Not to be balked by his churlishness, they pa.s.sed a hat and collected $8.67, which I thought a remarkably generous admission price. When this was added to Mrs d.i.n.kman"s ten dollars the gardener, still protesting, reluctantly agreed to perform.
Mrs d.i.n.kman prudently holding the total, he unloaded the powermower with many flourishes, making quite an undertaking of oiling and adjusting the roller, setting the blades; bending down to a.s.sure himself of the gasoline in the small tank, finally wheeling the contraption into place with great spirit. The motor started with a disgruntled put! changing into a series of resigned explosions as he guided it over the lawn crosswise to the lines of his predecessor. Miss Francis followed every motion with rapt attention.
"Did you expect this?" I asked.
"Ay? The abnormally stimulated growth, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Yes and no. Work in the laboratory didnt indicate it. My own fault; I didnt realize at once making available so much free nitrogen would have such instant results. But last night--"
"Yes?"
"Not now. Later."
The powermower went nicely, I might almost say smoothly, over the stuff cut before, muttering and chickling happily to itself as it dragged the panting gardener, inescapably harnessed, in its wake. But the mown area was narrow and the machine quickly jerked through it and made the last easy journey along the wall of untouched devilgra.s.s beyond.
The gardener, without hesitation, aimed his machine at the thicket of gra.s.s. It growled, slowed, coughed, spat, struggled and thrashed on and finally conked out.
"Ah," said Miss Francis.
"Oh," said the spectators.
"Sonofab.i.t.c.h," said the gardener.
He yanked the grumbling mower back angrily, inspecting its mechanism in the manner of a mother with a wayward son and began again. There was desperate determination in his shoulders as he added his forward thrust to the protesting rhythm. The machine went at the gra.s.s like a bulldog attacking a borzoi: it bit, chewed, held on. It cut a new six inches readily, another foot slowly--and then with jolts and misfires and loud imprecations from the gardener, it gave up again.
"You," judged Mrs d.i.n.kman, "don"t know how to cut gra.s.s."
The gardener wiped his sweaty forehead with the inside of his wrist.
"You--you should have a law against you," he answered bitterly and inadequately.
But the crowd evidently agreed with Mrs d.i.n.kman"s verdict, for there were mutterings of "It"s a farmer"s job." "Get somebody with a scythe."
"That"s right--get a scythe." "Got to have a scythe to cut hay like that." These remarks, uttered loudly enough for him to hear, so discouraged the gardener that after three more futile tries he reloaded his equipment and left amidst jeers and expressions of disfavor without attempting to collect any of the money.
For some reason the failure of the powermower lightened the atmosphere.
Everyone, including Mrs d.i.n.kman, seemed convinced that scything was the solution. Tension relaxed and the bystanders began talking in something above a whisper.
_6._ "This will just about ruin our sales," I said.
Miss Francis suspended the toothpick before her chin and looked at me as though I"d said dirty words in the presence of ladies.
"Well it will," I argued. "You can"t expect people to have their lawns inoculated if they find out it"s going to make gra.s.s act this way."
Her eyes might have been microscopes and I something smeared on a slide.
"Weener, youre the sort of man who peddles _Life Begins at Forty_ to the inmates of an old peoples" home."
I couldnt see what had upset her. The last idea had sound salesappeal, but it was a low income market.... Oh well--her queer notions and obscure reactions undoubtedly went with her scientific gift. You have to lead individuals of this type for their own good, otherwise they spend their lives wandering around in a dreamy fog, accomplishing nothing.
"I still believe youve got something," I pointed out. "You yourself said it wasnt perfected, but perhaps you havent realized how far from marketable it actually is yet. Now then," I went on reasonably, "youre just going to have to dilute it or change it or do something to it, so while it will make gra.s.s nice and green, it won"t let it grow wild like this."
The fixed look could be annoying. It was nearly impossible to turn your eyes away without rudeness once she caught them. "Weener, the Metamorphizer is neither fertilizer nor plant food. It is a chemical compound producing a controlled mutation in any treated member of the family Gramineae. Dilution might make it not work--the mutation might not take place--but it couldnt make it half work. I could change your nature by forcibly injecting an ounce of lead into your cerebellum. The change would not only be irrevocable, but it wouldnt make the slightest difference if the lead were adulterated with ironpyrites or not."
