"We do not attempt the impossible," explained Dr. Magnus, dryly. "Our failures must be inherent in the man, not in his subject."
There were other rooms, a long succession of them, filled with melancholy evidences of incapacity and defeat in almost every department of human activity—plans of abortive military campaigns, prospectuses of moribund business enterprises, architectural and engineering drawings of structures never to be reared, charts, models, unfinished musical scores, finally a huge papier-mache globe on which were traced the routes of Mr. Colman Hoyt's four unsuccessful dashes for the North Pole. It depressed me, the sight of this vast lumber-room, this collection of useless flotsam and jetsam, cast up and rejected by the sea of strenuous life. Most moving of all, a broken golf-club standing in a dusty corner, and beside it a wofully scarred and battered ball. I pointed them out to Indiman.
"A fellow-sufferer," he said, and sighed deeply.
Last of all we were conducted to the common room, a spacious apartment immediately under the dome. At one end a huge stone fireplace, in which a fire crackled cheerfully.
"'Non Possumus,'" read Indiman, deciphering the motto chiselled upon the chimney-breast.
"An admirable sentiment indeed! Dr. Magnus, I venture to infer that the Utinam Club is the child of your own brain. Permit me, sir, to congratulate you—a glorious inception and carried out to perfection."
Dr. Magnus smiled frostily. "I thank you, Mr. Indiman," he said, staring hard at him. "In a civilization so complex as ours the Utinam undoubtedly fills a want. And now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me; I have some affairs of moment. The club is yours; make use of it as you will. You are already acquainted with Mr. Hoyt, I believe. The other gentlemen—but opportunity will doubtless serve." He bowed and withdrew.
Indiman dropped into an easy-chair and lit a cigar. "Les miserables," he said to me in an undertone. "Look at them."
In truth, it was a strange company with whom we had foregathered. There were perhaps a dozen men in the room, and each seemed absorbed in the listless contemplation of his own dejected personality. The large table in the centre of the room was laden with newspapers and periodicals, but no one had taken the trouble to displace the neat files in which they had been arranged. The card-room adjoining was untenanted; the green-baize tables, with their complement of shiny, new packs of cards and metal counters, bore no evidence of use; in the billiard-room at the back a marker slept restfully in his high-legged chair. Assuredly, the members of the Utinam Club were not advocates of the strenuous life.
It was after six o'clock now, and the big room was beginning to fill up with later arrivals. Yet there was none of the cheerful hum and bustle ordinarily characteristic of such a gathering. A man would enter and pass to his place unfavored by even the courtesy of a friendly glance; at least a score of men had made their first appearance within the last quarter of an hour, and not a single word of greeting or recognition had I heard exchanged. Among them was Mr. Colman Hoyt, the unsuccessful Arctic explorer. He passed close to where Indiman and I sat, yet never looked at us. An odd set, these our fellow-members of the Utinam, and one naturally wondered why they came to the club at all. But we were now to learn.