CHAPTER III. MARGARET RALEIGH
After breakfast the-following morning Roland Clewe mounted his horse androde over to a handsome house which stood upon a hill about a mile anda half from Sardis. Horses, which had almost gone out of use during thefirst third of the century, were now getting to be somewhat in fashionagain. Many people now appreciated the pleasure which these animals hadgiven to the world since the beginning of history, and whose place, inan aesthetic sense, no inanimate machine could supply. As Roland Cleweswung himself from the saddle at the foot of a broad flight of steps,the house door was opened and a lady appeared.
"I saw you coming!" she exclaimed, running down the steps to meet him.
She was a handsome woman, inclined to be tall, and some five yearsyounger than Clewe. This was Mrs. Margaret Raleigh, partner with RolandClewe in the works at Sardis, and, in fact, the principal owner of thatgreat estate. She was a widow, and her husband had been not only a manof science, but a very rich man; and when he died, at the outset ofhis career, his widow believed it her duty to devote his fortune to theprosecution and development of scientific works. She knew Roland Cleweas a hard student and worker, as a man of brilliant and original ideas,and as the originator of schemes which, if carried out successfully,would place him among the great inventors of the world.
She was not a scientific woman in the strict sense of the word, but shehad a most thorough and appreciative sympathy with all forms of physicalresearch, and there was a distinctiveness and grandeur in the aimstowards which Roland Clewe had directed his life work which determinedher to unite, with all the power of her money and her personalencouragement, in the labors he had set for himself.
Therefore it was that the main part of the fortune left by HerbertRaleigh had been invested in the shops and foundries at Sardis, and thatRoland Clewe and Margaret Raleigh were partners and co-owners in thebusiness and the plant of the establishment.
"I am glad to welcome you back," said she, her hand in his. "But itstrikes me as odd to see you come upon a horse; I should have supposedthat by this time you would arrive sliding over the tree-tops on a pairof aerial skates."
"No," said he. "I may invent that sort of thing, but I prefer to use ahorse. Don't you remember my mare? I rode her before I went away. I lefther in old Sammy's charge, and he has been riding her every day."
"And glad enough to do it, I am sure," said she, "for I have heard himsay that the things he hates most in this world are dead legs. 'When Ican't use mine,' he said, 'let me have some others that are alive.' Thisis such a pretty creature," she added, as Clewe was looking about forsome place to which he might tie his animal, "that I have a great mindto learn to ride myself!"
"A woman on a horse would be a queer sight," said he; and with this theywent into the house.
The conference that morning in Mrs. Raleigh's library was a long andsomewhat anxious one. For several years the money of the Raleigh estatehad been freely and generously expended upon the enterprises in hand atthe Sardis Works, but so far nothing of important profit had resultedfrom the operations. Many things had been carried on satisfactorily andsuccessfully to various stages, but nothing had been finished; and nowthe two partners had to admit that the work which Clewe had expected tobegin immediately upon his return from Europe must be postponed.
Still, there was no sign of discouragement in the voices or thefaces--it may be said, in the souls--of the man and woman who sat theretalking across a table. He was as full of hope as ever he was, and sheas full of faith.
They were an interesting couple to look upon. He, dark, a little hollowin the cheeks, a slight line or two of anxiety in the forehead, ahandsome, well-cut mouth, without beard, and a frame somewhat sparebut strong; a man of graceful but unaffected action, dressed in ariding-coat, breeches, and leather leggings. She, her cheeks coloredwith earnest purpose, her gray eyes rather larger than usual as shelooked up from the paper where she had been calculating, was dressedin the simple artistic fashion of the day. The falling folds of thesemi-clinging fabrics accommodated themselves well to a figure whicheven at that moment of rest suggested latent energy and activity.
"If we have to wait for the Artesian ray," she said, "we must tryto carry out something else. People are watching us, talking of us,expecting something of us; we must give them something. Now the questionis, what shall that be?"
"The way I look at it is this," said her companion. "For a long time youhave been watching and waiting and expecting something, and it is timethat I should give you something; now the question is--"
"Not at all," said she, interrupting. "You arrogate too much toyourself. I don't expect you to give anything to me. We are workingtogether, and it is both of us who must give this poor old worldsomething to satisfy it for a while, until we can disclose to it thatgrand discovery, grander than anything that it has ever even imagined. Iwant to go on talking about it, but I shall not do it; we must keep ourminds tied down to some present purpose. Now, Mr. Clewe, what is therethat we can take up and carry on immediately? Can it be the greatshell?"
Clewe shook his head.
"No," said he; "that is progressing admirably, but many things arenecessary before we can experiment with it."
"Since you were away," said she, "I have often been down to the worksto look at it, but everything about it seems to go so slowly. However, Isuppose it will go fast enough when it is finished."
"Yes," said he. "I hope it will go fast enough to overturn the artilleryof the world; but, as you say, don't let us talk about the things forwhich we must wait. I will carefully consider everything that is inoperation, and to-morrow I will suggest something with which we can goon."
"After all," said she, as they stood together before parting, "I cannottake my mind from the Artesian ray."
"Nor can I," he answered; "but for the present we must put our hands towork at something else."
The Artesian ray, of which these two spoke, was an invention upon whichRoland Clewe had been experimenting for a long time, and which was andhad been the object of his labors and studies while in Europe. In thefirst decade of the century it had been generally supposed that the Xray, or cathode ray, had been developed and applied to the utmost extentof its capability. It was used in surgery and in mechanical arts, and inmany varieties of scientific operations, but no considerable advance inits line of application had been recognized for a quarter of a century.But Roland Clewe had come to believe in the existence of a photicforce, somewhat similar to the cathode ray, but of infinitely greatersignificance and importance to the searcher after physical truth.Simply described, his discovery was a powerful ray produced by a newcombination of electric lights, which would penetrate down into theearth, passing through all substances which it met in its way, andilluminating and disclosing everything through which it passed.
All matter likely to be found beneath the surface of the earth in thatpart of the country had been experimented upon by Clewe, and nothinghad resisted the penetrating and illuminating influence of his ray--wellcalled Artesian ray, for it was intended to bore into the bowels of theearth. After making many minor trials of the force and powers ofhis light, Roland Clewe had undertaken the construction of a massiveapparatus, by which he believed a ray could be generated which, littleby little, perhaps foot by foot, would penetrate into the earth andlight up everything between the farthest point it had attained and thelenses of his machine. That is to say, he hoped to produce a long holeof light about three feet in diameter and as deep as it was possibleto make it descend, in which he could see all the various strata anddeposits of which the earth is composed. How far he could send down thispiercing cylinder of light he did not allow himself to consider. Witha small and imperfect machine he had seen several feet into the ground;with a great and powerful apparatus, such as he was now constructing,why should he not look down below the deepest point to which man'sknowledge had ever reached? Down so far that he must follow hisdescending light with a telescope; down, down until he had discoveredthe hidden secrets of the
earth!
The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminenceover all other penetrating rays, was the power it possessed ofilluminating an object; passing through it; rendering it transparent andinvisible; illuminating the opaque substance it next met in its path,and afterwards rendering that transparent. If the rocks and earth in thecylindrical cavities of light which Clewe had already produced in hisexperiments had actually been removed with pickaxes and shovels, thelighted hole a few feet in depth could not have appeared more real, thebottom and sides of the little well could not have been revealed moresharply and distinctly; and yet there was no hole in the ground, andif one should try to put his foot into the lighted perforation he wouldfind it as solid as any other part of the earth.