"But, Miss Francis," I expostulated, "you"ll have to do _something_."
She threw her hands into the air, a theatrical gesture even more than ordinarily unbecoming. "Why?"
"Why? To make your discovery marketable, of course."
"Now? In the face of this?"
"Miss Francis," I said with dignity, "you are a lady and my selfrespect makes me treat you with the courtesy due your s.e.x. You advertised for a salesman. Instead of sneering at my honest efforts to put your merchandise across to the public, I think youd be better advised to worry about such lowbrow things as keeping faith."
"Am I to keep faith in a vacuum? You came to me as a salesman and I must give you something to sell. This is simple morality; but if such a grant entails concomitant evils, surely I am absolved of my original contract."
"I don"t know what youre talking about," I told her frankly. "Your stuff made the gra.s.s grow too fast, that"s all. You should change the formula or find a new one or else ..."
"Or else youll have been left with nothing to sell. I despair of making the point about changing the formula; your trust in my powers is too reverent. Again, I"m not an arrogant woman and I"ll admit to some responsibility. Make the world fit for Alfred Weener to make a living in."
"It"s Albert, not Alfred," I corrected her. I"m not touchy, goodness knows, but afterall a name"s a piece of property.
"Your pardon, Albert." She looked down at me with such a placatory and genuinely feminine smile I decided I"d been foolish to be offended.
She"s a nut of course, I thought indulgently, someone whose life is bounded by theories and testtubes, a woman with no conception of practical reality. Instead of being affronted it would be better to show her patiently how essential my help was to her.
"Of all people," she went on, searching my face with those discomfiting eyes, "of all people Ive the least cause for moral sn.o.bbery. Anxious to get a few dollars to carry on my work--and what was such anxiety but selfindulgence?--I threw the Metamorphizer to you and the world before I realized that it was not only imperfect, but faulty. h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions and the first result of my desire to benefit mankind has been to injure the d.i.n.kmans. Meditation in place of infatuation would have shown me both the immediate and ultimate wrongs. I doubt if youd been gone an hour yesterday when I knew I"d made a blunder in permitting you to go out with danger in both hands."
"I don"t know what youre getting at," I said stiffly, for it sounded as though she were regarding me as a child.
"Why, as I was sitting, composing my thoughts toward extending the effectiveness of the Metamorphizer beyond gramina, it suddenly became clear to me I"d erred about not knowing how long the effect of the inoculations would last."
"You mean you found out?" If she brought the thing under control and the effect lasted a specified time there might be repeat business afterall.
"I found out a great deal by using speculation and logic for a change instead of my hands and memory. I sat and thought, and though this is an unorthodox way for a scientist to proceed, I profited by it. I reasoned: if you change the genetic structure of a plant you change it permanently; not for a day or an hour, but for its existence. I"m not speaking of chance mutations, you understand, Weener, coming about over a course of generations, generations which include sports, degenerates, atavars andsoforth; but of controlled changes, brought about through human intervention. Inoculation by the Metamorphizer might be compared to cutting off a man"s leg or transplanting part of his brain.
Albert--what happens when you cut off a man"s leg?"
I was tired of being talked to like a grammarschool cla.s.s. Still, I humored her. "Why, then he has only one leg," I answered agreeably if idiotically.
"True. More than that, he has a onelegged disposition. His whole ego, his entire spirit is changed. No longer a twolegged creature, reduced, he is another--warped, if you like--being. To come to the immediate point of the gra.s.s: if you engender an omnivorous capacity you implant an insatiable appet.i.te."
"I don"t catch."
"If you give a man a big belly you make him a hog."
A chevvy coupe, gently breathing steam from its radiator cap, interrupted. From its turtle hung the blade of a scythe and on the nervously hinged door had been hopefully lettered _Arcangelo Barelli, Plowing & Grading_.
While the coupe was trembling for some seconds before quieting down, I sighed a double relief, at Miss Francis" forgetfulness of the money due her and the soothing of my fears for the lawn"s eating its way downward to China or India. The remark about gluttonous abdomens was disturbing.