Part 11 (1/2)

”I want to be friends with you, that's all. You probably know a good deal more about me than I do about you, but that need not matter.

Hullo--do you always drum with your fingers on the table like that?

Ha-ha-ha! Why, that was a habit of my father's, too.”

Peer stared at the other in silence. But his fingers stopped drumming.

”I rather envy you, you know, living as you do. When you come to be a millionaire, you'll have an effective background for your millions. And then, you must know a great deal more about life than we do; and the knowledge that comes out of books must have quite another spiritual value for you than for the rest of us, who've been stuffed mechanically with 'lessons' and 'education' and so forth since we were kids. And now you're going in for engineering?”

”Yes,” said Peer. His face added pretty clearly, ”And what concern is it of yours?”

”Well, it does seem to me that the modern technician is a priest in his way--or no, perhaps I should rather call him a descendant of old Prometheus. Quite a respectable ancestry, too, don't you think? But has it ever struck you that with every victory over nature won by the human spirit, a fragment of their omnipotence is wrested from the hands of the G.o.ds? I always feel as if we were using fire and steel, mechanical energy and human thought, as weapons of revolt against the Heavenly tyranny. The day will come when we shall no longer need to pray.

The hour will strike when the Heavenly potentates will be forced to capitulate, and in their turn bend the knee to us. What do you think yourself? Jehovah doesn't like engineers--that's MY opinion.”

”Sounds very well,” said Peer briefly. But he had to admit to himself that the other had put into words something that had been struggling for expression in his own mind.

”Of course for the present we two must be content with smaller things,”

Ferdinand went on. ”And I don't mind admitting that laying out a bit of road, or a bit of railway, or bridging a ditch or so, isn't work that appeals to me tremendously. But if a man can get out into the wide world, there are things enough to be done that give him plenty of chance to develop what's in him--if there happens to be anything. I used to envy the great soldiers, who went about to the ends of the earth, conquering wild tribes and founding empires, organising and civilising where they went. But in our day an engineer can find big jobs too, once he gets out in the world--draining thousands of square miles of swamp, or regulating the Nile, or linking two oceans together. That's the sort of thing I'm going to take a hand in some day. As soon as I've finished here, I'm off. And we'll leave it to the engineers to come, say in a couple of hundred years or so, to start in arranging tourist routes between the stars. Do you mind my smoking?”

”No, please do,” said Peer. ”But I'm sorry I haven't--”

”I have--thanks all the same.” Ferdinand took out his cigar-case, and when Peer had declined the offered cigar, lit one himself.

”Look here,” he said, ”won't you come out and have dinner with me somewhere?”

Peer started at his visitor. What did all this mean?

”I'm a regular Spartan, as a rule, but they've just finished dividing up my father's estate, so I'm in funds for the moment, and why shouldn't we have a little dinner to celebrate? If you want to change, I can wait outside--but come just as you are, of course, if you prefer.”

Peer was more and more perplexed. Was there something behind all this?

Or was the fellow simply an astonis.h.i.+ngly good sort? Giving it up at last, he changed his collar and put on his best suit and went.

For the first time in his life he found himself in a first-cla.s.s restaurant, with small tables covered with snow-white tablecloths, flowers in vases, napkins folded sugar-loaf shape, cut-gla.s.s bowls, and coloured wine-gla.s.ses. Ferdinand seemed thoroughly at home, and treated his companion with a friendly politeness. And during the meal he managed to make the talk turn most of the time on Peer's childhood and early days.

When they had come to the coffee and cigars, Ferdinand leaned across the table towards him, and said: ”Look here, don't you think we two ought to say thee and thou* to each other?”

* ”Tutoyer,” the mode of address of intimate friends.h.i.+p or relations.h.i.+p.

”Oh, yes!” said Peer, really touched now.

”We're both Holms, you know.”

”Yes. So we are.”

”And, after all, who knows that there mayn't be some sort of connection?

Come, now, don't look like that! I only want you to look on me as your good friend, and to come to me if ever there's anything I can do. We needn't live in each other's pockets, of course, when other people are by--but we must take in Klaus Brock along with us, don't you think?”