“You have heard of him?”
“Mr. Fothersley spoke of him only this morning, and your daughter mentioned him the other day.”
“He was an interesting personality, and very strong on the point that there were extraordinary powers and forces latent in man. I never cared to discuss them with him. He went too far, and looking back I think I almost unconsciously dreaded his influence over Dick. I don’t think I need have. Dick was, I recognize it now, the stronger of the two.”
“But he was interested in the same things?”
“Undoubtedly. Possibly I was jealous; I preferred him to be interested in my particular line of study. He was interested to a great extent of course, but von Schäde’s lines of thought appealed to him more. I remember the last night von Schäde was here. It was in the June of 1914. He had been paying Dick a long visit and was leaving in the morning. It was the sort of night when the world seems much bigger than it does by day—a wonderful night. The sky was thick with stars, and he stood just over there with their light on his face, and talked to us as if we were a public meeting. He was a good-looking chap in a hard frozen sort of style. Oliver Lodge had been speaking to the Royal Art Society on the Sources of Power, and it had got von Schäde on to his hobby.
“‘You talk of the power of atomic energy, you scientists,’ he said; ‘it is as nothing compared with the forces possessed by man in himself. If we studied these, if we understood these, if we knew how to harness and direct them, there is nothing in heaven and earth we should not be masters of. Men—we should be gods! And you men with brains puddle about among the forces of nature, blind and deaf to the forces in man which could harness every one of the forces of nature obedient to your will, and leave the study of these things to hysterical madmen and neurotic women. And those who have some knowledge, who have the gift, the power, to experiment with these forces if they would, they are afraid of this and that. My God, you make me sick!’
“He threw out both his arms and his face was as white as a sheet. Old Dick got up and put his arm round the fellow’s shoulders. Goodness knows what he saw in him! ‘We’ll get the forces harnessed right enough, old fellow, when we’re fit to use them,’ he said.
“And they looked at each other for a full minute, von Schäde glaring and Dick smiling, and then von Schäde suddenly began to laugh.
“‘Mostly I’m fond of you, Dick,’ he said, ‘but sometimes I hate you like the deuce!’
“He went the next morning, and I was glad. For another thing he fell in love with Vi, and she was such a little demon to flirt that until the last minute you never knew if she was serious or not. Morally and socially he was irreproachable, but—well, I didn’t like him! I often wondered how he took the news of her engagement to Dick.”