Midbin. Anyway, I’m not her guardian so I’m not taking her anywhere. But, just as a theoretical question, suppose examination did reveal physical damage?”

He appeared delighted and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, it would. I assure you it would. These fellows always find what they’re looking for. If your disposition is sour they’ll find warts on your duodenum. In a postmortem. In a postmortem. Whereas emotional pathology deals with the sour disposition and lets the warts, if any, take care of themselves. Matter is a function of the mind. People are dumb or blind or deaf for a purpose. Now what purpose can the girl have for muteness?”

“No conversation?” I suggested. I didn’t doubt Midbin was an authority, but his manner made flippancy almost irresistible.

“I shall find out,” he said firmly. “This is bound to be a simpler maladjustment than Barbara’s—”

“Aw, come on,” protested Ace.

“Nonsense, Dorn, obscurantic nonsense. Reticence is a necessary ingredient of those medical ethics by which the quacks conceal incompetence. Mumbo jumbo to keep the layman from asking annoying questions. Priestly, not scientific approach. Art and mystery of phlebotomy. Don’t hold back knowledge; publish it to the world.”