The Complete Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
said Conolly, “I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Douglas at the
Academy yesterday evening.”
“Indeed? Marian did not mention that you were there. Well, can we see the wonders of the place, Mr. Conolly; or do we disturb you?”
“Not at all,” replied Conolly, turning to one of the models, and beginning his showman’s lecture with disquieting promptitude. “Hitherto, as you are no doubt aware, Mr. Douglas, steam has kept electricity, as a motive power, out of the field; because it is much less expensive. Even induced magnetic currents, the cheapest known form of electric energy, can be obtained only by the use of steam power. You generate steam by the combustion of coal: electricity, without steam, can only be generated by the combustion of metals. Coal is much cheaper than metal: consider the vast amount of coal consumed in smelting metals. Still, electricity is a much greater force than steam: it’s stronger, so to speak. Sixpennorth of electricity would do more work than sixpennorth of steam if only you could catch it and hold it without waste. Up to the present the waste has been so enormous in electric engines as compared with steam engines that steam has held its own in spite of its inferior strength. What I have invented is, to put it shortly, an electric engine in which there is hardly any waste; and we can now pump water, turn millstones, draw railway trains, and lift elevators, at a saving, in fuel and labor, of nearly seventy per cent, of the cost of steam. And,” added Conolly, glancing at Douglas, “as a motor of six-horsepower can be made to weigh less than thirty pounds, including fuel, flying is now perfectly feasible.”
“What!” said Douglas, incredulously. “Does not all trustworthy evidence prove that flying is a dream?”
“So it did; because a combination of great power with little weight, such as an eagle, for instance, possesses, could not formerly be realized in a machine. The lightest known four-horse-power steam engine weighs nearly fifty pounds. With my motor, a machine weighing thirty pounds will give rather more than six-horse-power, or, in other words, will produce a wing power competent to overcome much more than its own gravity. If the Aeronautical Society does not, within the next few years, make a machine capable of carrying passengers through the air to New York in less than two days, I will make one myself.”
“Very wonderful, indeed,” said Douglas, politely, looking askance at him.
“No more wonderful than the flight of a sparrow, I assure you. We shall presently be conveyed to the top of this building by my motor. Here you have a model locomotive, a model steam hammer, and a sewing machine: all of which, as you see, I can set to work. However, this is mere show. You must always bear in mind that the novelty is not in the working of these machines, but the smallness of the cost of working.”
Douglas endured the rest of the exhibition in silence, understanding none of the contrivances until they were explained, and not always understanding them even then. It was disagreeable to be instructed by Conolly — to feel that there were matters of which Conolly knew everything and he nothing. If he could have but shaped a pertinent question or two, enough to prove that he was quite capable of the subject if he chose to turn his attention to it, he could have accepted Conolly’s information on the machinery as indifferently as that of a policeman on the shortest way to some place that it was no part of a gentleman’s routine to frequent. As it was, he took refuge in his habitual reserve, and, lest the exhibition should be prolonged on his account, took care to shew no more interest in it than was barely necessary to satisfy Mr. Lind. At last it was over; and they returned westward together in a hansom.
“He is a Yankee, I suppose,’” said Douglas, as if ingenuity were a low habit that must be tolerated in an American.
“Yes. They are a wonderful people for that sort of thing. Curious turn of mind the mechanical instinct is!”
“It is one with which I have no sympathy. It is generally subject to the delusion that it has a monopoly of utility. Your mechanic hates art; pelts it with lumps of iron; and strives to extinguish it beneath all the hard and ugly facts of existence. On the other hand, your artist instinctively hates machinery. I fear I am an artist.”
“I dont think you are quite right there, Sholto. No. Look at the steam engine, the electric telegraph, the — the other inventions of the century. How could we get on without them?”
“Quite as well as Athens got on without them. Our mechanical contrivances seem to serve us; but they are really mastering us, crowding and crushing the beauty out of our lives, and making commerce the only god.”
“I certainly admit that the coarser forms of Radicalism have made alarming strides under the influence of our modern civilization. But the convenience of steam conveyance is so remarkable that I doubt if we could now dispense with it. Nor, as a consistent Liberal, a moderate Liberal, do I care to advocate any retrogression, even in the direction of ancient Greece.”
Douglas was seized with a certain impatience of Mr. Lind, as of a well-mannered man who had never learned anything, and had forgotten all that he had been taught. He did not attempt to argue, but merely said, coldly: “I can only say that I wish Fate had made me an Athenian instead of an Englishman of the nineteenth century.”
Mr. Lind smiled complacently: he knew Douglas, if not Athens, better, but was in too tolerant a humor to say so. Little more passed between the two until they reached Westbourne Terrace, where Marian and her cousin were dressing for dinner. When Marian came down, her beauty so affected Douglas that his voice was low and his manner troubled as he greeted her. He took her in to dinner, and sat in silence beside her, heedless alike of his host’s commonplaces and Miss McQuinch’s acridities.
Mr. Lind unceremoniously took a nap after his wine that evening, and allowed his guest to go upstairs alone. Douglas hoped that Elinor would be equally considerate, but, to his disappointment, he found her by herself in the drawingroom. She hastened to explain.
“Marian is looking for some music. She will be back directly.”
He sat down and took an album from the table, saying: “Have you many new faces here?”
“Yes. But we never discard old faces for new ones. It is the old ones that are really interesting.”
“I have not seen this one of Mr. Lind before. It is capital. Ah! this of you is an old friend.”
“Yes. What do you think of the one of Constance on the opposite page?”
“She looks as if she were trying to be as lugubrious as possible. What dress is that? Is it a uniform?”
“Yes. She joined a nursing guild. Didnt Mrs. Douglas tell you?”
“I believe so. I forgot. She went into a cottage hospital or something of that kind, did she not?”
“She left it because one of the doctors offended her. He was rather dreadful. He said that in two months she had contributed more to the mortality among the patients than he had in two years, and told her flatly that she had been trained for the drawingroom and ought to stay there. She was glad enough to have an excuse for leaving; for she was heartily sick of making a fool of herself.”
“Indeed! Where is she now?”
“Back at Towers Cottage, moping, I suppose. That’s Mr. Conolly the inventor, there under Jasper.”
“So I perceive. Clever head, rather! A plain, hard nature, with no depths in it. Is that his wife, with the Swiss bonnet?”
“His wife! Why, that is a Swiss girl, the daughter of a guide at Chamounix, who nursed Marian when she sprained her ankle. Mr. Conolly is not married.”
“I thought men of his stamp always married early.”
“No. He is engaged, and engaged to a lady of very good position.”
“He owes that to the diseased craving of modern women for notoriety of any sort. What an admirable photograph of Marian! I never saw it before. It is really most charming. When was it taken?”
“Last August, at Geneva. She does not like it — thinks it too coquettish.”
“Then